Saturday, November 14, 2015

#Paris - Initial thoughts on the latest example of #ISIS pathology on display on the streets of Paris, a city that stands in stark contrast to everything repressive Islamic fundamentalism rejects: Liberté, égalité, fraternité; @France24_en

#Paris - Initial thoughts on the latest example of #ISIS pathology on display on the streets of Paris, a city that stands in stark contrast to everything repressive Islamic fundamentalism rejects: Liberté, égalité, fraternité; @France24_en


Tom Burges Watson of France24

Per continuing developments in #Paris, you probably still have it from previous emails of mine but just in case... link for France24's English language channel in Paris, which I previously mentioned back in January during Charlie Hebdo massacres. http://www.france24.com/en/



I also watched both the English and French-language channels during the last French presidential elections, where Hollande defeated Sarkozy. A well-known international media organoization even contacted me about appearing on-air to discuss the election, if you can believe it.
I said no thanks, foolishly.

As it happens, I took French for many years at North Miami Beach High School in late '70's and even received an award for being the 2nd-best non-native speaker of French at the 1979 Dade County Youth Fair Oral competition down at FIU, open to all French high school students in greater Miami.
Of course, I lost to a ringer from Quebec. :-(


In case you forgot what some people in Great Britain were thinking back in January, since we are rarely reminded of it in the U.S.:




The Telegraph
Quarter of British Muslims sympathise with Charlie Hebdo terrorists 
Some 27 per cent of British Muslims sympathise with Paris gunmen, 
while more than one in ten say satirical cartoons "deserve" to be attacked
Am sure we will see similar polls done in U.K. and other European countries within the next few days, with results that both surprise and frustrate.





















Ann Coulter's thought about Donald Trump, on the other hand, seems reflected in both the words, action and human behavior of Americans I see and speak with everyday, not mystical elite salons that believe that their own unpopularity is, itself, a reflection of something positive. She's right, they're wrong. 
















































This blog post is based in part to my not only looking at themany emails I received from friends and contacts in Europe, but also watching and monitoring France24 all morning, including seeing the Interior Minister's speech outlawing public demonstrations until at least next Thursday (?), for fear, clearly, of creating so many new and completely undefensible targets for so-called '"one wolves."
That being a favorite topic of some U.S. TV reporters, even when there isn't as much empirical evidence of them as often suggested in their reports.
But it only takes one, right?
Or, two in Boston.

Also, since it was reported last night per French President Hollandes's speech to the nation, I've learned that there are 61 official "border' entrances and exits in France, which will be more closely monitored than ever before, even while plane flights into France continue.

Press reports I've seen in various places keep hinting at more than passing concern with the 
French-Belgium border for some reason, but yet the media seems reluctant to say just why that would be so compared to France's borders with Spain, Germany or via boat in #Calais, scene of so much craziness and heartbreak because of the surge of immigrants there and theri attempst to get into Great Britain via the Eurotunnel or any other means available to them, a topic which I've written emails about to friends bot not posted about on the blog this summer.

I wonder whether this info I have heard about Belgium is being mentioned specifically because of an errant police leak or it's merely a trial ballon? Sheer supposition? Intuition? 
Hard to say, which also makes it frustrating given how much mis-information has already gotten out and with MUCH more sure to come in the days ahead..

As of 9 am Eastern this morning, two Syrian passports and 1 French passport were found so far on the 7 dead terrorists who killed themselves.
Numbers show that French police did not actually kill any terrorists, leading to a growing if still somewhat under-the-radar for now criticism that French SWAT teams simply waited too long to go in, given history and pathology of hostage takers -i.e. they were selected for the assignment 
precisely because they are prepared (and happy) to kill themselves AFTER killing as many hostages as possible, for a radical ideology where #numbers DO matter.

(That "strain" of Islam that to the regret of this country, President Obama refuses to say aloud for fear of causing offense - Islamic fundamentalism.)

Which means that in these types of situations, law enforcement simply has no time to pretend they are military units with overwhelming numbers and have the freedom to mass, coordinate with everyone and then enter and attack on THEIR own timetable.
New reality is that in this type of terror hostage situation, the clock is ticking... and a real bomb WILL definitely go off.

Similar public criticism of Littleton police by parents during and after the Columbine High 
School massacre proved to be more than justified, as there's still extant video of assembled, frantic parents and public near school asking why police were waiting SO LONG back then,
given that the Littleton area SWAT teams were armored, armed and trained.

Los Angeles Times
Police Under Fire in Quest to Study Columbine
Emergencies: Public lacks understanding, officials say. They defend actions of Littleton officers.
April 27, 1999
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and MATT LAIT | TIMES STAFF WRITERS

(N.B.: Eric Lichtblau is now at NY Times and an excellent reporter.)

Too much police concern for SWAT team members and not enough for kid hostages?
Which is precisely what I was thinking even as I watched the LIVE coverage of that on CNN 
back in 1999, when I was still living/working in Washington DC and that day, doing some consulting work for a well-known U.S.law firm... until the news hit and everyone raced into the giant conference room to watch the TV and see what was happening.
And not quite believing the 'rescue operation' seemed to be going in slow-motion... 

I had a similar sinking feeling and thought last night, and I suspect that many of  you did as well 
-the Police are simply waiting TOO LONG... 

:-( Anguish and exasperation in equal measure.


The Tweet below from this morning is my clear reference to George Stephanopoulos' frequent
absence from his own Sunday morning public affairs show, This Week, NOT the amount of time per show he's actually visible on it, which may be the impression I mistakenly conveyed when I did it.
This fact is self-evident, esp. to someone like me who's tracked it all year, since I believe that as of July, he was barely on 55% of 2015's This Week shows.

I've mentioned to many of you in person and probably even tweeted it a few times, and mentioned in emails, that as far as I'm concerned, ABC News should have never allowed Jake Tapper to get away to CNN, however it happened.
He was the best host for that show since its creator and first host, David Brinkley.  







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Monday, November 2, 2015

Tomorrow's vote in San Francisco on #housing, #techboom, #SharingEconomy and @Airbnb may be the least-covered important voter referendum on ideas & public policy of the past 15 years. (Thanks #MSM!) Fortunately, @ConorDougherty of @nytimes has a fair and well-written story on it for you to make sense of.


Tomorrow's vote in San Francisco on #housing, #techboom, #SharingEconomy and @Airbnb may be the least-covered important voter referendum on ideas & public policy of the past 15 years. (Thanks #MSM!) Fortunately, @ConorDougherty of @nytimes has a fair and well-written story on it for you to make sense of.


 http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/02/san-francisco-ballots-turn-up-anger-over-the-technical-divide.html



































The two inactive Twitter links above can now be found at:
Airbnb Is Inc.'s 2014 Company of the Year 
Disruptive, brazen, and overall brilliant, the (possibly illegal) home-sharing empire has become the biggest lodging provider on Earth--earning it the title of Inc.'s 2014 Company of the Year.
By Burt Helm,  Senior Contributing Writer @burthelm
http://www.inc.com/magazine/201412/burt-helm/airbnb-company-of-the-year-2014.html





Tomorrow's vote in San Francisco on #housing, #techboom, #sharingeconomy and @Airbnb may be the least-covered important voter referendum on ideas & public policy of the past 15 years. 
Fortunately, @ConorDougherty of @nytimes has a fair and well-written story on it for you to make sense of in advance of the predictable spin we can expect from both sides of the debate, where a loss may well be spun as a win and vice-versa.

 His article below describes what is arguably the most important vote taking place in the U.S. tomorrow, esp. as far as ideas and getting an accurate reading of the mood of a particular community goes, and yet until I saw this NY Times story today, the #MSM has made no serious attempt to make me fully aware of the universe of both positive and negative consequences possible afterwards for other communities. (Thanks #MSM!)
Just saying...
Dave 
New York Times
TECHNOLOGY
San Francisco Ballots Turn Up Anger Over the Technical Divide
By CONOR DOUGHERTYNOV. 1, 2015
SAN FRANCISCO — Bruce Bennett is 52 and has a bum knee in need of surgery. But two Sundays ago he put on a knee brace and huffed his way up steep hills and dozens of stairs to implore residents to vote against a city measure called Proposition F.
“This is probably the heaviest I’ve ever gotten involved in any campaign,” he said.
Proposition F is a new proposal that would cut the supply of short-term home rentals, or, to quote a few of the people who answered their doors for Mr. Bennett, “the Airbnb thing.”

 Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/technology/san-francisco-ballots-turn-up-anger-over-the-technical-divide.html
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Thursday, October 22, 2015

Since facts still matter... Important facts & context NOT revealed in Sun-Sentinel's account of Broward County School Board hiring Leo Bobadilla from Houston to head its "troubled $800 million bond program." Charlotte Greenbarg, Buddy Nevins & Ericka Mellon help me connect some dots on the 'bigger picture' and what it reveals is NOT positive about Broward School Board members' public accountability. Surprise!

Since facts still matter... Important facts & context NOT revealed in Sun-Sentinel's account of Broward County School Board hiring Leo Bobadilla from Houston to head its "troubled $800 million bond program." Charlotte Greenbarg, Buddy Nevins & Ericka Mellon help me connect some dots on the 'bigger picture' and what it reveals is NOT positive about Broward School Board members' public accountability. Surprise!




South Florida Sun-Sentinel
District hires $185K executive - School board vote brings aboard head of embattled bond program in Texas
By Brittany Shammas, Staff writer
October 21, 2015

The Broward County School Board voted Tuesday to hire the leader of an embattled Houston school district bond program to oversee its own troubled $800 million bond program, which is being used renovate aging schools.

Leo Bobadilla, chief operating officer at the Houston Independent School District, will earn $185,707 as Broward's chief facilities officer. He'll be responsible for overseeing the construction and design of new facilities, as well as maintaining, repairing and renovating existing facilities

Read the rest of the article at:

 Broward Beat
Slammed In Last Job Because Of Bad Audits, Now Hired By Broward Schools
By Buddy Nevins
October 18, 2015

The Houston school executive chosen to manage Broward’s school construction was slammed for running a program that overpaid contractors and allowed lawful spending caps to be circumvented.

Leo Bobadilla, chief operating officer of the Houston school system, is due to be hired on Superintendent Robert Runcie’s recommendation on Tuesday.

Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.browardbeat.com/slammed-in-last-job-because-of-bad-audits-now-hired-by-broward-schools/

 Do I even need to point out that this week, per the above matter, we saw YET ANOTHER 
embarrassing vote on the Broward School Board by SE Broward's member, Ann Murray, who showed all over again that facts and context never really matter to her as long as she and the other School Board insiders can keep common sense accountability and reform from coming into play before even more kids and parents abandon the Broward public schools? 
Apparently so.

But if you were hiring someone for an important position of public trust, wouldn't you want to know as many salient and relevant facts as possible about their past experience, good and bad? 
Probably so.
The problem is that Ann Murray doesn't.

This is hardly surprising, given Murray's consistently unimpressive track record on behalf of the public and public education, which I have cited 44 times in the past 7 years on my blog, most recently, back in June:
Broward County residents increasingly dismayed by brazenness of Broward County 
Schools Supt. Robert W. Runcie & Broward School Board's Ann Murray and Rosalind 
Osgood's actions re bond $$ transparency & oversight

Supt. Robert W. Runcie wants Leo Bobadilla? 
Okay, that's good enough for Murray to say yes.
Just like the guys from Chicago that Runcie also said he needed to hire to fix things for him who never quite worked out. 

At times like this, it's very hard to recall that Supt. Runcie works for her and us, not the other way around.
And I remind you that I was a Runcie supporter initially, but at some point you have to admit that it's not working out the way you hoped.

Below, a relevant fact about this matter from my friend Charlotte Greenbarg, longtime Hollywood and Broward civic activist and education reformer, now making a big difference over in Lutz, in Hillsborough County.
(Yes, Lutz. Which, admittedly, I had never heard of before Charlotte moved there, since it sounded more like an App than a real place in Florida.)

Makes you wonder why the fact that the Houston audit was apparently going to be released the next day wasn't mentioned in the Sun-Sentinel article, no?
Really, the Broward School Board couldn't even wait 48 hours?

FYI: The abc13.com link below has a video about the story, too.


--------

This is the article from the Houston Chronicle. The Broward School Board didn’t think it was important to wait for the audit. Wonder why? 
They hired the Houston person the day BEFORE the audit was released.

Charlotte Greenbarg, President
IVBE, Inc.
Lutz, FL




 
TED OBERG INVESTIGATES
Audit: HISD's inflation claims as cause for $211M shortfall are false
A just-released audit contradicts claims by HISD officials that "rising inflation and construction costs" were to blame for a $211 million budget shortfall.

By Ted Oberg and Trent Seibert
Wednesday, October 21, 2015 06:46PM

HOUSTON (KTRK) --

 An audit released Wednesday contradicts claims made last month by Houston Independent School District officials that "rising inflation and construction costs" were to blame for a $211 million shortfall in the school district's failure to complete all school projects promised to the community.
Read the rest of the article at:

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Tuesday, October 20, 2015

An open letter to Florida CFO Jeff Atwater about the long overdue need for CRA reform in Florida. Today's Florida Bulldog expose by William Gjebre is a perfect example of why these spending/ethical reforms were needed... YESTERDAY: @Florida_Bulldog: Fort Lauderdale to use “poor people’s money” to subsidize transit for affluent?

October 20, 2015

Dear Mr. Atwater:

Per the enclosed story from this morning's newest expose in the Florida Bulldog, 
'Fort Lauderdale to use “poor people’s money” to subsidize transit for affluent?,'
I had some quick thoughts to share with you.

I do so because your record in public service shows that more than seems true with 
99% of the elected officials in this state, you've proven to be someone who shows 
via word and deed that you believe in both the spirit and letter of Florida's laws 
governing public accountability and spending, not just the abstract idea of them. 

Given my experience in Hallandale Beach, which I have recounted to you previously, 
where over a period of years, tens of millions of HB CRA dollars were mis-spent with 
no genuine accountability and no meaningful oversight, -where the Broward Inspector 
General's damning report showed high-ranking, highly-paid city/CRA staff 
essentially went on the 'honor system' with recipients who were friends of HB 
City Hall, including NOT even requiring CRA fund recipients to show any evidence 
they were actually doing or making progress towards what they claimed they'd 
accomplish with the CRA funds- I keep waiting for the Florida Legislature to do what
they keep saying they want to do, namely, tighten-up CRA rules so that clearly-understood 
rules are set so that both the public and the cities will know in advance what city CRA 
Boards can and can NOT do with CRA funds.

And chief among these is NOT continue to use them as slush funds and "found money" 
to pay for the things involving public policy that those in charge DON'T want the public 
either to get wind of or have any real input on, regardless of how many people it might 
ultimately affect.
This continuing misbehavior by local government corrodes public trust and alienates 
people who do believe that CRAs can serve a very useful purpose.

After all, how can I trust someone in government who will do whatever they want 
whenever I'm not looking?
I appreciate that you're no longer in the legislature and are sensitive to the limits of your 
own office's authority and official duties, but if the legislature is going to keep punting, 
why not consider launching a public campaign to bring some of these excesses to light, 
and create some momentum for more pressure to be exerted to make the needed reforms
that Florida residents deserve?

The current system, and the repeated reluctance of city/CRA attorneys to tell their 
bosses to rein-in their worst instincts, puts the honest public officials in Florida who DO 
believe in transparency and genuine public engagement in difficult positions, especially 
when their bosses or their colleagues who don't believe in openness, want to continue 
to keep their thumbs on the scale to get their way and keep the public thoroughly 
disadvantaged -and in the dark.

Given all the spending horror stories that have taken place throughout the state with 
respect to CRAs, why is the effort to finally enact meaningful CRA reforms in Florida 
NOT being pushed seriously NOW in Tallahassee?
Just wondering, since the public knows that it's LONG OVERDUE

I just posted this letter to my blog.

In the near future, I'll be happy to post any response that you and your office or any of 
the state legislators receiving this email as a cc choose to respond with. 
------------
end of letter

Here's the article and the tweet about it that I encourage all of my blog's readers to share. 



Florida Bulldog
OCTOBER 20, 2015 AT 5:41 AM
Fort Lauderdale to use “poor people’s money” to subsidize transit for affluent?
By William Gjebre, FloridaBulldog.org 
OCTOBER 20, 2015 AT 5:41 AM
Fort Lauderdale’s recent approval of a no-bid contract to update the plan for the troubled Northwest-Progresso-Flagler Heights Community Redevelopment Agency has raised concerns about a lack of public input amid a rush to add projects not in the current plan at the expense of community needs.
Scott Strawbridge, who serves on the CRA’s 14-member advisory board, has called for outside review of the agency after he and his colleagues were informed that City Manager Lee Feldman signed a $24,500 contract with a private firm in August to amend the current CRA plan, last updated in 2001.
Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.floridabulldog.org/2015/10/fort-lauderdale-to-use-poor-peoples-money-to-subsidize-transit-for-affluent/
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