FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL πŸ›«πŸŒπŸ“ΊπŸ“½️🏈. This photo of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in Alfred Hitchcock's 1955 classic "To Catch a Thief" is the large Twitter photo on my @hbbtruth account

Beautiful StrandvΓ€gen, the grand boulevard in Γ–stermalm, in central Stockholm, Sweden, along Nybroviken. In my previous life, I was DEFINITELY born and raised there!

Memorial Stadium, Bloomington, home of the 2025 National Champion Indiana Hoosiers

Monday, October 19, 2026

Beware of the fake (astro-turf) groups commenting online re Amendment 3, like the anti-3 "Floridians For Fair Taxes, Not Corporate Handouts"

Beware of the fake (astro-turf) groups commenting online re Amendment 3, like the anti-3 "Floridians For Fair Taxes, Not Corporate Handouts"


As I have previously posted on my blog, my Twitter feed and just a few minutes ago on NextDoor, for the past few months, NextDoor has been inundated by several south Broward residents/ stakeholders opposed to Amendment 3, using fliers/mailers and AI-created elements that in some cases specifically list the sponsoring org as something called, not surprisingly, "Floridians For Fair Taxes, Not Corporate Handouts." 

They are pretty easy to find, but attached is one I have seen on several posts.

For the record, for all the reasons I've written about on my blog and on Twitter, I am a VERY strong YES vote for Amendment 3.




People are entitled to think or vote however they want, it matters not to me, but what I DO think we can all agree on about NextDoor, a site that has NOT always been very reliable or accurate in the past, is that when people choose to share their own thoughts on a particular public policy matter AND back that up by linking to a website or attaching fliers/mailers and AI-created elements to some individual, group, organization or source, they should post to ACTUAL individuals or orgs that follow Florida state law, NOT by creating imaginary individuals or groups that do NOT exist or do NOT report to the Florida's Secretary of State's office, as required by law.
As you can see from the screenshot I've attached, at bottom, in 2026, there is no registered group on the Florida Secretary of State's searchable database named "Floridians For Fair Taxes, Not Corporate Handouts"


(Leaving aside for now the fact that I originally signed up to NextDoor seven years ago to hear about matters related to Hollywood, NOT to Cooper City, NOT to Pembroke Pines, and NOT to Fort Lauderdale.)

I have BLOCKED several of those "people" on NextDoor who have rather suddenly appeared out-of-nowhere to sign up in order to post, and then seem to only post about Amendment 3, usually using that same fake "Floridians For Fair Taxes, Not Corporate Handouts" material.

Regardless of how you feel about this one issue, I suggest that you do the same thing and BLOCK them when you come across them, because nobody needs to see self-evident disinformation from people or groups who think they can successfully get away with manipulating you, because experience teaches us that they will keep doing trying to fool you in the future.


Dave 
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Wednesday, October 14, 2026

A roundup of recent Broward School Board melodrama, antics and hijinks re misanthropic BTU President Anna Fusco -defending a Broward School administrator who was one of the subjects of a Broward IG report- and more on the latest long-overdue plan to close more under-enrolled and physically-failing public schools

Today's blog post concerns a roundup of recent Broward School Board melodrama, antics and hijinks regarding misanthropic Broward Teachers Union/BTU President Anna Fusco -defending a Broward School district administrator who was one of the subjects of a Broward Inspector General report- and more on the latest long-overdue plan to close more under-enrolled and physically-failing public schools in Broward.

A very flawed plan to be sure but certainly better than the alternative, which seems to be nothing more serious than placating the many vocal, entitled members of the special interest groups around Broward County, some of whom are still very much in denial about the tens of thousands of students who have fled Broward Public Schools the past ten years. The students that the School Board once claimed were "lost," as if they'd simply been misplaced. 

Below is an expanded copy of an email that I sent out Wednesday afternoon to the Usual Savvy Suspects or so people on my email list, before that list likely gets whittled down after the election in under three weeks.


BTU president Anna Fusco, a subject of SO many critical past tweets and blog posts of mine over the years, opposed the firing Tuesday of Jennifer Andreu, a Broward Schools district administrator and a City of Plantation city council member, whom the Broward IG's Office was, quite correctly, highly critical of, here:


OIG Final Report Re: Mismanagement and Vendor Misconduct in the School Board of Broward County’s Procurement of Computing Devices and Deployment Services, Ref. OIG 25-020-M   


This video with Local10 News reporter Jackie Pascale, an ardent Eagles fan, was posted shortly before my first draft of this post.
Broward Teachers Union president alleges First Amendment violation after meeting removal
WPLG Local 10
October 14, 2026
Broward Teachers Union President Anna Fusco said Wednesday that she plans to file a lawsuit against Broward County School Board Chair Sarah Leonardi and others, alleging her First Amendment rights were violated when she was escorted out of a school board meeting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j4SO4r4s4Q

----
I suspect most of you receiving this email can recall why I personally think it's VERY ironic for Broward School Board member Rebecca Thompson to be quoted in yesterday's Scott Travis article saying, "It gives fuel to the accusation people have made about how we act and how friendships and personnel influence our decisions” given her own VERY deceitful performance in the months immediately prior to her election two years ago, when the former Allen Zeman School system secretary posited many things re Torey Alston that were simply untrue -and confirmed as such by an independent investigation that exonerated Alston, despite Zeman's great efforts to ease the election path for his then-newly-arrived, dim-witted protege.
It is what it is, which shows that Thompson has not learned a thing in office, which, candidly, is about what I expected.

* In case you don't recall any of this completely unprofessional conduct by Zeman and Thompson, see my tweet thread connecting-the-dots, which started in 2024 and concluded last May: https://x.com/hbbtruth/status/1902457500298809412?s=20


South Florida Sun Sentinel
Broward School Board fires administrator named in inspector general report
By Scott Travis, South Florida Sun Sentinel
PUBLISHED: October 14, 2026 at 7:00 AM EDT

A Broward schools administrator accused by the county’s top watchdog of mismanaging the purchase of laptops and misleading the School Board has been fired.

The firing of Jennifer Andreu came despite pleas for leniency from many of her supporters, who told School Board members on Tuesday she had done nothing to warrant the action. Andreu denies wrongdoing.

Read the rest of the story at https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2026/10/14/broward-school-board-fires-administrator-named-in-inspector-general-report/

As for last week's Sun Sentinel story regarding the needed closure of schools, for the record, I don't personally know Chris Canter, the two-time failed Broward School Board candidate from Hollywood mentioned in Scott Travis' article below.
He is described as follows: "Chris Canter, a parent and chair of Hollywood’s education advisory committee, spoke out against closing either school, saying he doesn’t think the district had done proper research.

“I’m not ashamed to say I oppose the closure of every single school on this list. This is a failed process,” he told the board. “Look at what your staff did in West Hollywood. They threw out a bunch of names of schools and then basically said, ‘You guys figure it out.’”
  
As most of you know from my emails, blog posts and comments at public meetings over the past 19 years criticizing the troubled, leaderless Broward County Schools, where for much of that time I was the #1 person BLOCKED on Twitter by the myriad Superintendents, I have long supported School Choice, but recognize that it's not a perfect solution for every family, just a choice they should be free to take.




Despite being asked to do so via Lorie Alhadeff, one of his bosses, then-Supt. Robert Runcie refused to ever remove the completely illegal BLOCK placed on me by Broward Schools in 2016 for sharing facts and insight that was completely counter to THEIR preferred narrative.
She told me, "I wanted you to know I did speak to him but nothing is going to change. Sorry."

ICYMI the first time around, my long essay about the "Culture of Corruption & Incompetency by Feckless #Broward #SchoolBoard, General Counsel Barbara J. Myrick & Supt. Robert Runcie in a Nutshell. The special #Florida Grand Jury investigating them will find a target-rich environment: here are examples. #FixIt 😠"



While I have been complaining publicly for years about the myriad, ever-changing and nonsensical throw-spaghetti-at-the-wall policy process that the majority of the Broward School Board members have so often consciously chosen, I am in 100% opposition to Canter's opposition to this VERY imperfect process that could easily be improved by 500%.

But Canter proposes no reasonable alternative, and seems to refuse to acknowledge the central inescapable fact: Many Broward schools should have been closed years ago resulting in the Teacher's Union enrollment getting smaller in the future to match the huge drop in student enrollment that so many of the Broward Education Establishment and Downtown Fort Lauderdale Business Establishment that supported ex-Supt. Runcie has continually denied was taking place -even as it took place before their very eyes for years.
Parents have voted with their feet and with their wallets. 
  
Also, for the record, despite Canter having been a candidate while I have lived in SE Broward, I have never once heard anyone -including everyone receiving this email- mention Chris Canter by name in an email, text or phone call to me, nor have I ever read about him publicly discussing the quite embarrassing Jessica Norton ethics/fraud scandal in the School system, one that the Sun Sentinel has NEVER reported on honestly and accurately.


South Florida Sun Sentinel
Broward School Board sticks with plan to close 10 schools
By Scott Travis
October 8, 2026

Parents and community members packed the Broward school district headquarters Tuesday in hopes of saving their schools from closure, but School Board members gave little hope of that happening.

The School Board reviewed Superintendent Howard Hepburn’s proposals to close 10 low-enrolled schools and move students to other schools with plenty of space.

School Board members didn’t make any final decisions during a four-hour workshop Tuesday, but their discussion suggested a desire to move forward with the current proposal, with possibly some tweaks.

Read the rest of the article at:

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Friday, October 2, 2026

As GOP voters and political professionals across USA increasingly have doubts about Senate candidates in Georgia and North Carolina among others, some, like me, place a lot of the blame directly on Tim Scott's shoulders for his ineffective "leadership" and work ethic at NRSC

In my opinion -and I've felt this way for months- Georgia will be the next state that the GOP will pull their Senate donor funds πŸ’°  from, as current Rep. Mike Collins is as completely hopeless and charisma-free a candidate as former RNC Chair Michael Whatley is in North Carolina. This has been abundantly clear to me since about May because of several VERY experienced politico friends I knew and respected when I lived and worked in Washington, D.C. for about 15 years, who now live in Georgia and North Carolina. (One even lives tantalizingly close to the ex-Love of My Life.)

Both of them are prematurely crying tears in their beers or punching walls 🀯 in their emails/phone calls to me the past six months, and way past being exasperated that these two races will not even be competitive unless something crazy bad happens to or because of Jon Ossoff and Roy Cooper in the last 30 or so days of the campaign.


Yet because both candidates were in HEAVY rotation AFTER their respective primary wins on the increasingly-ineffective and uncompelling Conservative Talk Radio ecosphere, they seemed normal enough to win if you judged them only by their myriad show appearances.
But being "GOP normal" in 2026 against very popular (if highly-irritating) Dems like incumbent Jon Ossoff in Georgia and soft-on-crime ex-North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, is NOT a substitute for them also being savvy, articulate and able to effectively read the room.
Both Collins and Whatley have failed that test, with reasons aplenty that Rachel Bade does not even bother getting into via her Substack story from this morning, that also appears on the website of ABC News: 

GOP doubts grow over Senate wins in Georgia and North Carolina. One Republican said the environment has never been this bad for GOP in Georgia. 


New York Post 
GOP pulling up to $10M out of North Carolina Senate race, diverting to Kansas in late bid to save majority
By Josh Christenson
Published Oct. 2, 2026, 1:53 p.m. ET

Trust me, those reasons make up a long list that my friends can practically recite from memory the way that I can STILL recite the roster of the Miami Dolphins Perfect Season team in 1972, my first as a Dolphins season ticket-holder at the Orange Bowl, seated alongside my Dad. In part because these particular friends are not just keen professional political observers, but, themselves, have friends or family members who for reasons of their own, have backed Collins or Whatley, two Trump-endorsed candidates.
This, despite my prescient friends perfectly diagnosing these two candidates' fatal political flaws last year. But the friends and family didn't listen, and now are aboard ships that are about to be torpedoed and sunk -with no survivors. 

Not surprisingly, in most cases, it involves a series of mistakes that involve overconfidence and laziness, as always, the surest way to sabotage a political race.

The other big problem here is that Conservative Talk Radio in 2026 has completely censored the self-evident fact that lazy AF Tim Scott was in charge at the NRSC.
About the last person you'd want in charge of things in a dynamic and fast-changing year like this, and yet another sign that Conservative Talk Radio regretfully places a much higher priority on maintaining access to someone like Scott than in simply being honest with their core audience. πŸ˜’

See my Twitter thread from last week about Tim Scott's myriad failures, which is itself largely a repeat of something that I wrote several months ago:
Have wondered for 6 mos. why Conservative Media, esp. Talk Radio, was SO reluctant to tell truth abt #NRSC under Sen. Tim Scott. Republicans Say the NRSC Isn’t Taking the #Midterms Seriously 
https://washingtonsun.com/2026-election/nrsc-tim-scott-midterms-decasper

"Unlike #NRSC chairs in previous cycles, [Tim] Scott doesn’t make candidate-recruitment visits or fundraising calls, instead leaving those responsibilities to others on the Comm., acc. to two sources familiar w/matter." It SHOWS! 
Low caliber nominees sink lower-ballot #GOP.

"During early days of the cycle, DeCasper would bring her small dog into the office and, on at least one occasion, let it walk around on the conf. table during a mtg, a source familiar with the matter told NOTUS, leaving those in attendance taken aback."


FireShot Capture 001 - (1) David Bruce Smith on X_ _@ByronYork @Johnnydontlike @EdMorrisse_ - [x.com].png
Not-so-happy πŸ’° fact: For just the 2020 Georgia Senate races involving both seats, and the subsequent run-off in January of 2021 -NOT presidential ads- nearly $250 million dollars was spent on ads at ABC's Atlanta affiliate, WSB. $250M πŸ’°πŸ’°πŸ’°πŸ’°
Jon Ossoff narrowly defeated incumbent Republican Senator David Perdue, despite Perdue having received more votes in the first round, with Ossoff winning by just 54,9444 votes.
November will not be that close. πŸ˜’ 

Dave 



David Bruce Smith  

My blog, now eponymous, πŸ˜‰, formerly called Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog: 

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