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 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'

Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan

My Backstory; How to Contact Us; Where to Find Us on Social Media platforms

About Us; How to Contact Us; Where to Find Us on Social Media platforms


Above: My August 26, 2019 photo of the Andrew Antonaccio mural of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa masterpiece, at 1900 Hollywood Blvd. in Downtown Hollywood, that sits atop this blog.

I'm a friendly, enthusiastic and well-informed ENFP on the MBTI, who grew up in Memphis and Miami, attending North Miami Beach High School and Indiana University (Bloomington). My blend of enthusiasm, great people and strategic skills, meticulous research skills and preparation, and work ethic helped me many times on successful national and Florida political campaigns.

I am a 4th-Generation-born Texan born in San Antonio. My maternal ancestors were among the Early Pioneers who settled Bandera County after fleeing Prussian-controlled Poland. My family has lived in that beautiful Hill Country area of Texas continuously since 1854.

My paternal ancestors arrived in America from northern England in the 17th Century, not far from where the fictional Sherwood Forest of Robin Hood and his Merry Men was set, later settling in New England and the Mid-Atlantic colonies. 
One ancestor served under George Washington twice, the last time serving as a spy against the British during the Revolutionary War. My ancestors were among the first Americans to live in the then-new state of Ohio, in Jefferson County. on the banks of the Ohio River.

I lived and worked in Chicago and Washington, D.C. for a total of 17 years, in Chicago mostly working in 'The Loop' and in Downtown Evanston, and in DC, along K Street, in Georgetown, and Capital Hill for some of the most successful corporations, law firms, and trade associations in America. 
I also frequently interfaced with and worked with well-known Beltway news media personalities, high-ranking officials at prominent D.C. area Trade Associations, PACs, Think Tanks, and law firms, as well as Dem & GOP Congressmen/Senators/staffers and party officials on Capitol Hill, plus officials at the State Dept, DOD, the Commerce Dept., and at the Labor Dept.

I now write with enthusiasm, nuance and fact-based common sense from sunny #HollywoodFL via my past and present life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC & #SoFL, via my very popular blog, Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog, and my very popular Twitter feed, @hbbtruth, at https://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/ and https://twitter.com/hbbtruth. 

Most of those well-informed and influential people I regularly interacted with in Chicago and D.C. still keep up with me and Follow me, as do many well-known or influential business people, elected officials and Influencers in South Florida and the rest of Florida, esp. in the state capitol, Tallahassee.

I write on an array of issues, including public policy and govt. in Florida, Broward County and Miami-Dade County, esp. transportation, development/Land Use issues, education, housing, entrepreneurialism, and current events. 

I also write about govt., politics, public policy, Pop Culture and sports in South Florida, the U.S., as well as Great Britain, Sweden and France. 

I'm on Twitter daily since I'm a big politics, film, and sports fan, and am an AVID and VORACIOUS reader. 
That was clear early on when in Junior High and High School in North Miami Beach, I got up early every Sunday morning and walked from my house on NE 159th Street and 14th Avenue to NE 163rd Street and 19th Avenue to buy bagels/donuts for the family -next to then-Congressman William Lehman's district office- and on the way back, swung by the one-and-only news stand in the city, buying a copy of the NY Post and the Sunday NY Times, reading both from cover-to-cover, including the NY Times Book Review. 
I collected the NYT Magazines and NYTBRs, keeping them in banker boxes in a hallway closet, but was forced to throw out when I left for the rolling hills of the Cream and Crimson Indiana Hoosiers in Bloomington.



Dave 
David B. Smith

HallandaleBeachBlog at gmail dot com

Har ett svar eller en fråga om en bit jag har nyligen skrivit på Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog och inte vill göra din publika identitet?
Vill du skicka in en nyhets spets, föreslå en korrigering, eller fråga mig om att göra en gäst Op-Ed på något mina läsare är intresserade av?
Eller lämna ett motiverat argument om ett ämne i nyheterna att jag inte märker?
Kontakta mig på e-post: HallandaleBeachBlog (at) gmail (dot) com
Tack!

Everyone has to live somewhere -this is where I live: #HollywoodFL #USA. 🌞😎🌴🏖️🌊
There are very few things in nature better than the pink sunrises and sunsets we experience here. :-)

#HollywoodBeach #FL via the lens of mj_travel_tales, who took this photo on my birthday
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt7moeiF7AA/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Above, from the lens and creative mind of my very talented and opinionated Aussie friend here in Hollywood, Michelle Lopate.
♒️ Mixed Media Art, Paint, Print, Draw, Street photography: light, shadows, architectural, people, oddities, interesting, humorous, dramatic, chromatic. www.michellelopate.com

 ✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️


✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️
Jag älskar Stockholm -  ST❤️CKHOLM




Do you have a response or a question for me about a something I've recently written or featured at Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog and don't want to make your identity public? 
Want to submit a news tip, suggest a correction, or query me about your doing a Guest Op-Ed about a topic or subject that you think my well-informed and well-educated readers in Florida and around the world would be interested in?
Or, to just make a well-reasoned argument for or against a topic in the news that I didn't notice yet? 
Email me at: HallandaleBeachBlog (at) gmail (dot) com
Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog


Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog is where I try to inject or superimpose a degree of accountability, transparency and insight onto Florida and South Florida government and public policy issues, which I and many other residents feel has been sorely lacking in the local news media for many, many years. 

On this blog, locally, I concentrate my energy, enthusiasm, laser-like attention and anger n the coastal cities of Hollywood and Hallandale Beach, but we also keep our eyes and ears open about what's going on in other parts of South Florida, as well as up in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C. too, where I have lots of well-informed and well-connected friends and Followers who do not miss a beat. 

If you lived in this part of South Florida, you'd ALREADY be stuck in stultifying traffic gridlock, paying higher-than-necessary taxes and continually musing about the chronic lack of public accountability and transparency among not only elected govt. officials, but also of city, county and state employees as well. 

Collectively, with a few rare exceptions, most of the local government and its bureaucrats couldn't be farther from the sort of results-oriented, strong work-ethic mentality that local residents deserve and expect. Yet seldom if ever see...

This is particularly true in the Broward County city I used to live in for 11 years, right on the Atlantic Ocean, Hallandale Beach, located north of the City of Aventura in Miami-Dade County and south of the much-better governed-but-imperfect City of Hollywood, to its north, where I've lived the past 4-plus years. 
In Hallandale Beach, the "Perfect Storm" of years of rampant apathy, incompetency, indifference and cronyism under the ruinous reign of ex-longtime Mayor Joy Cooper are all too readily apparent to anyone who cares to open their eyes and look around. 

NOT "the road less traveled" but the road never traveled at all.

Sadly for its beleaguered residents, Hallandale Beach is where even easily-solved, quality-of-life problems have been left to fester for YEARS on end, because of City Hall's myopia, lack of common sense and ineffective supervisory management. 

It's a city with tremendous and even dynamic potential for positive change because of its terrific location and its generally well-educated populace, the majority of whom long for it to be the kind of quality city it ought to be now, but clearly isn't because of the reasons I've already set forth here and have chronicled now for 14 years. 

Citizens there became almost numb to HB City Hall's frequent ethics and performance outrages and screw-ups as a result of YEARS of the worst kind of mismanagement and lack of basic foresight, oversight and accountability. 


On a daily basis, residents and Small Business owners of HB woke up and saw the same old problems that have never being adequately fixed or resolved by the city in a logical and responsible fashion, and see that they've merely been kicked further down the road -once again- for others to solve in the future.

Before I started this blog in 2007, I used to ask myself, and NOT always rhetorically, "Where are all the enterprising young reporters in South Florida who want to show that through their own hard work and enterprise, what REAL investigative reporting can produce?" 
My friends and other observers of the South Florida scene asked the same question, too.


Hearing no response, I decided to finally do what I'd thought about doing when I lived in the Washington, D.C. area for fifteen years but never did- start a blog of my own that could try to do some of these very things.

On this blog I adopt the the Point of View of a reasonable-but-skeptical person seeing the situation for the first time with fresh eyes, and wanting questions answered in a honest and logical way that citizens have the right to expect -and demand.

Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog intends to be a catalyst for positive change in public policy and government engagement. If there's one constant gripe in South Florida, regardless of your age, race, nationality or political persuasion, it's about the fundamental lack of PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY of Florida's state, regional and local govt./agency officials, elected and otherwise. 

Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog aims to be a small step towards regaining some of that needed accountability, whether it's thru shining some well-needed public scrutiny on the issue or politician or government bureaucrat, or requires a higher degree of follow-up investigation and public exposure of the incompetency, cronyism or negligence -South Florida's usual governing style.

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