Showing posts with label Florida Marlins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Florida Marlins. Show all posts

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Importance of public engagement & transparency in South Florida govt. policy: After DECADES of #SoFL sports fans & taxpayers getting the shaft, City of Miami Comm. Ken Russell demands MORE reform, transparency and oversight over #SoFL's crony-laden sports Establishment: Is #Broward next? Let's hope so for taxpayers' wallets and sports fans' best long-term interests, after YEARS of Broward Commission caving-in to powerful special interests -read Florida Panthers!
















Importance of public engagement & transparency in South Florida govt. policy: After DECADES of #SoFL sports fans & taxpayers getting the shaft, City of Miami Comm. Ken Russell demands MORE reform, transparency and oversight over #SoFL's crony-laden sports Establishment: Is #Broward next? Let's hope so for taxpayers' wallets and sports fans' best long-term interests, after YEARS of Broward Commission caving-in to powerful special interests -read Florida Panthers!; A reminder of what has come before...

Miami Today News
Miami Sports and Exhibition Authority losing power
Written by John Charles Robbins on February 16, 2016
Miami city commissioners have begun altering the powers of the Miami Sports and Exhibition Authority, building in more oversight.
What some see as a shakeup of the 11-member authority comes on the heels of a delayed and prolonged review of a lease of prime city-owned waterfront property to a private company.
The authority leased property on the southwest corner of Watson Island as part of a plan to revive a seaplane base and heliport.

Read the rest of the article at;
http://www.miamitodaynews.com/2016/02/16/miami-sports-exhibition-authority-losing-power/

Miami Sports and Exhibition Authority
http://egov.ci.miami.fl.us/Legistarweb/Attachments/64346.pdf

After years of my writing/blogging/tweeting countless fact-filled emails/blog posts/tweets and attending innumerable public meetings throughout South Florida about the latest efforts by the owners and lobbyists of the Miami Heat, Miami Dolphins, Florida Panthers and Florida/Miami Marlins to improve THEIR bottom line directly via taxpayer funds or hotel tax revenue, it's great to see someone like new City of Miami District 2 Commissioner Ken Russell pushing back against the entrenched and well-heeled sports establishment that for DECADES has seen South Florida taxpayers as an obstacle to be manipulated and overcome, not a legitimate stakeholder whose interests demand respect -and first priority.





















My first Dolphin game at the Orange Bowl came in Dec. 1970, aged 9, a 45-3 win over Buffalo that propelled them into their first ever playoff appearance.
I attended 99% of every home game -preseason, regular season and playoff after that until leaving for Indiana University in August of 1979.
My first season as a Dolphins season ticket holder, at the Orange Bowl, was... the Perfect Season of 1972.







Before going to my first U-M game at the Orange Bowl in 1972, a friend's father often would bring me home an extra 'Canes game program. That's how I came to have the Alabama at U-M game program from Nov. 16, 1968, which was the first nationally-televised college football night game in color. (A 14-6 loss to the Crimson Tide.) 

My first U-M football game at the Orange Bowl was in 1972, age 11, against Tulane in the infamous "Fifth Down" game. In order to drum up support and attendance for the U-M at the Orange Bowl, that game had a promotion whereby South Florida kids who were school safety patrols could get in for free IF they wore their sash. 
I did, driven to the game by a U-M alum who happened to be the librarian where I then went to school, Fulford Elementary, in North Miami Beach. 
Clearly they knew that it was better to let kids in for free, knowing their parents would give them money to buy food and souvenirs, perhaps even become a fan and want to return for future games. 

The ballgame made an interesting impression on the New York Times, resulting in this gem from the "View of Sport" column of Oct, 14, 1990, labeled 'Fifth Down or Not, It's Over When It's Over.' -"
In 1972, aided by a fifth-down officiating gift in the last moments of the game, Miami of Florida defeated Tulane, 24-21. The country and the world was a much different place that fall because The New York Times took time and space to editorialize on the subject. ''Is it right for sportsmen, particularly young athletes, to be penalized or deprived of the goals for which they earnestly competed because responsible officials make mistakes? The ideal of true sportsmanship would be better served if Miami forfeited last week's game.' 

I hardly needs to tell you that this was YET another New York Times editoral that was completely ignored!

After that first ballgame against Tulane, as l often did for Dolphin games if my father wasn't going, I'd get dropped off at the Levitz parking lot near the 836 & I-95 Cloverleaf in NMB, and catch a Dade County Park & Ride bus, going straight to the Orange Bowl. Onboard, I'd get next to the window and listen to WIOD's pre-game show on my Radio Shack transistor radio. 
A few times, I was just about the only person onboard besides the bus driver, which was alright by me. 

Once at the Orange Bowl, if I didn't already have a ticket, I'd buy a game program for myself and one or two for friends or teachers before heading to the ticket window, since you usually couldn't find a program vendor once inside. I probaly had a friend or my father with me for just under 40% of the U-M games I ever went to, but you have to remember that the team, though blessed with several talented players, like Chuck Foreman and Burgess Owens, was just so-so to average at best, and the games were usually played on Friday nights, so it wasn't exactly high on everyone's list of things to do. Depending upon the opponent, if I was alone, I'd often have entire areas of the Orange Bowl to myself. (Wish I had photos of that now!) 

For instance, I had a good portion of the East (open) End Zone to myself against Oklahoma in the mid-70's, when the Boomer Schooner and the Schooner Crew went out on the field after an Oklahoma TD, and the Schooner received an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty from the refs, as would happen years later in an Orangle Bowl Classic game. (Against FSU?) 

I was there for the wins and losses under Pete Elliott, Carl Selmer & Lou Saban, and the huge on-field fight in '73 when under eventual-national champion Notre Dame (under Ara Parseghian), they called a time-out with less than a minute to go, and already up 37-0. Their rationale? 
To score another TD and impress the AP football writers; final score 44-0. 
Well, they got their wish and beat Alabama 24-23 for the title at the Sugar Bowl. 

A year later, thanks to my Mom's boss, she and I saw Ara's last game as head coach of the Irish in the Orange Bowl Game from the East End Zone -in front of the Alabama cheerleaders!!!- in an exciting 13-11 Notre Dame win over Alabama and Bear Bryant, a rematch of the '73 national title game. 

I was also present for the U-M's huge 20-15 win under Pete Elliott against Darrel Royal's Texas Longhorns, the week Sports Illustrated's College Football preview issue came out -september 10, 1973- with Texas on the cover.
I was also present for lots of wins against schools called College of the Pacific, UNLV and Cal-Poly San Luis Obsispo, which I'd then never heard of before.

Any reader who is new to my blog and wants to see of what I speak the past nine years here, simply do a search in the search box of this blog in the upper left corner for past posts about the ham-handed and duplicitous efforts of the Dolphins, Heat, Marlins and Panthers, esp. Dolphins owner Stephen Ross.
 
And you can also check https://twitter.com/search?q=%40hbbtruth%2C%20marlins&src=typd

Dave 

Sunday, September 11, 2011

9/11 -George F. Will on the American landscape ten years after 9/11: Commemoration can’t heal what is self-inflicted

Above, a screen-shot of mine from August 17th of Washington Post columnist and ABC-TV News commentator George F. Will -on left- at a Florida Marlins at Colorado Rockies ballgame at Coors Field, Denver.
George F. Will on the American landscape ten years after 9/11: Commemoration can’t heal what is self-inflicted
The Washington Post
Sept. 11’s self-inflicted wounds
By George F. Will, Opinion Writer
Published: September 9, 2011
On Dec. 8, 1951, the day after the 10th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the New York Times’ front page made a one-paragraph mention of commemorations the day before, when the paper’s page had not mentioned the anniversary. The Dec. 8 Washington Post’s front page noted no commemorations the previous day. On Dec. 7, the page had featured a familiar 10-year-old photograph of the burning battleships. It seems to have been published because a new process made possible printing it for the first time in color. At the bottom of the page, a six-paragraph story began: “Greater Washington today will mark the tenth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack by testing its air raid defenses.” The story explained that “the sirens are part of a ‘paper bombing’ of Washington” that would include “mock attacks by atom bombs and high explosives.”
Read the rest of the column, with links in that first paragraph at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sept-11s-self-inflicted-wounds/2011/09/08/gIQAfjm5FK_story.html
Reader comments at

George Will's time in Colorado later proved grist for an August 31 column of his titled Colorado's fresh brew, which largely dealt with the relative popularity of Colorado governor John Hickenlooper -A Democratic governor who favors less government- and TABOR, the Taxpayers Bill of Rights legislation approved by Colorado voters to limit the Colorado legislature’s ability to raise taxes, which many of the Usual Suspects want to litigate in court to over-turn the decision they couldn't win at the ballot box.
Above, one of the Community Resilience project counseling fliers I've kept which were posted in stores and govt. buildings all throughout Arlington County in the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks.
Because of where I lived in residential north Arlington, relatively quiet compared to near Reagan National Airport, and because I had an upper-floor bedroom with very large windows, at night, when they were open, I could hear the fighter jets which patrolled the area for months afterwards.
In those very first weeks of the overflights, sometimes, more often than I'd admit then, I couldn't fall sleep until I heard the 3 a.m. overflights soaring directly above.

They were very precise and almost always on time, even when the NATO forces took over after so many of the American fighter pilots were in Afghanistan.
That sound gave me some sense of peace and I could finally relax a bit.
But when they were late, I can recall staring up at the ceiling in the dark, or walking over to the window and looking south towards the Pentagon a few miles away, wondering when it would ever come. At those moments, I felt not a sense of dread, just one of complete exhaustion and a sense that my security blanket was missing.
U.S. FLAG OVER THE PENTAGON
U.S. Flag over the Pentagon United we stand...

2001 HEROES STAMP

2001 Heroes Stamp World Trade Center, Manhattan
I'm re-posting here an excerpt I originally ran four years ago, 9-9-07, on my other blog, South Beach Hoosier, since some of you newer readers may never have seen it before.
It's my personal experiences in Washingon, D.C. on 9/11, working on Pennsylvania Avenue, across the street from the FBI and DOJ, five blocks from The White House and with a clear view on that sunny day of the U.S. Capitol, twelve blocks southeast.
Let me relate a 9/11 anecdote that gives you some sort of insight into me, and informs my posts here. I lived for about 15 years in Washington, D.C., and while there, worked on behalf of some of the top law firms and business groups in town, doing all sorts of things on both Capitol Hill and along the K Street corridor.

 

While doing so, I was fortunate to meet and befriend lots of very talented, committed and impressive people, including many from the media, think tank and public policy sectors, as well as the diplomatic community. On 9/11, I was working on a project for Crowell & Moring, in an office in their DC office right across the street from the FBI & DOJ, and next to the Naval Memorial. After the initial reports of the attack in New York City and on The Pentagon, from our vantage point on the large patio overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue, we could see past the Old Post Office across the street, and could clearly see the smoke rising up from The Pentagon to our southwest.

 

Being equidistant to both The White House and the U.S. Capitol -and thus, in a direct position to have seen any attack on either- once we received word to evacuate the building because a plane within range of DC still hadn't been accounted for -what we would all later all know asUnited 93-I decided to forego playing the role of a sardine in a can on the Metro, and decided instead to walk the 7-plus miles to my home in north Arlington: via K Street, M Street in Georgetown, and finally Lee Highway in Arlington.


When I got a few blocks away from the office and was near Metro Center, whom do you suppose I walked right into, but the one man, whom, IF things had fallen differently, might've played a much larger role that tragic day?

 

(As I walked and walked, it was while listening on my Sony AM/FM/TV portable radio, via ABC News' Good Morning America -the same program that had informed my entire floor for 90 minutes before when we gathered en masse around my radio in our floor lobby area- that I first learned that some of the planes involved in the attacks had departed out of Boston's Logan Airport. That news made my heart sink, and made the walk home seem far longer than it normally would, since one of my former housemates in Arlington, Jennifer Dugan, a wonderfully sweet, thoughtful and immensely adorable University of Rhode Island grad, was, in fact, a flight attendant for US Airways, working out of Logan.)

 

That man I'm referring to was George Terwilliger, then of the DC office of McGuire, Woods, Battle & Boothe LLP, whom I knew from 1627 Eye Street, the location of the New York Times' DC bureau, who's now at WhiteCase, http://www.whitecase.com/gterwilliger/ Mr. Terwilliger was the man that much of the Washington press corps and Beltway Crowd thought was the likely first choice for President George W. Bush to be FBI Director, and a person that many of my friends at 1627 had an enormous amount of respect and admiration for, even if they disagreed with him politically.

 

When I saw him in passing on the sidewalk, with a pensive look on his face, like everyone passing us on both sides and spilling out onto the roads, all I could think to myself was, "Be careful what you wish for."
George F. Will column archives:

9/11 PILOT MOHAMMED ATTA'S FLORIDA DRIVER'S LICENSE

9/11 pilot Mohammed Atta's Florida Driver's License 
As pretty much everyone who knows me knows, I followed the 9/11 Commission hearings very closely, more than just about anyone I knew, watching or taping many of them off of C-SPAN, and, consequently, often staying-up late at night to catch up on their activities. 
Though it seems obvious now, while I'd heard from many sources that some of the hijackers had used Broward County Library computers to access the internet to send messages -and book their flights- it never dawned on me to think about where they lived in South Florida. As it turns out, Atta lived in Hollywood, 4.67 miles from my father's home in Hallandale Beach.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Sunday's CBS4 I-Team Special at 6:30 p.m.

Sunday's CBS4 I-Team Special at 6:30 p.m.,
right before CBS News 60 Minutes.

On Sunday's show, c
orrespondent Scott Pelley
tours the Sanofi Pasteur plant in Swiftwater, Pa.,
the only one in America making the H1N1
flu vaccine.

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/60_minutes/video/?pid=NFDTH07Oqk2qQkXtPVFH7EJ3FM4AMxtZ

Reminder: Dolphins at Jets kick-off on Channel 4
Sunday is 1 p.m.


CBS4 & My33
News from CBS4 & My33
Quick Links


CBS4 SPOTLIGHTS I-TEAM INVESTIGATIONS;
Half Hour Special Includes Three New Stories


Miami, Florida... The CBS4 I-Team has been responsible for bringing South Florida viewers ground-breaking investigations that have uncovered a number of frauds, scandals, scams and hidden dangers that were adverse to the public interest. On November 1 at 6:30 PM, CBS4 will present a half-hour special, ""The I-Team Investigates: A CBS4 News Special," featuring four new I-Team investigations. The program will be anchored by CBS4's Antonio Mora and feature I-Team reporters Michele Gillen, Jim DeFede and Stephen Stock.

The segments:

Michele GillenTrucking danger investigation - Michele Gillen takes viewers into the world of 18 wheelers where an I-Team investigation finds drivers are driving with little sleep, broken brakes, and while talking on cell phones... and killing alarming numbers of Floridians in the process. Gillen shows how fines for violating the sleep policy have not changed since the Eisenhower administration. Given today's difficult economy, insiders tell us that companies are pushing their drivers to work illegal hours, carry illegal loads, and drive broken trucks... and they are doing it because they need the money.


Defede

Marlins construction - From the moment construction began on the new Florida Marlins Stadium, nearby canals, water pumps and even the Miami River became contaminated with a milky substance that engineers have traced back to the dewatering operation at the old Orange Bowl site. For weeks city engineers blasted Hunt-Moss, the main contractor for the stadium, with emails demanding they take steps to control the contamination. Jim DeFede reports.


Stephen Stock

Medicare Fraud - Medicare Fraud results in $60 billion that's stolen from the pockets of tax payers every year nationwide. And South Florida is at the center of it all. The government reports that more than $4 billion dollars in Medicare Fraud has been scammed by South Florida companies in the last four years... and that roughly $2 Billion in false claims have been stolen by a group of companies established in about a ten block area in Miami alone... what federal investigators call the epicenter of Medicare fraud in the United States. Working in conjunction with CBS' 60 Minutes, the CBS4 I-Team spent the last six months penetrating the underworld of this Medicare fraud problem. Stephen Stock talks to those who actually committed the fraud and see how it works firsthand.

WFOR and WBFS/My 33 are part of CBS Television Stations, a division of CBS Corporation.

CBS4 is "always on." For local news, sports scores, weather updates, traffic reports, entertainment news and the best video experience available on the web 24 hours a day, go to CBS4.com.

-----------------------------
http://cbs4.com/iteam


Friday, February 13, 2009

Marlins Stadium Non-Vote; Pronounced Plouffle as in Liar

7:30 p.m.

Just got back from the Marlins Stadium non-vote at County HQ in downtown Miami, at the multi-use, multi-ethnic and multi-agenda driven Stephen P. Clark Government Building, via the 93 Biscayne Max.
Stephen P. Clark Building. 111 NW First Street, Miami, FL 33128

This morning was the first time I've taken that semi-express bus in about a year from nearby Aventura, and after the trip back to Aventura early this evening, all I can say is that it's much
quicker -and imminently more relaxing- in the morning while reading the papers, though I did get some great shots of The Freedom Building at sundown; while waiting at the same red light that I haven't caught green on since the first term of the Reagan Administration.

While coming back home I also saw the multiple police helicopters flying over North Miami -at least three- looking for a multiple-murder suspect as the bus trudged north and approached NE 125th St. & Biscayne.  Two of them remained stationary as if frozen, and the other making sweeping banking turns while it looked for the suspect, as if it were trying to flush a bird out of some trees.

Just a thought here, but perhaps in the future, Metro-Dade Police and local LEOs might want to consider contacting Transit HQ so that they can get BOLOs out via radio to bus drivers going thru areas where a dragnet is taking place, so they don't let the suspect board and have everything become a hostage drama.  One of precisely the sort that would be turned into a very mediocre film that I would never seek out at the movie theater and only see once it's in heavy rotation on TNT or USA Cable.

As it was, I already felt like I was a hostage for the better part of the day downtown, as the county's  powers-that-be did a positively dreadful job of keeping the hundreds of folks joining me for the first few hours properly informed, while we parsed phone messages and rumors that came in as one hour turned into another.
Mere "Extras" in someone else's film.

Meanwhile, just a few feet away down the hallway, conveniently, members of the local media could watch the City of Miami hearing live on a TV, while hoi-polloi like me and the others were left to grasp at straws and try to figure out what was going on at Dinner Key.
More mañana on the Marlins Stadium debacle and the half-assed communication and citizen customer service efforts.

After being there for almost six hours, and seeing lots of familiar faces, including some other bloggers and public policy website folks, I also met some new folks of a similar mind-set, many of whom I'll be talking about over the weekend as I discuss everything that happened -and didn't.
Avec photos.

But that will wait 'till then, since I first need to relax and get ready to watch some action and
adventure with the continuing chronicles of Sarah Conner and the new ones of the amazing Eliza Dushku on the Dollhouse series premiere on Fox-TV.
Lucky Friday the 13th has finally come for those of us who love both.

But before I get too comfortable, I wanted to share this great video that I saw earlier today,
before leaving for downtown Miami, from my daily Mediabistro Fishbowl DC email on yet 
another sign of the "Obama difference."
Not for the first time I'm here to say, be careful what you wish for.

Take it away Dana Milbank at the National Press Club.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Michael Lewis of Miami Today appears today on WQAM @ 4:30 pm re proposed Marlins Stadium -DON'T MISS IT!

On the chance that you haven't already heard, one of THE most well-informed individuals on the subject of the proposed Marlins StadiumMiami Today publisher Michael Lewis, will be a guest of Jim Mandich on his daily WQAM radio show this afternoon at 4:30 p.m.

Lewis is that rare individual in South Florida who can actually speak to the issue from a knowledgable point-of-view, since he has actually read the entire contract, all the hundreds and hundreds of pages.
He can make both the logical and common sense argument against the stadium plan based on both the finances as well as the public policy ramifications. 
http://www.miamitodaynews.com/news/090212/story-viewpoint.shtml


Yesterday on his afternoon program, after reminding his listeners about Lewis' appearance today, Jim posed a few logical questions that are entirely deserving of a thorough public response from the powers-that-be, people that have seemingly been in hiding, before a vote is cast on Friday.

Let me summarize those good points he made:

Who are the principals involved in the shell companies that are specifically mentioned  in the contract? 

What is their relationship to Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria?

Why does Loria's name never appear in the contract?
The Marlins are actually going to be receiving money loaned to them by the govt.: where is their collateral or supporting evidence of surety bonds, or even a recent, accurate appraisal or valuation of Loria's personal holdings, whether art or real estate?

Why is it that it took a year for the contract to be drafted, yet the County Commissioners were supposed to read it and make sense of it in two weeks? 

The irony of this awful deal is that with the possibility of actually having a convenient commuter train on the
 
FEC tracks in a few years that quickly connects millions of people from Palm Beach County to downtown Miami, and with MLB always in
the default position that stadiums should be engines for real-not-fanciful economic redevelopment in their new neighborhoods, as was the case in San Francisco, which I saw ample evidence of for myself even months BEFORE the Giants stadium opened, in hindsight, the general area near the site of the old Miami Stadiumright next to the FEC tracks, would've made infinitely more sense than this awful mish-mash of a plan that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. 

You could hardly claim you need to build a $100 million dollar garage if you made it possible for people to literally walk across the street to the stadium from a train.

That's something I know about first-hand, from taking the "El' train from Evanston or Wilmette down to Cubs games at Wrigley Fieldor from taking the MARC train up to Baltimore from D.C.'s Union Station.

Dozens and dozens of times.

Here are a few more things I've been wondering about that I've yet to see either mentioned or answered in local media coverage of the stadium deal, which I'm against, despite being a longtime and enthusiastic sports fan who was going to Baltimore Orioles spring training games at Miami Stadium 35 years ago, and was both a Dolphin, Hurricanes and Toros season-ticket holder for their games at the Orange Bowl before leaving for IU in August of '79 .

The number of Marlin game tickets and parking passes per game/per year to be given to the City of Miami, Miami-Dade County and any other South Florida governmental entity?
Where are those seats? Bleacher, reserved, box, suites?

Have the Marlins intentionally under-estimated value of those tickets and passes?
I ask because I was living in the Washington, D.C. area when investigations were conducted to see whether or not Abe Pollin, the Washington Wizards owner, intentionally mis-represented the costs of certain arena tickets so that they would be just under the lobbying "gift" limits, despite the fact that those tickets were clearly superior to similarly-priced tickets.

Pollin's goal was clear: he wanted D.C. lobbyists to buy LOTS of Wizards tickets.
By intentionally pricing tickets at the value the Wizards did, they made it easier for lobbyists to dole them out to whichever pols or influential city, county, and state employees the lobbyists wanted to influence, knowing that the gift recipients wouldn't have to publicly declare them.

Honestly, given South Florida government's sordid longstanding history of ethical problems, to me, that sounds EXACTLY like the sort of thing that would happen here!

Will existing city and county ethics procedures be changed to reflect this?
At each governmental unit that's given tickets, what official will decide who gets to use the tickets, or are they for the exclusive use of elected officials and their family and friends?
If for all employees, how will they be distributed?
Are individuals, including elected officials, limited to using a certain of tickets per season?

I'll be writing some things about the proposed stadium deal and the Marlins consistently awful marketing strategy over the next few days on my blog, much of which I've kept in draft form for months, and will also be attending the County's meeting Friday afternoon.

By the way, not that you'd know it if you'd actually gone to the Marlins broadcast partner's website, Fox Sports Net Florida, i.e. FSN Florida, but unlike last year, when the Marlins did NOT televise a single one of their spring training games back into their home market, this spring their games against the Twins on March 14th and March 23rd against the Astros will be televised at 1:00 p.m.

I've already spoken this morning to someone at FSN Florida and they will be updating their website to reflect this important fact.

Given their marketings miscues, last year, the only way I could see Marlin spring training games via TV was by watching the other teams' telecasts to their home market via DirecTV