Showing posts with label Miami. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miami. Show all posts

Friday, February 25, 2022

President Biden chooses Miami's #KetanjiBrownJackson for historic #SCOTUS nomination. 🌴 Pick would make the 1988 Miami Palmetto HS grad the 1st Black woman on nation’s high court if confirmed. Her father worked as an attorney for Miami-Dade School Board, and her mother was a HS principal. She's a real dynamo!




Above is my tweet from earlier this afternoon,
https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/status/1497291445644017668 and at the bottom and at my Facebook page, I have complete copies of the first two Miami Herald articles that ever mentioned Ketanji Brown Jackson specifically in some fashion other than simply as someone on a list of members of the excellent Palmetto HS debating team, which came in second place in a national competition in Baltimore in 1986. 

(I lived in what is now Palmetto Bay one summer when I was back from Bloomington for the summer from college at IU -Indiana University- when I lived a few blocks from The Fall Shopping Center on S. Dixie Highway and S.W. 136th Street.) 

That 1987 Herald article which quotes her is about... offshore oil drilling in Florida.

It's the second article, though, from 1988, that is even more prescient, given what has happened to her today. 😉


ICYMI#HollywoodFL and #HallandaleBeach City Commissions seem completely oblivious to a looming education crisis this Fall as several Broward Schools there could be merged, "overhauled," or closed due to a steady decline in student enrollment
https://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2022/02/hollywoodfl-and-hallandalebeach-city.html 

Dave 

David B. Smith  


Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Bloghttp://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/ 


Miami Herald
SECRETARY IS GRILLED ON POLICIES
By TERESA SMITH, Herald Staff Writer
October 4, 1987

U.S. Interior Secretary Donald Hodel, who is under intense criticism from Florida politicians, got the same treatment last week from Palmetto High School students.

After he gave a brief speech about the Interior Department and what it does, a panel of eight seniors questioned the secretary, who was in Miami on Thursday and Friday, with pointed questions about the environment.

"Oil and water don't mix," said Ketanji Brown, who asked why the department is endangering Florida's irreplaceable reefs by permitting offshore oil drilling.

Under Hodel's plan, waters off the Florida Keys would be leased to oil companies for exploration beginning in 1992. Gov. Bob Martinez, the state's two U.S. senators and environmental groups are leading a fight against the plan.

Hodel said the government's task was to find a balance between energy needs and environmental preservation. "This is a sensitive environmental mix," he said, adding that tankers are a greater threat to the coast than the "remote possibility" of an oil spill from drilling.

"He didn't really answer the question," said David Eckstein, editor of the school newspaper. "He made reference to California oil spills but didn't say anything about the effect on reefs in the Keys."

Ameeta Ganju asked Hodel what he thought about Sen. Bob Graham's proposal to end draining of the Kissimmee River into surrounding farmland, which she said has decreased the number of wading birds 90 percent.

Hodel said he was not familiar with the proposal.

"We thought as Secretary of the Interior he would know about it. But with everything he has to do I guess it's understandable," Ganju said later.

Hodel spiced his arguments with personal anecdotes. His jokes and offhand manner won him laughter and smiles, if not applause, from the audience.

Hodel's dollars-and-cents approach to environmental problems reflected President Reagan's philosophy.

The United States should not stop producing chemicals that deplete the ozone layer in the atmosphere because other countries would then produce them instead, he said, taking profits away from our businesses.

"I think he contradicted himself," said junior Aaron Greenman. "He based all his arguments on an economic standpoint, but at the end he said the main objective was the environment."
------------------

Miami Herald
PALMETTO STUDENTS EXAMINE THEIR VALUES
JONATHAN KARP, Herald Staff Writer
April 17, 1988

It may be as impersonal as a swastika scrawled on a bathroom stall or as blunt as a teacher telling a black student she will not be considered for a starring role in a play about a white family.

Thursday morning at Palmetto High School, students discussed prejudice in all its forms, from ethnic jokes to the crimes of Nazi Germany. During the three-hour program on values, students heard from community activists and participated in classroom discussions.

"What we're attempting to do as a community and staff is to start thinking about what our values are and how they affect our thinking," said Janet Hupp, chairman of the school's intergroup relations task force.

Hupp said she hopes an emphasis on values will reduce cheating and other unproductive forms of academic competition, as well as promote harmony among students.

Students viewed The Wave, a film about a high school teacher who convinces his students to follow a mass movement based on strength and discipline. After stirring wide support, the teacher identifies the leader of the movement -- Adolf Hitler.

The film, designed to provoke students to think for themselves, drew a lively response in creative writing teacher Stephanie Loudis' class. Some students said they avoid the calculated displays of loyalty at pep rallies and football games. One student said the only group activities he endorsed were singing, and possibly prayer.

But when Loudis abruptly asked all the students to stand up, none of them hesitated except Luis Rotolante, 17, who with his long hair, torn T-shirt and assortment of punk jewelry, embodied the classic rebel.

Loudis complimented Rotolante for questioning authority.

"No one thinks the same way as anyone else," Rotolante said. "People just want to think the same way."

Before seeing the film, students attended three different assemblies. At one, Valerie S. Berman and Fred David Levine of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith led a discussion on racial, ethnic and religious awareness.

Meanwhile, actress Roz Ryan of Miami, a regular on the NBC comedy Amen and mother of Palmetto sophomore Darren Reid, told students to set their goals and stick to them. "You can do anything you want to do," Ryan said. "Just make up your mind and get on down."

Ryan said she started singing in clubs at age 16. Her parents allowed her to perform as long as she maintained a B

average. Now 36, she works three weeks a month in Hollywood and returns to her home in Miami to be with her family. "When I come back here, my husband and son want to know if their dinner is ready and their underwear is clean," she joked.

Ryan's husband, Lance Singleton, also spoke at the assembly and drew hearty applause from girls in the audience when, in discussing teen-age sexual relationships, he said, "Gentlemen, you have a responsibility."

Singleton, a manager for Eckerd Youth Development Foundation in Okeechobee, helps incarcerated youth adjust to life after jail. "If you care about an individual," he told the boys, alluding to birth control, "care about what's going to happen to their future."

The third discussion was led by six students, and focused on the lack of communication among ethnic and racial groups at the school. Although Palmetto is 73 percent non-Hispanic white, 11 percent Hispanic and 16 percent black, those groups do not frequently mix, said panelist Ketanji Brown, 17.

After the discussion, Brown and panelists Stephen Rosenthal, 18, and Guillermo Cano, 17, said they each had seen examples of prejudice during their years in the public schools.

Cano, who is from Nicaragua, remembered being called "alien" in elementary school. Rosenthal, who is Jewish, said he had seen swastikas in bathrooms. Brown said a drama teacher told her she would not have a chance to win a role in a play about a white family because she is black.

"We can be a beginning," Cano said. "We have to start changing these prejudices."

Echoed Brown, "If you don't talk about it, you never deal with it."

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

#Ultra2019 debacle in #Miami is a sober reminder: the transit chaos in South Florida never ends! Brightline's awful decision that it should a run commuter rail connecting populous Eastern cities near US-1 on FEC tracks in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, makes the past decade of incompetency & bad decisions by Tri-Rail and the South Florida East Coast Corridor/SFECC study seem almost minor in comparison, though they DO have a lot to answer for to commuters/taxpayers, too. And the MPOs? Forget believing that they care what you think or want. They are the very picture of a runaway, non-accountable govt. agency. I know of what I speak!


#Ultra2019 debacle in #Miami is a sober reminder: the transit chaos in South Florida never ends! 

Brightline's awful decision that it should a run commuter rail connecting populous Eastern cities near US-1 on FEC tracks in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, makes the past decade of incompetency & bad decisions by Tri-Rail and the South Florida East Coast Corridor/SFECC study seem almost minor in comparison, though they DO have a lot to answer for to commuters/taxpayers, too. And the MPOs? 
Forget believing that they care what you think or want. They are the very picture of a runaway, non-accountable govt. agency. I know of what I speak!


Updated April 10th, 2019


 




More to come on those observations next week! 








































































































































Yes, can you tell that's one of my biggest longtime pet peeves?






















































As you can see below in emails and blog posts I wrote about him and his creepy behavior, and his organization's unsatisfactory performance, I have some history with Greg Stuart, the head of the Broward MPO. 
It's the "federally mandated transportation planning body that was welded to the county by a staffing contract since its establishment by the Florida Legislature in 1977. Its 19 members, mostly elected city and county leaders, control approximately hundreds of millions in federal transportation system funds and decide which Broward road and improvement projects get built and which don’t."

As I noted in my blog post of February 6th, 2011, titled, Managed lanes: Broward MPO & FHA up to patronizing mischief on Thursday that'll cost you $$$ to drive on primary roads -the ones YOU already paid for
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/managed-lanes-broward-mpo-fha-up-to.html

Did the Broward MPO have any PUBLIC meetings scheduled in  in Hollywood or Hallandale Beach in 2009 before this came up?

No, there weren't ANY in all of southeast Broward County.
Satisfied? 
 



Below a particularly germane excerpt from a 2018 blog post here at Halandale Beach Blog
about transit and transportation policy and execution and how poorly it's thought out and administered in South Florida.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-rising-tide-may-lift-all-boats-but.html


My factual blog posts also earned me a lot of animosity from high-ranking people at local transit organizations -like the Broward MPO among others- for daring to hold a mirror up to their consistently dismal performances given the resources they command and their near-anonymous hold on power.
Trust me, there are few govt/agencies in South Florida who are more used to people telling them how wonderful they were/are than the folks at the Broward MPO.

Which, of course, explains a lot.
The evidence of their collective failure is all around us in Broward.
Their failure to take other groups, agencies and elected officials to task publicly and highlight policies and methods that are counter-productive.

Instead, the Broward MPO is known largely by a sub-niche of people within the political power structure, and as I've tweeted about a few times over the years, is often NOT mentioned in the Miami Herald or the South Florida Sun-Sentinel for years at a time. YEARS.
Despite their stranglehold on policies and seemingly endless resources.
Where's the media oversight and accountability? MIA.

Though I could be wrong, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one of you reading this today to be criticized 
in public by the head of the Broward MPO after I detailed his and his agency's many failings at a Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting some years ago.
Promises, promises, but where were tangible results that Broward residents, taxpayers and Small Business owners actually wanted? MIA.

Thin-skinned Greg Stuart waited until I could no longer speak before blasting me, then obfuscated instead of simply answering the questions I posed to him because the truth was on my side, not his. As both of us knew at the time.
His aides at the time were not exactly the pick of the litter, either, considering their snide remarks at the time that showed that they were more cronies than transportation experts.

Needless to say, then-Mayor Joy Cooper -since removed from office by Gov. Scott after her arrest for numerous felonies- just chuckled from the dais, completely aware that she could prevent me from refuting what Stuart was saying, but unaware that Stuart was, in fact, making a monkey out of HER and the entire Commission.
In short, he took advantage of her great ignorance and was flat-out lying to her -to her face- while he also tried to make an example out of me publicly for daring to challenge him and his band of thin-skinned bureaucrats.  


Never heard of the Broward MPO or Greg Stuart? Read this eye-raising article that first appeared in the then-broward now Florida Bulldog

FloridaBulldog

Whistleblower probes expose bad blood behind county, MPO split
By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
September 15, 2010

Hardly anyone noticed last month when Independence Day arrived for the Metropolitan Planning Organization, Broward’s powerful but obscure transportation agency.

No politicians made speeches; no one marched in a parade. But it turns out that there were plenty of fireworks behind the scenes at the agency that largely decides what county roads get built or improved.

As the MPO was breaking away last spring, county employees filed a pair of whistleblower complaints accusing top MPO officials of mismanagement, unprofessionalism and cronyism.

The names of the whistleblowers are not public by law. But reports of county internal investigations obtained by Broward Bulldog using Florida’s public records law expose a bureaucratic fault line affecting hundreds of millions of dollars in public transportation spending, and future planning efforts.


Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.floridabulldog.org/2010/09/whistleblower-probes-expose-bad-blood-behind-county-mpo-split/












Ultra Music festival, #Ultra2019, @ultra, #EDM, Miami-Dade County, Broward County, transportation, commuter rail, Tri-Rail Coastal, Broward MPO,  SFECC, Miami, Virginia Key,  #FyreFestival2, Key Biscayne, traffic, Billy Corben, @BillyCorben, #OceanDrive, Metrorail, Brightline, @iflymia, @FLLFlyer, Noah Pransky, SunPass, FDOT, Miami Beach, All Aboard Florida, Transit Miami, @transitmiami, FixMetroMDT, @FixMetroMDT, Jeff Brandes, @JeffreyBrandes, Brittany Wallman, @BrittanyWallman, @GetAroundSafely, @MarketUrbanism, Brian Bandell, @SFBJRealEstate, Buddy Nevins, @Buddynevins, RED BROWARD, @RedBroward, Larry Barszewski, @lbarszewski, Miami Int'l Airport, @iflymia, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Int'l Airport, @FLLFlyer, City of Hollywood,FL, @cohgov, Josh Levy, Mayor of Hollywood @JoshLevyHlwd, Broward County Commission, @browardinfo, Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners, @MiamiDadeBCC, Zara Larsson, @zaralarsson