Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

No LBA Candidates’ Event Tomorrow

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

I just spoke with someone at the Latin Builders Association who said that the candidates’ event previously planned for tomorrow is not happening because too few of the candidates were able to make it.

Having missed the Group 3 event, I’m hoping that the all-candidates’ forum on Tuesday at the UMiami Fiedlhouse will be enough to help me decide who to vote for. In my experience, though, these cattle call events with a large number of candidates limited to brief replies to a small number of questions don’t necessarily shed as much light as one could wish.

Posted in Coral Gables | Comments Off on No LBA Candidates’ Event Tomorrow

Two Sitting Coral Gables Commissioners Offer Their Endorsements

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

I emailed the two sitting Commissioners I’ve contacted in the past, Maria Anderson and Frank Quesada, to ask them if they are endorsing anyone in the upcoming Coral Gables elections.

Here’s what they said:

Maria Anderson:

From my vantage point of 12 years on the Coral Gables City Commission, this will be the first time since 2001 that there will be 2 – 3 new faces serving our City. These new faces on our Commission will create an entirely new dynamic at City Hall. I am humbled for the three times Coral Gables residents elected me to office, however, as I leave public service, I am deeply worried about the future of my hometown.

The Mayor’s race in particular is pivotal. The standing mayor has become the puppet for a despotic City Manager. Furthermore the Mayor never truly expresses an opinion of his own. He is scripted by the manager, whose best interest does not seem to me to be in the best interest of Coral Gables.

Cason’s popularity with Cubans because of his Cuban Foreign Service work makes no sense to me. After all, I am a Cuban-born, 53-year resident of Coral Gables and my colleague, Ralph Cabrera is a Cuban born, 47 year resident. Our parents lost everything, and then made a life again in Coral Gables.

Shoddily re-paved streets and skinny palm trees do not a good mayor make. They are merely cosmetic cover-ups that hide the true issues. During his tenure as mayor:

1. Jim Cason refuses to admit that the City has had a 13%+ increase in crime. 2. Jim Cason approved an unprecedented number of no-bid contracts that cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. A no-bid contract give one or two people or companies an exclusive “in” to make money without having to prove they are giving the best service. It’s the “good old boy” network at it worst. 3. Jim Cason views city employees like actuarial statistics and the manager behaves as if these employees are chattel because of a failure in leadership by the Mayor. Morale has flat-lined in City Hall. Jim Cason has not figured out that fairly treated employees give the quality service residents expect.

I have served with Ralph Cabrera for 12 years. He knows Coral Gables and has served the city for over 20 years. He raises his family and built his business here. As commissioner:

1. He has voted against increased fees for over eleven years. 2. He has demanded the truth on crime issues be released and educated the public on the matter by speaking to WPLG just two weeks ago. 3. He has voted against every no-bid contract proposed by the manager and the mayor, believing that waving the rules is wrong for the City and an abuse of the process.

I am voting for Ralph Cabrera and asking my friends and neighbors to do the same, because it is that important for our City!

(I gather that Maria Anderson is staying neutral in Group 3 because she is friends with both Mary Young and Pat Keon.)

Frank Quesada:

I am endorsing Vince Lago and Mary Young.

Vince Lago – I’ve known Vince for the past 14+ years. For as long as I’ve known Vince, he is the kind of person with an interest in helping others and has strong leadership skills. He’s also served on the City’s Planning and Zoning Board and although we don’t agree on every issue, he has proven to me that he cares about the City and is looking to improve and protect it.

Mary Young – I’ve known Mary for the last 2-3 years through her involvement in numerous community organizations. I’ve always liked her enthusiasm to help the community and her impressive business background.

Incidentally, I also emailed Vice-Mayor Bill Kerdyk, but didn’t get a reply. Given the performance he put on in the last election, I’m not sure if his endorsement wouldn’t count as a negative anyway.

I plan to go to the Mayoral candidate debate tonight. As I noted in my Coral Gables Commission Candidates’ Forum (Group II) Report the event was very informative even when the candidates tended to agree on the issues (as I said, I thought Ross Hancock made the best case for his candidacy). The Group 2 debate was very civil; I think there’s a decent chance of more fireworks at this one.

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Cortadito-ing the Gables Election (Updated)

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

Political Cortadito dishes on the upcoming Coral Gables election: As Gables election nears, Lago, er, new faces are certain.

I haven’t felt right about PC since she started trashing Joe Garcia for no discernible reason, so feel free to take with a grain of salt.

Update: And she dishes on the Mayoral election too: Gables mayor’s race has third ‘candidate’ — the manager .

Posted in Coral Gables | 1 Comment

Michael is a Great Name

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

In the early ’80s, Pepsi ran a marketing campaign where they touted the success of their product over Coca-Cola in blind taste tests. They called this the Pepsi Challenge. Psychologists had already determined you choose your favorite products often not by their inherent value, but because the marketing campaigns and logos and such have cast a spell over you called brand awareness. You start to identify yourself with one marketing campaign over another. That’s what happened in the all the taste tests up until the Pepsi Challenge. People liked Coca-Cola’s advertising more than Pepsi’s, so even though they tasted pretty much the same, when they saw that bright red can with a white ribbon people chose Coke. So for the Pepsi Challenge, they removed the logos. At first, the researchers thought they should put some sort of label on the glasses. So, they went with M and Q. People said they liked Pepsi, labeled M, better than Coke, labeled Q. Irritated by this, Coca-Cola did their own study and put Coke in both glasses. Again, M won the contest. It turned out it wasn’t the soda; people just liked the letter M better than the letter Q.

from Why We Can’t Tell Good Wine From Bad.

The rest of the article is pretty interesting too: it reinforces my expectation that expectations strongly shape perceptions.

I often say that white hairs are the best teaching aid I ever had: my student evaluations shot up once I got a bit of salt-and-pepper.

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When Poverty Isn’t News

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

My brother’s Neiman Reports article It Can’t Happen Here: Why is there so little coverage of Americans who are struggling with poverty? throws down the gauntlet:

Nearly 50 million people—about one in six Americans—live in poverty, defined as income below $23,021 a year for a family of four. And yet most news organizations largely ignore the issue. The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism indexed stories in 52 major mainstream news outlets from 2007 through the first half of 2012 and, according to Mark Jurkowitz, the project’s associate director, “in no year did poverty coverage even come close to accounting for as little as one percent of the news hole. It’s fair to say that when you look at that particular topic, it’s negligible.”

This clearly has intrigued NYT Public Editor Margaret Sullivan who writes A New Focus on Poverty Raises a Question About Times Coverage. And the NY Times is surely better than many on this issue.

Posted in Dan Froomkin, The Media | 5 Comments

Senators Reject Biometric Worker ID Card

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

The NYT reports that Senators trying to hash out a bipartisan immigration bill have rejected using biometric ID cards to identify legal workers:

The bipartisan group of eight senators is also still debating how to improve E-Verify, the system that employers use to check the immigration status of their workers. A high-tech, biometric identification card was deemed too costly; instead, the group is considering an enhanced E-Verify system that would allow employers to use photographs to identify job applicants and would let workers provide answers to security questions to help prove their legal work status.

I’d like to think that the report Jonathan Weinberg and I wrote last year, Hard to BELIEVE: The High Cost of a Biometric Identity Card (Feb. 2012), published by the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law & Social Policy at UC Berkeley School of Law, had something to do with this.

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