As of last week, Jeffrey Loria is $1.2 billion richer and South Florida is officially free of the worst owner in professional sports. But Miami officials aren’t quite done with Loria. Both the city and the county believe the fine print of the Marlins Park deal likely entitles taxpayers to millions from the Marlins sale to Derek Jeter’s group.
This past Sunday, Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross abruptly changed his tune on the NFL player protests. Ross, who’d previously supported players kneeling to raise awareness of police violence and racial inequality, told the Miami Herald’s resident Kaepernick-basher, Armando Salguero, that since President Donald Trump had made the protests “about patriotism,” he now disagreed with the move.
Miami Beach is two very different towns for two very different groups of people. The large class of wealthy residents lives in glitzy towers along the beach and casually drinks chablis at five-star restaurants the rest of us can’t afford. Many Miami Beach tourists, however, are poor or middle-class…
Ballard Partners is a powerhouse lobbying firm in Tallahassee, Miami, and other major Florida cities. Before this year, the firm had never lobbied anyone at the federal level, but Ballard did have one important client: It was the Trump Organization’s go-to lobbying wing when it needed to make deals in Florida. After Donald Trump’s election, the firm swiftly opened New York and D.C. offices.
Despite what the National Rifle Association claims, gun laws influence gun deaths. For example, it’s completely legal in Las Vegas to walk around town holding a loaded, military-style rifle. No one can stop you, which is likely one reason terrorist Stephen Paddock was able to carry an arsenal of assault weapons into a Mandalay Bay hotel room and use them to murder 59 people and wound more than 500 others over the weekend.
On Sunday, a madman armed with high-powered rifles he’d turned into virtual automatic weapons with perfectly legal slide-fire stocks massacred 59 people and injured more than 500 in Las Vegas. Congress could easily have prevented the scale of the tragedy by re-instating a federal ban on assault weapons, and making…
Plenty of South Florida walls are covered with eye-catching murals, but the developers behind one Miami Beach project have another idea for filling the blank space: ginormous LED screens — one of them nearly 91 feet wide and 38 feet tall. The two screens proposed for “1212 Lincoln Road,” a Crescent Heights…
In the view of the Miami-Dade County Commission, uttering the word “damn” is more damaging than plans to defund public transportation, cut bus routes, or jack up police spending. At a public meeting over the county’s $7 billion taxpayer budget last night, a man was kicked out — and escorted away…
Florida finally has a champion to fight for the most unfairly treated group of people in America — white, Christian conservatives. Florida Rep. Joe Gruters filed a bill today that would add discrimination against “political affiliation” to the list of infractions Florida classifies as hate crimes, and though he insists the law would apply to both liberals and conservatives, Gruters’ social media posts make it pretty clear which side he’s worried about.
More than three million Americans are living through an unprecedented disaster in Puerto Rico, yet so far they’ve apparently ranked far below NFL protests and the concerns of the shipping industry on Donald Trump’s priority list. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio subtweeted Trump straight to Hell this morning, demanding the president immediately send more aid to the battered island.
In the middle of a decaying central square of closed junk stores and shuttered barbershops, Opa-locka’s gleaming, $8 million Town Center was eerily empty Wednesday morning. That’s because every elected official in town was huddled in a room with Florida Inspector General Eric Miller, the man tasked with unraveling…
Take a look at Miami Beach Commission candidate Mark Samuelian’s campaign platform and you might assume he’s a longtime progressive. The board director of Miami Beach United and former business consultant emphasizes his support for increasing the minimum wage, fighting climate change, and advocating for the city’s LGBT population.
The Florida Democrats are the Washington Generals. They’re the 1962 Mets. They’re Mike Dukakis, Steve Urkel, and pre-time-travel George McFly rolled into one. Yes, they’ve been steamrolled by gerrymandering and voter suppression, but they also rarely miss a chance to blast off their own feet en route to their latest, all-too-predictable loss.
Omar Rivero is standing cross-armed in his light-filled Los Angeles pool house, urging one of his employees to finish a meme about the “Republican Hypocrites of the Year,” when the news breaks: The president has just signed a memo banning transgender people from the military. “Oh, I hate Donald Trump!”…
Even in Miami Beach’s drunken carnival of a political scene, few elected officials have had quite as colorful a term as Commissioner Michael Grieco. The attorney has brawled with the NAACP over civil rights, sprinted down a drug dealer while out on his morning job, called a former opponent a “fucking scumbag” at a debate, and been embroiled in an unseemly fundraising committee now under state investigation.
Arguably the biggest stain on Miami-Dade County State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s 24-year record involves the death of a mentally ill man. In 2012, witnesses claimed four prison guards at Dade Correctional Institution scalded schizophrenic inmate Darren Rainey to death inside a jerry-rigged prison shower as punishment for soiling himself.
More and more Americans are waking up to the fact that no other developed nation subjects its citizens to a nightmarishly cruel health-care system that forces people to sell their homes to pay for cancer treatment. Many have realized that, through a combination of strict price controls and/or straight-up nationalized health care…
North Miami state Sen. Daphne Campbell has been ensnared in a remarkable series of corruption scandals throughout her career. But even for Campbell, her response to Hurricane Irma was nothing short of jaw-dropping. This past Saturday night, Campbell held a post-Irma “relaxation” party, complete with pizza, massages, and Scientologists, because of course she did.
Over the past few days, hordes of patrons have flocked to Trump’s resort in Doral to escape from the wrath of Hurricane Irma. Just this morning, the front desk announced to hopeful guests that the hotel is booked. But it doesn’t seem right for a president whose policies intend to cut disaster relief budgets to benefit from the panic of Irma.
Boca Raton’s GEO Group is one of the most powerful private-prison companies in America — and a major player in state and federal politics. GEO throws campaign money at Florida lawmakers from both parties: Sens. Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson, Gov. Rick Scott, Reps. Carlos Curbelo and Mario Diaz-Balart,…
After Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Grieco dropped his bid for mayor following a scathing Miami Herald report on his sketchy campaign finances, Beach residents were left with just four candidates to choose from. Two of them haven’t raised any money, while former federal prosecutor Dan Gelber has pulled in close to a half-million bucks.
There is simply no reason to repeal the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program unless brown people bother you. DACA prevents children brought here by their parents from being deported. It’s a program that helps kids who did not choose to grow up in America but did anyway. Even if you think, incorrectly, that immigrants are predisposed to crime, you can’t even apply for DACA if you have a criminal record.
