Facing a $427 million deficit, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez promised he would thin out the county executive offices by 10 percent in his proposed budget. The Herald has written a fair amount about this lately. So have we. What you might not know is that two of them with monster salaries…

Fredric Karlton, a first-time candidate for Miami Beach City Commission, is getting a rude introduction to the city’s gutter politics. The 49-year-old real estate investor’s perceived enemies initiated a Miami-Dade ethics commission inquiry into allegedly improper business dealings with his childhood chum, Commissioner Ed Tobin. It went nowhere. And now,…

Kudos to Miami Herald reporters Matt Haggman and Scott Dolan, who today whacked Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez really good. Turns out our dear alcalde fuerte was doling out raises to his favored employees while taking the ax to the rest of the county budget. Of course, don’t forget yours truly…

The Miami Herald’s skullduggery against local blogger and photographer Bill Cooke is getting serious. Miami’s only major daily has sicced Ian Ballon, a big-dog intellectual property lawyer based out of Greenberg Traurig’s Los Angeles office, on the canterkerous shutterbug-agitator. On his bio page, Ballon lists among his accomplishments winning a…

Over the past four weeks, I’ve written a news article and several blog posts about Sean Casey, a 35-year-old Bostonian who was charged with DUI manslaughter in the hit-and-run death of Mary Montgomery in 2001.To recap, Casey is serving a 12-and-half year prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2006 after…

In this year’s City of Miami elections, the theme is “Taking It Back to the Old School,” considering Frank Carollo, brother of mercurial ex-Mayor Joe Carollo, is running for Joe Sanchez’s seat. And then there is Francis Xavier Suarez, who  wants to replace Tomas Regalado on the commission dais. Francis…

Miami-Dade Criminal Court Judge John Thornton denied Sean Casey’s request to unseal transcripts of secretly recorded conversations the convicted hit-and-run driver had with his attorney and therapist in 2004.The judge’s ruling almost certainly brings an end to Casey’s quest to overturn a plea deal that in 2006 sent him to prison for…

The more Riptide dissects Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez’s proposed budget cuts in order to make up a $427 million shortfall, the more we realize el alcalde fuerte is not gonna mess with his executive staff’s perks. The mayor’s spokeswoman, Vicki Mallette, confirmed Alvarez will not ax the approximately $101,200 a…

UPDATE: Earlier this week, Miami-Dade County spokeswoman Vicki Mallette responded to my earlier report regarding executive salaries. I apologize to my readers for not posting her response sooner.She insisted that Alvarez is proposing in the budget a ten percent reduction to the county executive offices, which is not reflected in…

Today at 2 p.m., Sean Casey will make his case before Judge John Thornton not to seal secretly recorded conversations the 35-year-old Bostonian had with his former lawyer Milton Hirsch and ex-therapist Michael Rappaport. Casey claims the conversations prove Hirsch and Rappaport lied on the stand when they denied advising…

An anonymous blogger named the Straw Buyer has been dedicating a serious amount of bandwidth to bash and ridicule the Miami-Dade Police detective.Apparently, the Straw Buyer became fascinated with Baluja this past October, when the 11-year county cop arrested Coral Gables lawyer Delaila Estefano, John Romney, and Michael Martinez for stealing someone’s identity…

Casey is serving a 12-year prison term for running down and killing an elderly woman in Miami Beach, leaving the scene, and then fleeing the country to avoid prosecution. He has an August 13 court hearing before Judge John Thornton to unseal transcripts of secretly recorded conversations he had with his former criminal defense lawyer, Milton…

Last week, I reported about Sean Casey, a 35-year-old Boston native who is serving a 12-and-a-half-year prison term for allegedly running down and killing an elderly woman on Harding Avenue in Miami Beach, and then fleeing the scene, back in 2001.While awaiting trial, Casey fled the country in 2004 to…

The Banana has a friend named Betty, who earlier this year picked up a two-bedroom condo on Brickell Avenue for $109,000. Betty got the unit at a bargain because it was in foreclosure. But you wouldn’t know that by checking the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser’s online property search database, a…