For the first time since the ugly Republican primaries ended with a Mitt Romney win, the GOP nominee has opened up a clear lead over President Obama among Florida voters, mostly for one, simple reason: the economy, stupid.More surprising than the six point lead Romney nabbed in a new poll…
Last summer, millions of Cubans were deliriously ready to blow their meager earnings on badly knit Che dolls on Etsy, flood Facebook with Fidel-praising status updates and, yeah, just download mucho, mucho porn. High-speed Internet, they were told, was finally coming to the masses via a 1,000-mile long cable between…
When Carlos Bertonatti slammed into cyclist Christophe LeCanne on the Rickenbacker Causeway in January 2010, killing the 44-year-old on the spot, advocates begged the County to make the bike lanes safer. Nothing happened. This past February, almost the exact same tragedy repeated: This time, the driver was Michele Traverso and…
Somewhere in Miami there’s a masseur named Jeff. If you run into him, buy the poor bastard a drink or an appetizer or something — he’s been through enough already. Jeff was just trying to give John Travolta a massage at the Eden Roc when Mr. Saturday Night Fever grabbed…
Prosecutors in the Trayvon Martin case released a stash of evidence to a mouth-watering press horde yesterday evening, making public hundreds of pages of witness testimony, medical reports and photos. The headline takeaways: Zimmerman was hurt (his nose broken and head bloodied) and a few neighbors told police he was…
Insurance fraud is a really tough crime to prove, especially when scammers deliberately set fires. To show it’s arson, all kinds of experts have to do painstaking analysis on burn patterns and chemical traces. It’s incredibly time consuming and difficult.That’s assuming, of course, that the crooks aren’t total morons who…
Miami Beach: Corruption Central
It’s only May, but South Florida super-lobbyist Ron Book is already having one hell of a year in Tallahassee. This week, lobbyists filed their reports for 2012’s first quarter and since January, Book has already topped $1 million in fees. Who’s paying him all that cash? Along with every other…
Last Thursday, a 31-year-old named Brian J. Weiss was holding a meeting in a Hilton hotel near Kennedy International Airport when a man pulled out a .380 Baretta and shot him five times in the head. That man, Gary Zalevsky, then killed himself as four others in the room dove…
On a muggy autumn afternoon, 400 of Miami Beach’s most prominent names packed into a luxury Loews Hotel ballroom. As waiters hoisted trays of food, WSVN’s Belkys Nerey took the stage and introduced a big-screen video. With a cinematic splash and to copious applause, billionaire Norman Braman, Miami Beach Mayor…
Back when the Bush administration was using “enhanced interrogation techniques” on suspected terrorists — also known as “torture” to most of the West — the most hotly debated trick was waterboarding. That’s the one where you make a prisoner think he’s drowning by slowly pouring water over his face while…
Stephanie Kienzle, a North Miami Beach resident who blogs about her town at votersopinion.com, noticed something curious while reviewing voter registration rolls: nine different voters were all listed at an address on NE 171st Street. Even more curiously: That house belongs to a city councilman, Frantz Pierre. Suspicious, Kienzle filed…
The Debtor List, a Miami-based Website, Tries to Shame Scofflaws Into Paying Up
Miami Beach residents are happy, the city is a well-oiled machine and — despite a string of embarrassments by the police and a mass FBI corruption bust last month — the majority of city employees do good work. That was City Manager Jorge Gonzalez’s upbeat message, at least, to an…
In an interview with ABC News, President Barack Obama announced this afternoon that he now supports gay marriage. It’s a striking change from the commander-in-chief on the same day that North Carolina’s voters followed in Florida’s footsteps in passing a gay marriage ban. “I think same-sex couples should be able…
It’s official: Gov. Rick Scott’s biggest single fuck-up in office is not his spectacularly failed plans to drug test everyone in Florida, his botched ideas for fixing the economy or even his refusal to pee in a cup when the Daily Show asked him so nicely. No, his biggest catastrophe…
Inside a heavily fortified compound in rural Osceola County, Florida, a well-armed group of white supremacists lead by 39-year-old Marcus Faella held regular paramilitary drills where they pretended to shoot black victims, talked about attacking Orlando’s city hall and even discussed obtaining ricin — a potentially deadly poison.So says the…
Jon Broder was sick of getting stiffed. As an attorney and small-business owner, he was tired of clients walking out on small debts — $500 here, $2,000 there — knowing full well they wouldn’t be worth going to court or hiring a collection agency. But what could he do? Then,…
The facts seem pretty clear: On Feb. 15, Michele Traverso, a 25-year-old with a suspended license, slammed into two cyclists on the Rickenbacker Causeway after he’d spent a long night drinking in Coconut Grove. Traverso then sped away, leaving one of the cyclists, Aaron Cohen, a father of two, dying…
Hugo Chávez might have quelled rumors last week that he was near death by appearing on television looking relatively robust, but some recent political moves have left many in Caracas wondering if he’ll make it to the presidential elections — and even more alarming, what will happen to Venezuela if…
In Miami-Dade, the only thing most folks know about IKEA is that it’s the gigantic store worth a drive all the way to Broward because its hip furniture is so damn cheap. But in Europe, the Swedish giant’s image has been rocked by recent accusations that in the 1980s, the…
Miami-Dade Police Watched Occupy Miami’s Facebook Page for Months
