When Sean Gallagan was named Miami-Dade’s principal of the year in 2011, administrators lauded the leader of George T. Baker Aviation Technical College for his humanitarian work in Haiti and resourcefulness in getting American Airlines to donate a $6 million plane to the district. Clearly pleased with his abilities, the district…
Last November, Miami resident Mario Javier Cordoba sued the City of Miami and two of its cops, Reynaldo Irias and Yesid Ortiz, for false arrest, battery, and civil-rights violations. Cordoba says the two MPD officers chucked him in the back of a cop car just for trying to record his…
Virtually all 2.5 million Miami-Dade residents live on land that’s less than ten feet above sea level. In terms of real-estate assets vulnerable to flooding, Miami is the second most exposed city on Earth, behind only Guangzhou, China. And Miami is basically the poster child for the effects of climate change, because the city has already begun flooding on sunny days.
The caller to “Amandi on Air” was somewhere between irate and fuming. Fernand Amandi had asked his listeners to grade Donald Trump on his first 100 days in office and a woman with a New York accent had a word or two to offer. “This is a comment, not a…
Without Miami Heat playoff basketball, May is an abysmal time for South Florida sports. The only thing keeping us entertained is whether the godawful Marlins can score five runs in a loss so we can snag some half-off Papa John’s pizza. There is little else going, and sadly we are still a couple of months away from the sports scene picking up.
This past March 23, singer Alicia Keys headlined the grand-opening party for the Porsche Design Tower, an ultraluxury condominium complex in Sunny Isles Beach built by father-and-son Miami developers (and former Trump business partners) Michael and Gil Dezer. The event was a spectacular display of wealth at the Porsche Tower, a massive steel-gray building filled with spartan German decor, billionaire investors, and elevators that lift whole cars right into residents’ condo units.
For the past year, Brandon Russell has saluted the flag and worn the uniform of the Florida National Guard while serving his country as a private first class. But in his suburban Tampa apartment, Russell and his three roommates pledged allegiance to a whole different ideal. Russell’s bedroom was decorated with neo-Nazi and white supremacist propaganda and a framed photo of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. His garage was full of guns, ammo, and high-powered materials for bomb-making.
Finding affordable housing in Miami has never been harder, and the problem affects the whole city: It worsens traffic gridlock by forcing workers to live at the edges of the county, drives out bright college grads who would otherwise stay, and can even prevent domestic violence victims from leaving their abusers.
A note to U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo’s staff: Just stop letting him talk about health care. Earlier this month, the Miami Republican was one of the final swing votes that ensured the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which cripples Obamacare, passed on to the Senate. After his constituents excoriated him for trying to rip away their health care, he wrote a condescending, insulting, and lie-ridden op-ed in the Miami Herald calling his critics leftists and crybabies for asking for basic access to health insurance. That did not go over well.
Most sensible Americans these days believe in ending the War on Drugs. The facts are clear that low-level drug arrests ruin lives and tear families apart. Some day, selling weed in Florida will no longer feed thousands of new prisoners into the state’s broken criminal justice system.
The City of Miami might want to consider testing Barnaby Min for drugs. The deputy city attorney must have been high when he compared legalizing medical marijuana to legalizing pedophilia during a Miami Planning Board session last week. He was arguing against dispensaries in the city. In the tape of that meeting, Min comes off like that college stoner kid who takes massive bong rips before giving a speech in class.
Barnaby Min, Miami’s deputy city attorney, was widely ridiculed last week for comparing legalizing weed to pedophilia at a meeting at city hall. But it turns out he’s an even worse messenger for that offensive claim than most anyone knew.
Where the Florida Republican Party is hell-bent on making life worse for every poor person in the state and turning the Everglades into the Rick Scott Memorial River of Oil, the Florida Democrats are simply an incompetent group of corporate boot-lickers who have no idea how to actually win elections…
There is truly no defeat the Florida Democratic Party will avoid snatching from the hands of victory. Donald Trump has turned the Republican Party radioactive. His polling numbers are plummeting right alongside the GOP as a whole. And the nation is seeing a groundswell of progressive activism at levels not witnessed since the 1960s.
Roger Stone, the political consigliere, accused defamer, and alleged Russia go-between for Donald Trump, is difficult to predict. After spending decades smearing political candidates as an admitted backroom political operative, Stone had seemingly hit a lull in his career over the past decade. Remember when he was handling the campaign of a stoner comedian running for Miami Beach mayor?
Miami’s police union president, Lt. Javier Ortiz, notoriously said he had “no regrets” after posting a woman’s photos and contact information online and encouraging his Facebook followers to harass her. But when the case came before the city’s independent police oversight board this March, almost everyone agreed his actions reflected poorly on the police department.
Inside the walls of Miami’s Federal Correctional Institution, Michael A. Stern typed out a desperate email to a longtime friend. The 56-year-old former Miami Beach developer, locked up for swindling an NFL player and collecting millions from fraudulent mortgages, was in panic mode. He’d been diagnosed with prostate cancer…
The Coral Gables Police Department, which patrols one of the safest, richest parts of Miami-Dade County, inexplicably has two military-grade, tank-like armored trucks called Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected trucks (MRAPS). The department got the truck from the U.S. Department of Defense, which outfits local cops with military-grade equipment for free, so long…
David Beckham’s crew said just about everything right last night. They’d pay for their new stadium entirely with their own money. Minority and locally owned contractors would have first dibs on the construction, and then the team would create at least 50 full-time jobs. They’d offset a lack of parking with new public transit options. It all sounded great.
In 2017, legalizing medical marijuana is not a crazy fringe position. To date, 29 states plus Washington, D.C., have all allowed sick people access to the drug. In November, an overwhelming majority of Florida voters agreed that the Sunshine State should also write legal medical pot into the state constitution…
As another hot AF summer commences in Miami, mosquitoes will once again be unavoidable. Testing is still underway as scientists work to develop a Zika vaccine, but in the meantime, public health officials’ best advice for preventing transmission seems to be just telling people not to get bit. In South…
Longtime Overtown residents and Miami historians will both tell you that highway overpasses destroyed the neighborhood. The formerly segregated community, which used to be called “Colored Town,” was full of renowned clubs, brightly colored homes, churches, and a thriving mix of Caribbean and African cultures that played itself out in city streets each day.
