Deerfield's Mango Festival has been a financial juggling act
I've been stymied in my efforts to get an answer to the question I put at the bottom of this mammoth post from yesterday, about the Deerfield Beach's Mango Festival. Namely, why did the city cut the Mango Festival a check for $36,000 in June 2008?
Acting parks and recreation director George Edmunds might know, but he hasn't returned calls or emails. Nor has City Manager Mike Mahaney (update: until just a moment ago). Vice Mayor Sylvia Poitier, the festival's leading patron on the commission, isn't picking up her phone, either.
The president of the Mango Festival, Norm Edwards, didn't act on a appointment we had to discuss the issue yesterday. And he hasn't a returned a message I left for him today. So we'll have to try cracking the case without help from the people closest to it.
Usually, we're skeptical when a campaigning politician cites a breaking news story as a basis for new legislation, but we'll suspend that cynicism for the moment. State Sen. Dan Gelber, Democratic candidate for Florida attorney general, has seized on the recent corruption cases in Broward County to demand new laws against official misconduct.
This issue is right in Gelber's wheelhouse: He used to work in the public corruption unit of the federal prosecutor's office in Miami, meaning he worked on cases exactly like the ones those against Broward County and School Board officials. He knows the advantages that a federal prosecutor has in working with an "honest services" statute.
But now that he's a state lawmaker, Gelber also understands how much weaker Florida public corruption laws are. Here's the passage of that blog post that makes a muckraker's heart flutter:
One of the photos that Mango Festival organizers did not want you to see.
The Mango Festival of Deerfield Beach has a math problem: Its most recent festival, in June 2008, attracted a lot of people. But for some reason, it didn't make a lot of money. And for the city, which has invested more than a million dollars in that festival over the last several years, that should be cause for concern.
"There's nothing that we're hiding," insists the festival's president, Norm Edwards. "Everything is done by the book."
We'll see about that. After the jump, let's take a close look at how the Mango festival handles its money.
In a post yesterday that's part of our Panning for Gold series, I made a crack about how it's rather foolish to trust a charter fisherman's hunch about the sustainability of fish population -- not just for the obvious fox-running-the-hen-house reasons. Mainly, it's because there's a much more reliable, objective means for ascertaining fish population: the federal government's science-based research tools.
As if on cue, Florida's Broward-born, shiny-new senator, George LeMieux, can be seen in the video above (also from yesterday) asking the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to relax restrictions against fishermen like those who protested recently in Fort Walton Beach, claiming they knew the fish population better than government researchers.
It would have been a more fortuitous sign for Marco Rubio if Doug Hoffman hadn't lost his congressional race in upstate New York, but the fact that a Conservative Party candidate won 45 percent of the vote has Rubio more hopeful than ever. The same can be said for the right wing of the Republican Party, which is now treating Florida Senate seat as its biggest priority.
The Wall Street Journal is so eager to cover that it treated the New York campaign as a mere undercard to the Rubio-Crist title bout in August.
The article makes no mention, however, of the scandals brewing in Broward County among some of Crist's most active supporters.
After watching three Republicans on the Palm Beach County Commission head to prison on corruption charges, one might imagine local Democratic operatives corking champagne bottles in anticipation of next year's battle to fill the seat held by Republican Commissioner Steven Abrams.
But politics in Corruption County are never that simple. Indeed, the Dems have yet to find anyone to run against Abrams. "Of all the races we're scoping out, it's probably the toughest race in the county," says Mark Siegel, chairman of the
We can all agree with what Florida's new senator, George LeMieux, says above, that this health-care fraud thing should stop. And he makes it sound so easy!
But if you watch the longer version of that speech above, you'll see that LeMieux's debut piece of legislation is part of a larger, grander Republican scheme:
The local community of marine mammal experts is a relatively small one, so the Juice has been asking some high-level folks in the scientific community to weigh in on the recent controversy surrounding veterinarian Dr. Rene Varela, candidate for mayor of Lake Worth.
One expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Varela was a "very good veterinarian and seemed like a good person, but I personally lost respect for him when he went to work for Ocean Embassy."
Speaking specifically of Ocean Embassy's capturing of 28 dolphins in the Solomon Islands and further plans to capture dolphins in Panama, the expert said, "They were capturing wild dolphins and selling them to marine parks -- and they were doing it irresponsibly. If you're going to capture wild dolphins, you should determine how many there are and make sure that population can sustain itself. This was drastic; they couldn't recover. I feel like that was irresponsible."
Looking forward to two years of scintillating stories.
It probably comes as no surprise that Lake Worth residents under age 12 overwhelmingly favor Javier del Sol in today's mayoral race. When asked why she was supporting del Sol this morning, the urchin pictured above hesitated, rubbed her toe into the ground, and answered, "I don't know."
But we think we can confidently answer for her. Del Sol is every infant's dream of a city official: He's kind of funny-looking, with that long braid down his back interwoven with pink yarn poofies; he rides a bike everywhere; he wears interesting and colorful clothes; and he can spin a tale like nobody's business, keeping babes enthralled with Aesop's fables and multiculti creation myths from around the world, told bilingually.
Heard the one about the tortoise and the hare? The guy on the bike has been spotted coasting ahead of drivers snarled in traffic.
Lake Worth Mentoring Center gets grant from Community Foundation
Immigration is a hot-button issue in tomorrow's Lake Worth City
Commission elections, in part due to the large number of undocumented
residents in the city but also because of the recent flap over candidate Scott Maxwell's alleged ties to anti-immigration hate groups.
Tomorrow, Lake Worth residents go to the polls to vote for mayor and City Commission candidates in districts 1 and 3.
We asked all four City Commission candidates to respond to
three questions about policies for undocumented workers in Lake Worth.
We've posted Jo-Ann Golden's and Wes Blackman's responses. After the jump, excerpts from District 1 candidate, former mayor, and city commissioner Ron Exline. As yet, we haven't had a response from Scott Maxwell.
Immigration is a hot-button issue in tomorrow's Lake Worth City
Commission elections, in part due to the large number of undocumented
residents in the city but also because of the recent flap over candidate Scott Maxwell's alleged ties to anti-immigration hate groups.
Tomorrow, Lake Worth residents go to the polls to vote for mayor and City Commission candidates in districts 1 and 3.
We asked all four City Commission candidates to respond to
three questions about policies for undocumented workers in Lake Worth.
We just posted Jo-Ann Golden's responses. After the jump, excerpts from her District 3 opponent Wes Blackman, whose contentious local blog has been a major source of information and amusement for Lake Worth residents this year.
Lamberti, Lieberman, Hasner, and Bogdanoff: They all got Rothstein $$.
At the Florida Secretary of State database, you can call up a list of the Florida politicians who accepted campaign contributions from embattled attorney Scott Rothstein. Long, isn't it? Mind you, that doesn't include the contributions he made to the candidates for federal office -- John McCain and Charlie Crist, to name a couple. Nor does it include the many contributions he made directly and bundled on behalf of local politicians.
I'm tempted to list them, but honestly, it's almost easier to list the state politicians who didn't take money from Rothstein. So let's just talk about those who blundered most spectacularly.
Immigration is a hot-button issue in tomorrow's Lake Worth City Commission elections, in part due to the large number of undocumented residents in the city but also because of the recent flap over candidate Scott Maxwell's alleged ties to anti-immigration hate groups.
Tomorrow, Lake Worth residents go to the polls to vote for mayor and City Commission candidates in districts 1 and 3.
One subject of bitter debate has been Lake Worth's Mentoring Center, founded to help immigrants find work and learn English. Supporters argue that the center integrates immigrants into the community and provides needed services; detractors say the Mentoring Center, which cost around $400,000 to refurbish, has become a trash-strewn eyesore and a magnet for drunks.
We asked all four City Commission candidates to respond to three questions about policies for undocumented workers in Lake Worth. After the jump, excerpts from District 3 candidate and current Vice Mayor Jo-Ann Golden. We'll post responses from other candidates later today.
Attorney Scott Rothstein hasn't been charged with any crime, and there's no evidence of wrongdoing at this point, but this morning, it's become clear that there will at least be very serious civil suits against him, the type that will call into question whether he was honest with people who invested money with him.
Can we skip over the stage where we talk about how he had us all fooled? Whatever Rothstein did, he did it in very public fashion. There's simply no excuse for not having at least a gut feeling that Rothstein's honeymoon with high society couldn't last.
One year ago in this newspaper, columnist Bob Norman began a profile that reflected both the fascination and the skepticism of the region's big shots.
Rothstein's big-spending ways and race to the top of the Fort Lauderdale glitterati has legal and business insiders wondering: Who is this guy? Is he for real, or is he building a house of cards?
This story's not going away. The doc, as well as the state child welfare system, have some hard questions to answer. Let's hope by next week, the agency's secretary George Sheldon -- a former colleague of DeGroot's at the AG's office -- has the temerity to address the issues in that DeGroot email.
In the video above, which was posted to Youtube today, you can hear Lake Worth City Commission candidate Scott Maxwell on his own radio show. The audio leaves little doubt that on immigration, he lines up to the right of Lou Dobbs. By the sound of it, he's getting mighty close to Minuteman territory. If you listen to the end you'll hear Maxwell basically excuse police who engage in racial profiling. He also refers to Congress as "535 fools on the Hill," suggesting he's to the right of all them, too.
After 30 years in the South Florida news business, Dan Christensen isn't about to let one small layoff stop him from mining the bottomless pit of Broward County corruption.
The veteran Daily Business Review and Miami Herald reporter has launched a new nonprofit investigative news site, Broward Bulldog, that aims to pick up where the ever-shrinking dailies leave off.
"We're gonna report the news and let the chips fall where they may," says
When asked about the the coalition's allegations, Maxwell said, "Is there a way to answer this question? It's like the old 'When did you stop beating your wife?' routine? Referring to his alleged association with Stormfront, he said, "I would never knowingly associate with that type of organization. I'm saddened and disappointed that the issues important to the neighborhood are being swept away because those folks choose to talk about something that I have never for a moment brought up in this campaign."
Everybody's still talking about Crist gaffe-ing (lying?) over the Obama appearance, but this quotable moment is, I think, much more precious. Let's pull out a portion of that Sarasota Herald-Tribune article, which asked for Crist's opinion of a Senate Democrat health-care reform package that would allow states to opt out of government-run health care -- the so-called public option.
"My view of it is that the public option I think may be sort of a Trojan horse to a government takeover of health care," Crist said. "And I think our administration has demonstrated that's not what we favor, nor do I think that's what Floridians really want."
But Crist refused to say whether he would support letting Florida "opt out" of the government plan if the Senate proposal becomes law.
"I would rather see them pass something that doesn't have a public option in it," he said.
So he took the bait. Your prospective Florida senator is telling Floridians that they should reject the option of having an option of a public health-care plan. Does that make sense?
At about the 2:40 mark of this Sun-Sentinel video, you'll hear Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler complain about the lack of positive media coverage of the Broward County School Board. Then former Attorney General Bob Butterworth plays editor, questioning why the dailies didn't give more coverage to some lame awards that the school district won.
That's right. The fellows who have been appointed and entrusted with the role of being critical of the School Board are on record as saying that people are too critical of the School Board. Gosh, if that doesn't make you optimistic about the prospects of this "investigation," I don't know what will!
Does "consumer option" sound more inviting than "public option"? How about "competitive option"? In case it does, Fox News is warning its partisan audience that whatever West Broward Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Nancy Pelosi call it, it's still a "public option" -- which still translates to the dreaded "big government."
Normally, efforts to re-brand public policy, deserve the eye rolls they get. But then you look at polls like this one, which suggest that roughly a quarter of the population has a knee-jerk opposition to policies that sound public option-y but who will reverse that opposition if the same plan is described as giving them a "choice" between a government health care plan and a private one. It's roughly the difference between a plan that only half of Americans support and one that three-quarters of Americans' support.
So if it boils down to semantics, and if -- as those polls attest -- opponents of the public option don't understand the public option, why not try re-packaging it?
Maxwell is one of the leading rabble rousers on illegal immigration: He sees the issue as a major problem facing Lake Worth. He's joined by a vocal coterie of local frothers including blogger Lynn Anderson. Until recently, Maxwell broadcast a radio program devoted to the subject, "Connecting the Dots on Illegal Immigration," which ran Thursdays at 8 pm on WBZT 1230 Clear Channel.
Olga Bichachi, a reporter for WPLG-TV (Channel 10) at least as recently as February 2008, has gone rogue! That's her as part of a picket that took place last week outside her old studio in Hallandale Beach. She sounds pretty convincing -- right up to the point where she starts talking about the "liberal media." Yes, a media so liberal that it gives wall-to-wall coverage of Tea Party rallies and largely ignores gay marriage rallies. A liberal media that mostly didn't bother to fact-check absurd, exaggerated claims about health care reform made by Tea Party types trying to derail the horrifying policy of universal coverage.
Two days ago, we posted this story about how protesters in Lake Worth targeted mayoral candidate Rene Varela, shining light on his work with Ocean Embassy, an Orlando company (formed by ex-SeaWorld employees) that has plans to build a resort in Panama featuring marine animal attractions. The company has also been accused of involvement with capturing wild dolphins in the Solomon Islands and exporting them to Dubai for use in theme parks. Protesters called Varela a "dolphin trafficker," and the story set off a heated debate in the comments field.
I contacted both Varela's employer and campaign manager requesting a phone interview. Varela did not return my calls but instead sent this email, which I only just rescued from my spam filter. I've posted it after the jump.
LeMieux getting comfortable in the office Charlie scored for him.
Say this about young Broward County Republicans: They know a meal ticket when they see one. By my count, the three men who have the most crucial roles in getting Charlie Crist elected to the U.S. Senate are all from Broward.
We know about George LeMieux, the former county GOP chair and campaign "maestro" who thanks to an appointment by Crist is now the youngest U.S. Senator. LeMieux's job: simply to vacate the office when Charlie wants after 2010. In exchange, you can bet LeMieux lands whatever job he wants in Crist's office -- probably chief of staff, the title he took after the victorious gubernatorial campaign.
As we wait to learn more about the stabbings that occurred last night at the Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan, here's an interesting account of a similar David Irving speaking engagement scheduled for last week in Jackson, Mississippi.
It comes from a white nationalist website, whose group was going to host Irving at a speech in Jackson City Hall, despite condemnations from politicians and several minority rights groups. The nationalists weathered that controversy but didn't get much in return from the historian.
Irving had stated on his website that he would be appearing, but turned out to be a no-show. Most major television-networks were present, as well as interested spectators and considerable police-security. Nationalists held to their reservation of the venue, in order to defy those who had vowed to shut the appearance down.
It's not unusual for politicians to want to hide controversial details of their lives: adulterous affairs, DUI arrests, bankruptcies. Leave to the reliably kooky city of Lake Worth to have this week's most interesting political scandal: rivals of mayoral candidate Rene Varela -- a marine mammal veterinarian -- say that he helps sell wild dolphins for profit.
On his campaign website, Varela claims that he has taught at such esteemed institutions as Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and the University of Florida. His website says nothing of his involvement with Ocean Embassy, a company that is building a $500 million Sea World-style resort in Panama. Ocean Embassy's website says Varela has been director of veterinary services since 2005. No one answered the phone at Ocean Embassy's offices today, and Varela has yet to respond to an email seeking comment.
Ocean Embassy has been no stranger to controversy.
Contributors: Eric Barton, Michelle Centrone, Deirdra Funcheon, Keith Hollar, John Linn, Michael J. Mooney, Bob Norman, Lisa Rab, Nicole Rodriguez, Gail Shepherd.
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