Anthem Education, Shady For-Profit College, Welcomed With $350,000 in Tax Breaks

Categories: Business

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Collidge is good!
On Tuesday, Gov. Rick Scott's offices sent out a news release that declared, "Gov. Scott Announces Anthem Education Expansion in Fort Lauderdale, 70 New Jobs."

It explained that the for-profit college will be locating its "North American headquarters" to Fort Lauderdale, spending $300,000 on a building and furniture, and creating 70 jobs with salaries that average more than $50,000.

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Bahamas Express Ferry: Adding a Miami - Bimini Route

Categories: Business
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courtesy Bahamas Express

When it launched in 2011, we told you about the Bahamas Express fast ferry service out of Fort Lauderdale, serving Grand Bahama Island. Last year, we gave the company the award for Best Weekend Getaway, since the trip is quick and kids up to age six travel free. 

Though other fast-ferry services have come and gone from South Florida over the years, Bahamas Express has managed to hang in there (it reportedly served 80,00 passengers last year) and is even expanding its services. Last Friday, it launched a Miami - Bimini route. 

Parent company Balearia has shipped over a fast ferry called Maverick from Spain to be its workhorse. This boat can sail at 30 knots and carries 357 passengers. 

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Hallandale's Cheetah Strip Club Can Now Stay Open Until Dawn

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Ever been to a strip club and thought to yourself, "Boy! This place is great! I sure like looking at all the boobies! If only it were open until the sun came up so I can look at boobies till breakfast!"?

Well, Hallandale Beach resident who loves boobies, you're in luck.

Because, thanks to City Hall, Cheetah's Gentleman's Club can now stay open until 6 a.m.

City Hall's reason? Other strip clubs in South Florida stay open until the sun comes up, allowing their patrons to gawk at topless dancing girls till the crack of dawn.

So why not Hallandale?

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Digital Domain's John Textor: "I Lost My Job, Too"

Categories: Business
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Newsday
John Textor doesn't want to talk to the press.

"I don't trust any of you," he said to a reporter on a recent weekday afternoon, answering the door of his cloistered Hobe Sound house in a faded green polo shirt, slacks, and sandals.

See also:

The former CEO of Digital Domain, the country's most famous digital video-effects shop, is feeling pretty down these days. He had an audacious vision: rejuvenating the video effects industry right here in South Florida; creating a startup production studio to rival Pixar; luring local animation students to take part in the next great thing. Then it all collapsed, and nearly everyone blamed Textor. 

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Foreign Buyers Totally Into South Florida Real Estate

Categories: Business
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Little-known fact: When Pangea broke apart, it freed several giant butterflies.
Popular real-estate website Trulia.com has been tracking you, international real-estate buyers. And now it's telling everybody.

While a study released earlier this week found that searches for U.S. homes from other countries has dropped 10 percent on the website since 2011, there was other information that was pretty interesting: Of the ten cities most searched-for in the United States, six were in Florida.

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Jesse Gaddis: Riverside Market Lot "Was Never a Big Issue of Mine"

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South Florida Business Journal
This is a followup to our piece mapping out property owned by Yellow Cab and real estate mogul Jesse Gaddis, one of the richest people in Fort Lauderdale.

Gaddis recently attempted to purchase a city-owned lot that just happens to be the parking lot for Riverside Market Cafe, a popular hangout that needs the parking to qualify for a zoning change to keep serving liquor.

Rumors have been swirling around the neighborhood's palm-lined streets that Gaddis has been scheming to wrestle the lot from the café's owner, Julian Siegel. He called us up yesterday, though, and (as nicely as you could expect from an annoyed 80-year-old) told us that he really doesn't care that much.

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Florida's Anti-Cuban Trade Law Is an Insult to Capitalism

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Wikimedia
Apparently, he has the power to squelch American business deals. Who knew?
Odebrecht, the giant Brazilian company that has a $225 million contract to help build the new runway at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, is suing the state over a histrionic law that Rick Scott signed last month in Miami, banning state and local governments from doing major business with companies with commercial ties to Cuba.

The company is right to sue, and a victory against this ill-conceived law would be a victory not just for a Brazilian multinational but for the all the free-market capitalist principles we demonize Fidel Castro for not supporting.

The law -- obviously cynical pandering to a hardline Cuban-American base -- flies in the face of the conservative, business-friendly environment its Republican champions claim to represent. Promoting state-endorsed ideological positions over the free flow of money to competitive corporations? Sounds like something Cuba would do.

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Feeling Burned by Facebook's IPO? Be Pissed Instead at the Stock Market, a True Sucker's Bet

Categories: Business
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Photo via bestweekever.tv
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg now faces a series of lawsuits about his company's public stock offering.
On May 9, Facebook's upper brass had a meeting with financial analysts to tell them the company's revenue should be on the low end of projections, according to the Associated Press. That was bad news, especially considering Facebook was about to sell stock publicly for the first time.

The analysts for the nation's major investment firms then took that information and handed it out to their biggest whales, according to a series of lawsuits. Regular investors -- the working man who maybe got excited about the chance to own a bit of the website he wastes time on at work -- got screwed.

And that's where you shouldn't be surprised. The stock market these days is a sucker's bet. It's built on the principle that the average worker will never pull money out of the market, no matter the cloudy

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Solantic Walk-In Urgent Care Getting New Name

Categories: Business, Health
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Gov. Rick Scott's Solantic Walk-In Urgent Care is no longer Rick Scott's... or Solantic Walk-In Urgent Care.

Scott founded the chain of health care clinics in 2001, and sold it in 2011 amid cries of conflicting interests. The company announced yesterday that it will be changing its name to CareSpot Express Healthcare to, as a release states, "represent improvements the company is making to deliver a more convenient and better healthcare experience."

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Bankrupt Twinkie Manufacturer Warns of Hundreds of Florida Layoffs

Categories: Business
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Hostess Brands, the makers of Twinkies, Ho Hos, and Ding Dongs that declared bankruptcy in January, has filed paperwork with the state warning of at least 479 potential layoffs all over the state.

And it's not just a Florida thing -- reports of layoff warnings are coming out all over the country, with the cited number looking to be 18,500 jobs that could be lost nationwide due to restructuring.

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