Blogs

Community center to be named for Teele - A community center to be built in Little Haiti Park will be named after former Miami-Dade commissioner Arthur E. Teele Jr. who pushed for the project before his suicide in 2005.

Suit against new Florida Marlins ballpark to proceed - A Miami-Dade circuit judge will allow the suit brought by auto dealer Norman Braman against Miami-Dade County for the financing of the new Florida Marlins stadium to go forward. Braman claims the financing of the stadium violates the Florida constitution because it relies on public funding to help out a private business.

Miami Art Machine - Local developer and art collector Craig Robbins and the University of Miami are pioneering a new graduate program called Art + Research that would give artists the opportunity to live and work in Miami on a full scholarship. While some applaud Robbins efforts to expand the arts in the city, others see it as nothing more than an unrealistic fantasy.

- Jose D. Duran

Janine Zeitlin

Activists at the Tina Hill Pavilion at Bayfront Park hoping to bring awareness of the injustices at Guantánamo Bay.

What’s two times smaller than your first apartment and shorter than Shaq?

Stumped? It’s a prison cell at Guantánamo Bay. A true-to-life replica of the roughly 6.5-by-8-foot space arrived in Bayfront Park in downtown Miami Thursday. Amnesty International kicked off its national tour of the cell to bring attention to the injustices just across the water in the U.S.-controlled slice of Cuba. The goal: close Gitmo.

More than a dozen activists – old, young, bald, brown, blonde and bearded - dressed in orange jumpsuits and linked by silver chains, gathered near the replica Thursday at Tina Hills Pavilion (behind the balloon). Leaders from Amnesty International, the ACLU and the American Bar Association presented a bleak reality. One even noted that a detainee was imprisoned for having a Timex watch. Apparently, that's a preferred brand for terrorists.

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Cathy Jackson, Director of the Miami-Dade Department of Audit and Management, finally released today her long-awaited audit of the Wackenhut Corp., which holds several major security contracts with the county, including the county’s lucrative contract for posts at Metrorail stations.

As reported in the Herald, the audit reveals, to no one’s surprise, that Wackenhut over-billed the county for millions of dollars worth of work that was never performed, including “ghost posts,” which went unfilled but were billed anyway to create the appearance of a fully-staffed Metrorail when, in fact, Wackenhut suffered a personnel shortage.

This much has been known – or strongly suspected, anyway – for some time. Besides the Herald, local blog Eye on Miami has featured particularly good coverage of the ongoing Wackenhut fiasco, and New Times has written several stories about the company as well.

But the real story lies in questions as yet unanswered:

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What’s going on in Haiti these days?

If you read the New York Times yesterday, you might have seen this rather alarming headline from Reuters: “Haiti riot instigators set deadline to install [Prime Minister].”

The article began with this cheerful sentence:

“Slum leaders in the southern town of Les Cayes who started Haiti's recent food riots handed lawmakers an ultimatum on Monday to install a new government within a week or face more protests.”

Alarming stuff -- but maybe you didn’t read the Times yesterday; maybe you turned to the Herald, which seems to have brushed aside news of the possible collapse of Haiti’s government for something a little . . . well, not so serious, for God’s sake.

Yesterday’s Herald headline: “Young Haitian soccer players get lesson in shopping”

You can almost hear the exclamation marks dotting themselves.

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Foreclosure Fraud Bill OK'd - The state Legislature approved a bill to protect homeowners going into foreclosure from being scammed by so-called "foreclosure rescue services."

Renters Grasp At Opportunities In Risky Market - With the current state of the housing market, the market has tipped in renters' favor. Owners looking to get any amount of money for their properties are willing to rent cheap. But are some deals too good to be true?

Stores Hint at Change Under New Castro - Cubans are enjoying new liberties they probably never imagined getting in their lifetime. Nowhere is this more apparent than in stores selling consumer goods like DVD players, computers and appliances to the general population. Signs of things to come?

Five Years, Two Words, No Letup - Five years ago, President George W. Bush said "Mission Accomplished" when talking about Operation Iraqi Freedom. Five years later, the United States still finds itself trying to bring stability to the region.

- Jose D. Duran

The newest numbers from Editor and Publisher show Miami Herald circulation falling faster than virtually any other major American newspaper in the last six months.

According to a story in today's Editor and Publisher, the Herald numbers dropped 11 percent in daily circulation...and nine percent on Sundays. Ouch!

It is no longer among the nation's top 25 daily newspapers. Nor is it in the top 25 Sunday rags.

The drops were among the steepest in the country. Newark and Orange County were in our league....but it's sad to see the bottom drop out here in the Magic City.

Maybe it's time to come up with something creative....A publicity stunt? A giveaway? A lotto ticket in every paper. Hell, maybe a nude centerfold like those English tabs?

Chuck Strouse

Florida tomato pickers and activists from across the country plan to arrive at Burger King's Miami headquarters at 3:30 this afternoon with 75,000 signatures asking the corporation to kowtow to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers demands to pay pickers more and adopt a zero tolerance for slavery in the fields, the latter of which doesn't seem like an onerous request these days.

Activists will come armed with an eight-story banner, giant tomatoes and paper mache burgers so bring your camera if you go. Burger King offices are at 5505 Blue Lagoon Drive, Miami. In other fast food news, the daughter of a Burger King exec blamed her dad for posting anonymous online attacks against the workers rights organization.

Read more here.

Janine Zeitlin

Sure, the economy's bad here in South Florida. Workers are getting laid off, salaries slashed, homes foreclosed upon.

But have some pity for the poor Deutsche Bank employees in Germany. According to the London Independent, senior executives of the German Bank can no longer expense brothel visits or porn channels in hotel rooms. According to one anonymous bank employee:

"In the good old days, you could pass off a trip to a knocking-shop as a restaurant if the name wasn't too obvious. But we're in an uptight, locked-down new puritanism now."

Murdoch Gears Up To Buy Newsday - Rupert Murdoch has offered the Tribune Company $580 million to purchase Newsday and further solidify his hold on the tabloid papers in New York. If the deal goes through, Murdoch will own 3 of the 10 largest circulation newspapers in the country.

Turnpike Tolls May Increase - Lawmakers have added a provision to a transportation bill that will allow for a 25 percent increase to the tolls on Florida's Turnpike, and the Sawgrass Expressway. The purpose of the toll is to raise money to widen certain roads and build new ones.
Wesley Snipe Sentenced to Three Years - The actor was sentenced to three years for his income-tax crimes. He will have to pay upwards to $20 million in back taxes, interests, and penalties.

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In his first visit to the United States as Pope, Benedict XVI has met with sex abuse victims from Boston, ground zero for the abuse scandals that rocked the church in 2002. Since that time, however, similar scandals have erupted in dozens of other metropolitan areas.

In the Archdiocese of Miami, no priest has accumulated as many abuse reports as Rev. Neil Doherty, the subject of New Times' cover story this week. By the time these national controversies led church officials to take another look at his file, it was too late. The allegations against Doherty span three decades, and every archbishop who has served the archdiocese had a chance to act. As they delayed action, more abuse claims surfaced. Doherty now faces criminal charges for the one remaining alleged victim whose claims fall within the statute of limitations.

So while the pope sounds a contrite tone in his public remarks, those who claim to be abused by Doherty have known a church that protects its priests, even when means leaving children vulnerable. --Thomas Francis

Earlier this month, MySpace Latino officially launched in yet another corporate bid to milk a bilingual market.

MySpace Latino is teaming up with South Florida based Spanish Broadcasting System to add people in a project, "We Want a Million Friends," and SBS will offer users access to its radio and TV personalities.

That's all well and good if the intent behind the site is to beef up the offerings to an under served bilingual, community of MySpace users.

But targeting Spanish-speakers in the United States, many of whom already freely use MySpace (now, presumably, Non Latino) seems antithetical to one of the concepts behind social networking. Is it segregating or connecting?

In other MySpace news: the networking hub expanded to South Korea this week. Would it not be utopian if users MySpace Latino, MySpace South Korea and plain ol' MySpace could somehow be connected? I'd rather have friends in MySpace South Korea and Latino than Jenna Sexxxy who, by the way, is not my real friend.

--Janine Zeitlin

Pope Visit - Pope Benedict XVI visited the U.S. Tuesday in what is deemed to be a historic a visit. He said he is ashamed of "pedophile priests," but some catholics are demanding more action.

Delta, NWA Merge - Delta and Northwest Airlines settled on a deal to merge that would make them the largest airline in the world. The two airlines now face challenges as they combine because they are very distinct.

Bruce Springsteen Show Canceled - "The Boss" canceled both his Sunrise and Orlando shows because of the death of long time E street band keyboardist and organist Danny Federici.

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Student activists suspect a fast food giant could be behind a woman who posed as a student to spy on the organization.

For months, the Student/Farmworker Alliance and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers have been pressuring Miami-based Burger King to give tomato pickers a needed raise. The Home of the Whopper hasn’t budged.

Last month, Marc Rodrigues, a 27 year old alliance organizer, fielded a call from a Cara Schaffer who expressed interest in joining ranks and asked to listen in on the group’s conference calls. Rodrigues soon discovered an unsettling link.

The woman heads Diplomatic Tactical Services, a South Florida firm that boasts of its covert surveillance in labor issues on its site: “Placing of an operative in the ranks is dangerous if not handled with the greatest care…”

Burger King denied connection to the mole in an article by The News-Press, which broke the story. Rodrigues doesn’t buy it. “There was a little bit of fear and surprise that they would try to infiltrate a pretty innocuous human rights organization,” Rodrigues told the New Times. “To us, it seemed kind of obvious that it’s something that Burger King is behind.”

Whatever the truth, the idea that any entity or individual hired a firm to dig up dirt on an organization fighting for farmworkers is both creepy and sleazy.

Read the full story here.

--Janine Zeitlin

Marco Kornfeld

Click here to see a slide show of the driving school.

BMW launched its performance driving school program yesterday on a mild April morning at the Homestead International Speedway.

I was invited to take photos and join this very exclusive opportunity -- $1,495 for the one-day school -- for BMW owners and aficionados. We were to get behind the wheels of the M3, M5, M6 and 550 series and drop the pedal to the metal for a day totally without speed limits.

After some basic theory time in the classroom with a certified driving instructor, I had one goal in mind: don’t crash these 500-horsepower monsters. My heart pounding, I grabbed a helmet and prepared to rocket to speeds in excess of 120 MPH.

The instructors, including Le Mans Series driver Rene Villeneuve, operated with finesse. He possessed all the knowledge necessary to overcome the countless times the car would simply stretch its limits going around the track’s curves and steep banks. I watched as he demonstrated how to exercise skid- and spin- control skills on wet pavement and how to handle asphalt at top speed. The 37-year-old Canadian was unflappable as he flew in the M6 down the course.

Punctuating the driving was a lavish buffet. I chowed down with Homestead Mayor Lynda Bell and Vice Mayor John Burgess. They had climbed in brand new M5s and took an impressive one-on-one duel to the checkered flag. “Billy,” the official mascot of the Marlins, flagged the start and finish of the opening race. (For the record, Vice-Mayor Burgess won the contest).

Then it was my turn. I took the wheel of the M6 and, together with three other students, followed Villeneuve around the track. I was in the back of the pack, and slowed a bit so I could punch the gas petal hard. I felt like a lion. Taking the car up to 140 MPH, I marveled at the machine. This wasn't I-95 at rush hour -- it was more like heaven. I realized that the higher the speed on a track, the less you feel danger. Hey, what can I say? I’m Italian. I love speed.

There’s still slots available for the driving school, which runs at the Homestead Speedway until April 25th. Anyone interested should call 888-345-4269. -- Marco Kornfeld

Click here to see the slide show presentation given at the meeting.

FIU President Modesto Maidique spoke about priorities. He placed the schools of education, and journalism below the, yet to be open, school of medicine and the school of hospitality management.

At the meeting yesterday, Maidique revealed that schools and centers within the university have been ranked, and that these ranks will determine how much each school will be expected to cut, priority one receiving the fewest cuts, and priority four receiving the most.

The journalism school is ranked priority three. It has trained eight Pulitzer-Prize winners and graduates more Hispanic journalists than any other such institution in the country each year. The school is slated to lose 12.4 percent of its budget, or around $455,422, over three years, according to Lillian Kopenhaver, its dean. The school may be dismantled if it can't absorb the cuts.

Maidique, as of March 13, made $476,486.65 a year.

In justifying the cuts, he notes that he took a $30,000 cut last year. “I challenge you to find any administrator who has taken a higher cut,” Maidique said. He forgot to note that no other administrator makes as much.

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