by Jeff Weinberger Dericia Charles left her native Cap Haitien for South Florida seven years ago expecting the best. A print shop worker who’d been earning a few dollars a day toiling on a low-tech printing press in virtual sweatshop conditions, she had barely been getting by in her homeland…
Now that the economy seems to be soldiering on, we tend to forget that just a few years back the banks were basically endless conveyor belts of foreclosures. But the aftershocks of the mess are still sounding. John Lebeau’s case puts that in stark relief Last week, the North Palm…
Hey, got an extra $70-plus million lying around? Because Celine Dion has put her giant Jupiter Island property/water park/mansion on the market and is asking $72.5 million for it. Cheap! What does a plethora of middling and annoying Canadian pop songs buy you? Why, a luxurious Bahamian-inspired estate with a…
In a cover story last year, we told you about how a few Florida women were the ones who discovered how banks were screwing people out of billions of dollars through foreclosures of homes during the past decade’s housing crisis. Banks resorted to robosigning and forged documents in order to…
iPad, here we come! OK, so you’ll still be charged sales tax on certain things, but if you’re in the market for back-to-school stuff, clothing, or a computer, you’re in luck. Throughout Florida, sales tax is being waived from 12:01 a.m. this Friday until midnight Sunday, August 4. The more…
We’ve told you about the electronic cigarette revolution: Thousands of people are switching from conventional cigarettes to electronic ones, believing that inhaling a vapor — which typically contains propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, natural and artificial flavorings, and pure nicotine — is much less harmful. The FDA has warned that the…
State Senator Dwight Bullard and Broward County Commissioner Martin David Klar have promised to accept the minimum wage — $7.79 in the state of Florida — as their salaries for this entire week. “This week, I have committed to gaining more perspective on the day-to-day struggles of low-wage workers in…
I did not set out writing last week’s feature — about pastor O’Neal Dozier’s connection to a plan hatched by the successor to Desmond Tutu, which just might save Africa — with the intention of getting Dozier fired.All I did was try to find out what was going on, and…
Fire Ant — an invasive species, tinged bright red, with an annoying, sometimes fatal bite — covers Palm Beach County. Soon, his column will appear twice a week on The Pulp. Got feedback or a tip? Contact fire.ant@browardpalmbeach.com.Would the fine folks at an institution like Citigroup steal the pennies off…
The big business brains over at Forbes compiled a list of 200 American cities that the magazine says are the best for “business and careers.”Don’t get your hopes up, folks. Fort Loddy Doddy did terrible, coming in 192 out of 200. We barely beat out notorious hellhole Flint, Michigan…
More than one in five South Florida residents said their employers were firing workers in 2011, according a Gallup poll released this morning.In a Gallup ranking of the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, the “Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach” area ranked 44th out of 50 for job creation last year — the worst…
Homeowners facing foreclosure turn to some creative measures to try to fight the banks. For example, there’s the Luznar family of Pembroke Pines, whom we followed last year as they hung massive signs on their house saying, “We are fighting back.”Meanwhile, another homeowner — Lynn Szymoniak of Palm Beach Gardens…
Buying guns and shooting targets in Lake Worth is officially part of the economic recovery effort.According to data compiled by the nonprofit journalism website ProPublica, the Palm Beach Shooting Center in Lake Worth received a $550,000 loan backed by the Small Business Administration using stimulus funds.The loan, which was awarded…
The jobs numbers released yesterday look promising — the nation’s overall unemployment rate dropped from 8.5 percent to 8.3 percent in January, and the rate of black unemployment dropped from 15.8 percent to 13.6, the lowest it’s been since March 2009.Still, the last time another president faced unemployment this high…
The Florida House bill that would grant three licenses to developers looking to build South Florida resorts has been killed, at least for the time being. The House Business and Consumer Affairs committee postponed a vote rather than voting it down, which theoretically keeps the bill alive but makes it…
If you need affirmation that West Palm Beach is too rich rich for your blood, Forbes has you covered. Using a semiscientific method that accounted for things like housing affordability, the cost-of-living index, and median salaries for college grads, the magazine produced a list of the most overpriced cities in the U.S. The Sunshine…
More than 53 percent of Florida’s unemployed residents went six months or more without work last year — the highest rate in the country, according to a study from the Hamilton Project, run by the Brookings Institute, a D.C. think tank.To compare, the average unemployed worker between 2004 and 2007…
The man who oversees much of the state’s job-creation effort submitted his resignation late last week for “personal reasons.”It’s not clear why Department of Economic Opportunity Director Doug Darling, who was hired for the gig last July, is calling it quits, but it probably isn’t for a lack of results: The…
There are two very distinct ways to think of the hedge fund managers meeting right now in Boca Raton for the annual GAIM USA conference. If you side with the Occupy Palm Beach protesters, you believe that they’re responsible for the global financial crisis and that they serve as “pawns…
Luckily for Florida, a new list of the best-run states in the U.S. of A. included all 50 states or it may not have made the cut.Based on what 24/7 Wall Street calls “the 10 most important measurements of financial and government management,” Florida ranked 40th.In fact, a lot of…
If you’ve ever wondered where all the members of that oh-so-loathed “1%” that’s not too hot with the Occupy Wall Street movement, look no further than Florida — mostly South Florida.Forbes decided to use an interesting method to figure out the rankings for its list of “America’s Millionaire Capitals” –…
After a pretty good September for not getting laid off in Florida — only the fourth-most mass layoffs in the nation for that month — the state is back to its usual position of second-most for October.According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Florida accounted for 91 of the nation’s…
