George Will Also Loves Marco Rubio (Or Does He Just Despise Charlie Crist?)

Yesterday in his nationally syndicated column, the Washington Post’s George Will joined the chorus of “true” conservatives to accuse Charlie Crist of being — gasp! — a moderate. Will condemned the national Republicans who gave Crist their endorsement the moment after Crist announced his candidacy for Senate. And he’s showing…

Guilt by Association? Pines Attorney Sam Goren Takes Pay Cut Too

A mysterious illness has infected the highly paid, privately contracted top administrators at the City of Pembroke Pines, causing them to become suddenly squeamish about their paychecks. First, City Manager Charlie Dodge volunteered to slice $20,000 off his company’s annual salary of $755,000. Then, Wednesday night, moments before the City…

Did Salesman Violate Campaign Finance Laws Too?

I suppose it’s a deck chair on the Titanic, but check out this page of then-Miramar Commissioner Fitzroy Salesman’s campaign finance treasurer’s report from 2005. In the two boxes on the top, in the column that requires the name and address of the campaign contributor, Salesman wrote, “Fund Raiser” and…

Dodgeball, Part II: Pines City Manager to Take Small Pay Cut?

Pembroke Pines City Manager Charlie Dodge, whose private company earns $755,000 a year from the city, has offered to take a 2.6 percent pay cut next year, in deference to the Broward suburb’s dire financial straits.That’s the word from Pines Mayor Frank Ortis and Vice Mayor Angelo Castillo, both of…

Charlie Crist: Has Such a Popular Candidate Ever Been So Unpopular?

Let me explain. Surveys show that Charlie Crist is one of the nation’s most popular governors. Polls show that he has a huge, possibly insurmountable lead in the race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Yet straw polls show that Republican activists prefer underdog Marco Rubio. And some of…

Hollywood Couple’s Health-Care Horror Story

A writer at American Chronicle, Virgil Hervey, offers a personal story about the health-care status quo that Glenn Beck’s disciples are working arduously to protect. It begins with Hervey’s receiving a call about his parents, who lived in Hollywood and were in a car accident in Italy. Hervey’s father died…

Update: Plant an ACORN, Grow a Bloviating Hasner

Oh good Christ. Now Delray Beach Republican House Rep. Adam Hasner is crowing about a Florida investigation of ACORN, as if that organization weren’t already a corpse riddled with right-wing arrows. Hasner appears to be terrified that the dead will rise and, once risen, perhaps even stalk around collecting fake…

Dennis Giordano Responds: “We’re Very Careful Not to Have a Conflict”

The president of Calvin, Giordano & Associates, a private firm that provides building inspection, engineering, code enforcement, and other services to local cities, says his company pioneered local government outsourcing, and performs its work ethically.”We’re very careful not to have a conflict,” Dennis Giordano says. “We never do any work…

UPDATED: Calvin, Giordano’s Own Private City of West Park

This summer, the Juice brought you the troubling tale of the City of Pembroke Pines’ decision to outsource its building department to a private consulting firm, Calvin, Giordano & Associates. At the time, this was worrisome because the Fort Lauderdale-based firm already does engineering work for Pembroke Pines. It was…

Your 912 Project Scavenger Hunt

[jump] From this, we have the Tea Party protests (where the other half of the country finally learned that government is bad, especially if it’s run by people with whom you disagree) and the under-reported upon 9-12 Project. Beck lists nine “principles” (they involve liking America and God and family and…

Flak for State Utility Regulator Gets Grabby With Reporter

OK, so it’s not nearly as goofy as the WPLG video I mentioned in the Morning Juice, but this one has a better backstory. Cynthia Muir, a spokeswoman for the Public Services Commission, is already in hot water over sharing BlackBerry PINs with an FPL lobbyist — one of the…

Media Spins Survey to Find Racial Divide Between Obama, Whites

This past weekend, the major newspapers in the Tribune company chain, including the Sun-Sentinel, ran this article, originally from the Los Angeles Times, about how Obama is “fast losing white voters’ support.”And judging by the mostly white tea party types who’ve been heckling Democrats at health care town halls and…

Bueller? Pines Leaders Fumble Tax Calculations

Pack City Hall with more than 150 angry citizens and any governing body would get a bit anxious. But at Wednesday night’s budget hearing, the Pembroke Pines city commissioners appeared to be auditioning for Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? And it wasn’t going well.First, they faced the small…