Accompanied by a handful of rabbis, Harold Wishna lowered the boom on the North Broward Hospital District last week. The 75-year-old political power broker stood before the district board, which is appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush, and complained that the public hospital system discriminates against Jews. The gray and balding…
The audacious bid to gain control of government money and media coverage began with a strange but simple equation: a quarter a head. That’s how much the downtown developers and businessmen who formed the Broward Alliance in 1998 felt they deserved from your local tax coffers. Twenty-five cents for every…
The story of a cash-hemorrhaging public boondoggle begins, appropriately enough, with a massive heart attack. Seven years ago, a man woke up gasping for breath in his Fort Lauderdale mansion in the middle of the night. It was Dave Thomas, founder of the Wendy’s hamburger chain. Cardiologist Michael Chizner helped…
It’s a medical horror story that never happened as far as the State of Florida is concerned. And it began on New Year’s Eve 2001 in the most mundane of places — a living room. Mary Emma Marshall thought she simply pulled a muscle in her left hip as she…
Gov. Jeb Bush will likely be pulled into a federal grand jury investigation of the North Broward Hospital District, the $800 million-a-year, tax-subsidized public health powerhouse that serves as one of his chief political fiefdoms. The grand jury is looking into a project by the nation’s sixth-largest public hospital system,…
You might think the North Broward Hospital District would be at least moderately thrifty, especially since it keeps raising our property taxes to help fund its monstrous $800 million budget. But then, you’d be wrong. A look at an unauthorized Internet database of NBHD’s expenses provides strong evidence that the…
Standing outside the glass wall of the nursery on the third floor of the Broward General Medical Center this past Sunday, Dr. Reynald Pouliot gazed at the two babies who slept peacefully in two of the many cribs. “This is going to be like a ghost town without SunLife,” says…
You may have never heard of Dr. Steven M. Scott, but chances are he’s taken some of your money. A huge financier of the Republican Party, Scott owns an HMO that covers some 385,000 people in Broward and Miami-Dade counties and, until last month, provided physicians to more than 200…
Basketball started changing about a year ago. The kids who play on my driveway court began rolling the ball around their bodies under their shirts. They seemed to forget the rule against traveling and carrying the ball. They didn’t so much practice dribbling behind their backs as behind those of…
What’s up with Wayne Huizenga’s suits? The chipper green number the mogul wore Sunday for the Dolphins’ last game made him look like a racetrack official or an Irish bureaucrat. A billion dollars and he wears bad suits. Just goes to show that all the money in the world can’t…
I persecute Christians. David Limbaugh says so and he’s famous radioman Rush’s brother, so it must be true. The uncle of Dittoheads across the land came out with a best-selling book this fall titled Persecution: How Liberals are Waging War Against Christianity. Just to make sure you don’t miss the…
The Pompano Beach water scandal is starting to feel like a bad dream, or a Dolphins game at New England, or, worse, a Terry Gilliam movie, non-Monty Python. Faces change, nonsense is uttered, awful things keep happening, and the thing just won’t end. Now, high levels of dangerous lead –…
The good doctor phoned me a couple of weeks ago after reading a column I wrote about the corrupt depths of a North Broward Hospital District building deal. He says he didn’t want his name in print because district leaders would try to destroy him for saying his piece. “I…
The acronym used by North Broward Hospital District staff for the $32 million medical office building project — “MOB” — says it all. Meyer Lansky would have been proud. As I wrote here November 6, the publicly funded district intends to pay a few big-wheel developers $170 million over 55…
After several meetings with two local congressmen about the Iraq War, it’s time to unleash the transcript. Democratic Reps. Robert Wexler of Boca Raton and Peter Deutsch of Pembroke Pines revealed their most intimate thoughts during the sessions, though they thankfully stopped short of any discussion about their precious bodily…
Peter Deutsch has been giving it to Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas good. For the past few months, the Pembroke Pines congressman has been playing the Elliot Ness — or Eliot Spitzer, if you prefer — of the U.S. Senate race. Both Democrats, of course, are running for the Florida seat…
We’re being robbed blind — $100 million blind. That’s how much money a couple of politically connected developers stand to make on a medical office building they’re set to construct for the taxpayer-funded North Broward Hospital District. When the $30 million project near Broward General Hospital on South Andrews Avenue…
Baseball is the most superstitious sport. It’s got something to do with the cosmic rotation of the ball, the 60 feet of deception from mound to home plate, and the damning difficulty of hitting that makes even the best batters miserable failures two-thirds of the time. Or maybe it’s because…
A lot of people are whining about World Series tickets. Saying Ticketmaster screwed them, that viperish brokers are charging too much money, that none of it is fair. They’re right. It’s an ugly business. But I’m going to give you an almost sure-fire method to see the Marlins play the…
I won’t say they fear me, because they probably don’t. But politicians do seem to avoid me. And when I speak with them, they sometimes seem perturbed by my questions. Broward County Commissioner Josephus Eggelletion once ranted at me that New Times has an agenda to destroy the political careers…
As she strolled the hallways of Silver Palms Elementary on that Tuesday morning, Kristi Krueger wasn’t the Channel 10 anchorwoman seen on television. She was the suburban mom, the one who went by her married name, Templin. And she was there to tell administrators she’d be bringing cupcakes to school…
When the 7-year-old girl climbed onto the witness stand, she didn’t know her mother was in deep trouble. Dressed in pink, from the barrette in her sandy-brown hair to her shoes, Kylee Roberts had no idea that the man sitting across from her in the courtroom was trying to convict…
