A Broward Teachers Union poll taken of the county’s school teachers illustrates just how much the people closest to the Broward County School Board feels that it is an abject failure. To put it lightly, teachers don’t trust this board, and they don’t think elected board members know what the hell…
So I solved one of the outstanding mysteries of the indictment of GOP moneyman Alan Mendelsohn: The mysterious figure called “Contributor #4” is veteran Broward credit counselor Howard Dvorkin. But this really isn’t about Dvorkin — who almost surely isn’t in any trouble — but about the man who got him into…
Linda Ferrara, a former Cooper City commissioner and longtime School Board appointee and volunteer, was among what is really turning into a rogue’s gallery of attendees for the party on the Intracoastal thrown by the FBI in December. Funny thing is that Ferrara knows all about partying at the expense of taxpayers — she…
Austin Forman, the land heir, developer, and political power broker, has branched out to the Panhandle, where he’s got several pieces of apparently environmentally sensitive parcels of land, a pending lawsuit, and a small herd of donkeys. I’m most interested in the lawsuit, since it tangentially involves my newspaper. Forman…
Longtime government real-estate operative and convicted felon Ira Cor was another guest on an FBI boat at a party thrown for School Board Member Beverly Gallagher by undercover agents, the Pulp has learned. Cor attended the December 10 party — which was part of a years-long FBI corruption sting — on…
Former Senate President Ken Pruitt did not receive $87,000 in secret money from Hollywood eye doctor and GOP money man Alan Mendelsohn, my reporting has revealed. The actual recipient of the money is revealed here. The connection between Pruitt and Mendelsohn was investigated by federal agents, according to numerous sources, and no evidence has surfaced that Pruitt…
Let’s say somebody took you, your spouse, and another couple of family members on a luxury yacht cruise on the Intracoastal and gave all of you all the free booze and food you could stuff into your body and into bags to take home when the party was over. How…
When Sunrise City Commissioner Sheila Alu tried to put the city’s garbage contract out to bid, things began to get very weird. And it began a four-year odyssey that came to an end yesterday, when she went public with her work for the FBI. It started with harassment. The company that had the…
It started with a meeting between mega-lobbyist Ron Book and Broward School Board construction czar Michael Garretson and turned into a $765,000 fiasco. I’m talking, of course, about the Ashbritt affair, wherein the company is accused of ripping off the board during its work on schools after Hurricane Wilma. When…
One thing the 32-page indictment of Hollywood eye doctor and GOP bag man Alan Mendelsohn proves is that the FBI is still very adept at cloaking their investigation in darkness. It’s full of code names for campaign contributors and PACs that Mendelsohn manipulated in at least an attempt to bribe Charlie Crist and other officials to kill investigations into Mutual Benefits’ Joel…
News is busting out all over, so I’ll make this quick. Here’s a list of the most popular Pulp posts for the month of September, which saw a 25 percent bump up in traffic from August due mostly to the federal corruption case coverage. Still, three non-fed stories — Post layoffs, Scott Rothstein, and Mc…
Picture this scenario: officials lawyering up, high-ranking personnel angry about possible news leaks, people dodging the FBI, and the top man trying to assure everyone that his agency isn’t full of crooks. No, this isn’t the Nixon White House; it’s the Broward County School Board. With one School Board member,…
So you know that Broward School Board Member Phyllis Hope was on the clandestine FBI boat, as well as Miramar Commissioner Fitzroy Salesman. But there was a third elected official there as well, a fact that Hope this morning revealed to reporters. Sunrise Commissioner and Broward prosecutor Sheila Alu. But…
Broward County School Board Chairwoman Maureen Dinnen and Superintendent James Notter sent an email to all district employees regarding the stunning federal investigation and arrest of Beverly Gallagher. And what they said can boiled down to two words: “Rah rah.” Here’s the text of the email: Dear District Employees, Reporters…
Well, another Pulp exclusive has come to fruition: Hollywood ophthalmologist, Republican Party money man and former Charlie Crist advisor Alan Mendelsohn was federally charged today with fraud in connection to the Mutual Benefits case. You read about Mendelsohn’s involvement here for the first time in March and it seems that he the…
I was a little cagey yesterday, so I might as well spill. Phyllis Hope was at the FBI “party” on December 10, which was floating on the Intracoastal in a regal yacht. She was invited by Beverly Gallagher after undercover agents asked her to invite “influential persons” for the extravagant…
So last night I put up my favorite Bob Dylan song of the moment. Here’s my favorite of all time. I don’t think he knew he was writing about Broward County. It’s an amazing live version from the Rolling Thunder Revue in Fort Collins in 1976, a year that, for absurd contrast, the…
In the federal complaint filed last week against Broward County School Board Member Beverly Gallagher, there’s an interesting note about a “party” held by undercover FBI agents this past December 10. The agents asked Gallagher to invite “influential persons” who could assist the undercover agents’ client in securing school board…
Former Deerfield Beach City Manager Larry Deetjen, who was ejected from Deerfield for a number of controversies including a racist outburst at an airport, has once again been accused of making racist statements. Deetjen has been accused by a landlord in his new town, Oak Lawn, Ill., of trying to run him…
Somebody linked a really fine Bob Dylan train song below and it made me think of my favorite Dylan song of the moment, which I hear on The Big Lebowski. It’s called the Man in Me and it’s probably got more treacle-ish lyrics in it than anything Dylan ever wrote (though he is a…
We’re into the second week of the post-arrest (or post-public) phase of the federal investigation in Broward County, so I think it’s a good time to take stock. I’m going to do a post on the heroes of this thing at some point, but first I’m going to shoot fish…
Officials lawyering up, high-ranking personnel angry about possible leaks, people dodging the FBI, and the top man trying to assure everyone that the place isn’t full of crooks. No, this isn’t about the Nixon White House; it’s the Broward County School Board. Here’s the text of the memo that just came across…
