Congressman Carlos Curbelo has made a big deal of the contributions collected by his first viable challenge since he beat former Congressman Joe Garcia in 2014. But his own money ain’t so clean.
Curbelo has taken at least $5,400 — $2,700 in 2016 and $2,700 again this past June — from billionaire conspiracy theorist Rex Sinquefield, who once said public schools were the product of the KKK while he worked to support private school vouchers, champion charter schools, and to bring an end to teacher tenure.
“A long time ago, decades ago, the Ku Klux Klan got together and said: ‘How can we really hurt the African American children permanently? How can we ruin their lives?’ And what they designed was the public school system,” Sinquefield said in a 2012 speech at a university in Missouri, where he is actively working to undermine the public school system.
It became quite a controversy and drew outrage from most if not all public officials and educators. Sinquefield is known as the equivalent of the Koch Brothers in Missouri, personally contributing more than $10 million to state and federal legislators that support his agenda.
Read related: Carlos Curbelo legacy in first term: Nod to cruise industry
Curbelo got money from another foe of public schools: Donald Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos contributed $1,000 to Curbelo when he ran for the Miami-Dade School Board.
This begs the question: Does Carlos Curbelo share the same disdain for public schools that they have?
Probably.
In 2014, when he was running against former Garcia in the primary, Curbelo bragged in a debate about cutting 1,000 jobs from our school district. In 2011, as a school board member, he voted on a budget that cut 280 jobs, including guidance counselors and college advisors.
Read related: Attack on Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is Carlos Curbelo being a hypocrite
There is a reason why the United Teachers of Dade have endorsed Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in the race for congressional district 26.
“We believe Debbie will make a difference in Congress by fully funding our public schools, supporting educational policies that put our students first and working to improve the lives of working people,” said UTD president Karla Hernandez-Mats.
“Every day, our teachers are working to improve the lives of over 350,000 children in Miami-Dade County. They deserve a representative who will fight for better schools and to ensure every student has a chance to fulfill their potential.”
That ain’t Carlos Curbelo.

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As Amazon continues to look at Miami-Dade as a possible home for its second headquarters, our region got a B+ ranking last month among the 20 cities being considered and county Mayor Carlos Gimenez went on Bloomberg TV Wednesday to make our case.
Unfortunately, he had to lie.
“Well, I really think Miami-Dade is the city of the future. We are building it right before your eyes,” he said on Bloomberg Markets TV’s “Mini Moment” feature, sounding very much like a used car salesman.
Even though Miami-Dade is a county. Maybe he feels he is already the city of Miami mayor.
“Our technology sector here has grown by 40 percent in the last six years,” he said, and I don’t know what that base was because it doesn’t seem like we’ve gotten that much more techy. Can anyone confirm this?
“We are a top ten college town. We have great weather. We have, uh, a great infrastructure,” he continued, because, yes, it’s hard for even him to say with a straight face.
Read related: Carlos Gimenez lies and cheats to keep control of billions
Sure, if you only count our airport and seaport, which have had billions of dollars of investments because they are proprietary funds, paid by user fees rather than tax dollars. But if you look at the county infrastructure paid for by taxpayers? Transit infrastructure? Woeful.
And aren’t we still under a federal consent decree or order to upgrade our wastewater collection and treatment system? Why, yes, we are mandated to make $13 billion in improvements by 2028 after the county was sued by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for violations to the clean water act.
And what have we done to make us more resilient to sea level rise, besides talk about it an awful lot?
“And we have great talent. What better example of this than Mr. Bezos came from here and maybe that’s a little bit of a home court advantage but we have so much more to offer.”
Like what? The high cost of housing? Almost half of our residents pay 40% or more of their income toward their mortgage or rent. There is a dire need for affordable or workforce housing, but that’s not on the mayor’s agenda.
We also have a higher number of foreclosures than the national average, and they are still increasing, with 30% more foreclosures in July than the same month last year.
And while we have our first A-rating and no “F” schools for the second consecutive year, our public schools are suffering because our legislators keep siphoning funds from them to put into the charter school industry that contributes to their campaigns.
Oh, and the corruption. Not just in Miami-Dade, where the mayor has given jobs to his best friend and his daughter-in-law and no-bid contracts to his friends and contributors. Have you heard of Hialeah? Sweetwater? Opa-Locka? Google it.
Read related: MDX spent $400K on PR, including $60K for mayor’s daughter-in-law
Even Commission Chairman Esteban “Steve” Bovo agrees.
“It ain’t gonna happen. We’re not equipped for it,” he said at a commission meeting last year when Amazon first floated Miami as a possibility.  “We’re not equipped to draw 50,000 new jobs in here because we don’t have the ability to let those people move around in our community.”
And the B+ rating that CNBC gave us in August — based mostly on South Florida’s lack of technological workers — is pretty good, but not great. Austin and Dallas were both given an A.
A surprising part of the Bloomberg interview was that Gimenez doesn’t even know if or when Bezos has been back in town. You’d think he would have reached out for a meeting.
“Frankly if he comes back, and if he’s visited, he will notice that Miami and Miami Dade County is not the same place that he left some years ago,” Gimenez said.
Read related: Carlos Gimenez taps commissioner to block return of the 1/2 penny funds
Well, except MetroRail, Jeff. MetroRail is exactly the same. Not a single mile of rail has been added since it was built and opened in 1984, even though voters here approved a half penny tax in 2002 to expand the line. Gimenez has been using that money to balance the budget, paying for operations instead of improvements. That’s how he balances the budget.
Oh, and they don’t really listen to voters here. That’s typical. They steal the half penny tax that we approved specifically for expanded MetroRail and they also failed to initiate the Pets’ Trust program that voters approved by 65% in 2012.
But they didn’t mention that on the Bloomberg show. A reporter did ask Gimenez “What new debt are you taking on? New P3 projects to make sure Miami’s infrastructure is up to par?”
Rather than answer her questions, the mayor went into a state-of-the-county-like speech.
“We’ve already invested heavily into our airport. It is our leading economic generator so we’ve spent well over $3 billion over the last 10 years. We basically have a brand new airport there,” Gimenez said. “We invested over a billion in our seaport. We dredged it so it would be Panamax ready. That means we can accept the large cargo ships that are able to traverse the Panama Canal.”
Then came the hard part.
“W are investing millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars in our transportation infrastructure. We just uh,  improved, or we, oh, um, uh, approved some new highway projects to make our transit, uh, even better.”
Read related: No-brainer Miami-Dade Commission approves Kendall Parkway despite so much
Really? How is the Kendall Parkway, completed in four or five years if there are no delays, going to make our transit — which by then will be far worse — even better? The pressure valve will be at the very western end of the county, going south, after you’ve traveled more than an hour from downtown.
“We compare pretty favorably with our competitors in terms of commute times.”
That made Ladra laugh out loud.
“We are also really well connected to our neighbors. We just have a brand new rail line and passenger service to Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach…all those things are infrastructure improvements that we are working on,” he said, but forgot to add “when I figure out how my kids and friends can get in on it.”
The mayor ended the interview thumping his chest when the reporter asked him about the last budget approved.
“We didn’t have to raise taxes. As a matter of fact, we lowered our taxes 11 years ago. I mean, when I became the mayor we had the biggest tax cut in Miami-Dade history. We’ve kept those tax rates flat during my administration. We haven’t had to raise any taxes.
Then the doozy: “We are providing the same or better services than we provided back in 2011 without raising taxes because we tightened our belts.”
You closed libraries — hours are still reduced at some branches — and had rolling blackouts at fire-rescue stations, remember? You are still cutting bus routes every year.
Read related: On library shortfall, Miami-Dade’s Carlos Gimenez falls short
You’ve also balanced the budget with stolen half-penny sales tax funding from the People’s Transportation Plan for the past ten years, seven of them with you at the helm, Gimenez. Bet you haven’t told Jeff Bezos that!
Don’t get me wrong. I’d love for Amazon to make its second home here. Not just for the jobs and economic impact but for the cache que te da to have been chosen over Denver and Atlanta.
But I don’t want to reward Gimenez and his pals on the commission for their bad behavior. If Amazon comes, they’ll pat themselves on the back and tell us how right they were and how we were wrong to demand rail. Or, worse, that we don’t need it.
That would just be another lie.

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Of all the Florida constitutional amendments on the ballot — and there are 13 of them — Miami-Dade voters should be the most excited about Amendment 10, which gives us the chance to have an elected sheriff and tax collector and supervisor of elections.
And maybe end the series of abuses of power by a mayor who thinks he is all of these things.
That’s exactly the type of tyrannical dictatorship that Ladra’s parents fled when they left Cuba, a government without checks and balances where the leader appoints everyone and did whatever he wanted because he was the big boss of everybody.
Don’t think this is an exaggeration.
Read related: Carlos Gimenez abuses power in election interference for lobbyist son
It was less than two months ago that Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez actually declared himself supervisor of elections — saying he only gives Christina White permission to act in the role for him — so that he could give his lobbyist son a week’s extension to write language for a ballot question. If that’s not an abuse of power Ladra doesn’t know what is.
And maybe he wouldn’t need or be able to justify his $100,000 raise if he wasn’t trying to do everybody’s job.
“I’m the supervisor of elections,” was his direct and arrogant quote to the Miami Herald, almost incredulous that anyone would even raise an eyebrow. “I delegate that power to Christina White.”
He delegates that power? Are you kidding me? That power should not be delegated and then taken away whenever the mayor gets a political whim.
If we had an elected Supervisor of Elections, that definitely wouldn’t have happened. If the mayor had called on a Sunday morning to see if an elected supervisor of elections could change her mind about a deadline she told another mayor was hard and fast, an elected SOE could have sent him to hell in a hand basket or somewhere less polite.
It also might have been more difficult for Gimenez to swoop in after hours, just before 11 p.m. on the eve of qualifying in the 2016 election with a replacement check — because the first one was invalid. An elected SOE would likely tell him to come by in the morning, like everyone else.
Read related: Carlos Gimenez submits late night campaign check
The measure on the ballot would make the five local constitutional offices — sheriff, tax collector, supervisor of elections, clerk of the court and property appraiser — mandatory and require elections for the offices in all 67 counties. It would also prohibit charter counties who opted out of these elected seats, like Miami-Dade, from abolishing or modifying those offices.
We already have an elected property appraiser and an elected clerk of courts. And if we need an elected clerk of freaking courts we certainly need an elected sheriff, who would have independence to run police operations without political interference — and investigate whatever elected official needs investigating.
If we had an elected sheriff, then Gimenez wouldn’t have any authority over the police chief. Everybody knows Police Director Juan Perez (in the photo, right) doesn’t take a pee without asking Gimenez for permission. And the mayor wouldn’t have been able to completely eliminate the public corruption unit in 2014, after they found absentee ballot fraud in his Hialeah campaign.
Maybe if we had an elected sheriff, he wouldn’t have gotten away with the AB fraud to begin with.
An elected sheriff who did not have to answer to the mayor could more easily investigate corruption without fear that his or her boss would fire him. Because his or her boss would be us, not the mayor. These positions are too important to be handled just like department heads that can be hired and fired by the mayor, who could use such power to do, well, whatever he wants.
Why do you think the county sued to get this amendment off the ballot? Because Gimenez doesn’t want to lose that kind of power. Luckily, the Florida Supreme Court saw right through his agenda and refused to take the question off the ballot.
There were also challenges because of four linked items on what some call a clustered amendment. One would move up the state’s legislative session to January rather than March in even-numbered years. Another that would create a counter-terrorism office. And a third would make the existing state veterans affairs department constitutionally required.
All these are good things. But none are as good as having an independent elected sheriff in Miami-Dade. There is a reason why all other 66 counties all have an elected sheriff. Why do we think we’re so special? Because Miami-Dade is so morally superior? Riiiiiight!
It is true that Miami-Dade voters themselves did away with the sheriff’s office decades ago. But look at what’s happened! We have a mayor who eliminated the public corruption unit after they found AB fraud in his campaign! It wasn’t a good idea and we have a chance to fix it and we may not have another chance to fix it for another 20 years.
These should be independently elected offices accountable to the people. And if there is one place that ought to have an elected sheriff, it is right here.
Vote yes on Amendment 10.

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Is a Miami-Dade county commissioner intentionally delaying the removal of the half-penny People Transportation Plan sales tax from the general operational budget? And is he, or she, doing it on behalf of Mayor Carlos Gimenez?
That’s what it looks like.
It’s been more than a month since the Citizens Independent Transportation Trust, a 15-member body created to oversee the People’s Transportation Plan funded with the half-penny sales tax, voted to rescind an agreement that gave the county permission to use the funds — which voters approved in 2002 to expand rail and bus service — for operations and maintenance.
Their intention was for Gimenez — who campaigned two years ago on adding rail lines (this photo is a screen grab from a TV ad) — to stop balancing the budget with PTP monies starting this year. The resolution, passed Aug. 23, basically recommends the commission “end the greater flexibility in the use of county transit surtax funds for the operation and maintenance of the existing transit system to be effective commencing with fiscal year 2019-2020.”
Read related: No brainer Miami-Dade Commission approves Kendall Parkway despite so much
It rescinds a 2009 board decision that gave the county the ability to use the funds for maintenance and operations after the county said it needed the reallocation because of budget shortfalls after the 2008 recession.
“The resolution was put forward to make the law reflect the desires of the CITT and citizens to expand transportation versus operate the current system,” said CITT member Evan Fancher, who proposed it. “If we make the law reflect our desire to return money to its intended use, next year’s budget will be presented with the money put back toward expansion instead of operations.”
That was wishful thinking.
Last week, before the final budget hearing, Commissioner Xavier Suarez tried to put something on the agenda to approve the CITT’s recommendation, but he was blocked. Another commissioner asked to sponsor legislation first, County Attorney Abigail Price-Williams told him, without telling him who it was but suggesting he schedule a Sunshine meeting.
Without knowing who it was? How is he supposed to do that?
Suarez says that’s either disingenuous or “complicit” in what appears to be an intentional effort to delay the “unwinding unification” of the PTP and general budget funds.
“Prior to the receipt of your legislative request another Commissioner requested to be the Prime Sponsor of legislation that conflicts and/or overlaps with your request,” Miami-Dade County Price-Williams wrote to Suarez on Thursday. “Once the first legislative request is finalized, we will send you that item for your consideration in case you wish to be listed as a Co-Sponsor.  Alternatively, upon our receipt of written confirmation that the first legislative request is released, we will work with your office to complete your legislative request.
“You may also wish to discuss this matter with the first requesting Commissioner at a sunshine meeting called for this purpose or at a publicly noticed meeting,” the attorney ended, signing her email “Take Care, Abi.”
Read related: Rumors persist of a new recall effort to oust Carlos Gimenez
But who is the first commissioner? The one who can hold this up indefinitely? Ah, “Abi” wouldn’t say.
Las malas lenguas say it’s Commissioner Rebeca Sosa, who has long been known to support Gimenez in everything he does. “Sosa is holding up the process. Doing the mayor’s work,” said one source.
We’ll find out.
Attorney Paul Schwiep, a member and former chairman of the CITT, has asked for all written communications regarding the agency’s resolution to end the subsidies.
The next day, Commissioner Suarez joined that public records request “which hopefully will elicit any and all communications, including telephone messages, emails, and texts between your office and other county officials,” he wrote in an email to Williams, where he basically accused the county attorney and/or her staff of playing politics.
“You have stated that there is another commissioner who is interested in this matter moving forward.  However, you did not identify the commissioner – yet suggested that I have a Sunshine meeting with this unidentified commissioner. In light of the above, putting my request on hold is at best disingenuous and at worst complicit,” Suarez wrote.

“It is your obligation as well as ours, and the mayor’s, to comply with this action by the CITT, which effectively dissolves a contractual agreement,” Suarez wrote, adding that it was more important to comply with the will of a citizen board than pander to commissioners.
“You have indicated that it’s your policy to only prepare legislative requests that may ‘overlap or conflict’ consecutively rather than concurrently, and only if the first legislative request is ‘released.’  I do not believe this policy supersedes the legal obligation to respond to the CITT’s resolution in a timely manner in accordance with Ordinance 02-177. The Board’s failure to do that is a matter of considerable concern.”
Suarez ended the email promising to find out exactly who is behind the hold up.
“I am intent on getting to the bottom of what appears to be an effort to ignore, delay or permanently frustrate the CITT’s clear mandate that rescinds the county’s right to continue diverting surcharge funds to balance the budget.”

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President Barack Obama release his “second wave” of endorsements early Monday afternoon.
“Today, I’m proud to endorse even more Democratic candidates who aren’t just running against something, but for something—to expand opportunity for all of us and to restore dignity, honor, and compassion to public service,” tweeted the president, who gave his first wave of nods on Aug. 1, before the primary. “They deserve your vote:”
In Florida, where absentee ballots go out next week, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell got a shout out in her congressional race against Republican U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo. So did State Senate incumbent Annette Taddeo. and State Reps. Javier Fernandez and Nick Duran. He also gave Senate candidate David Perez, a firefighter who wants to replace the termed out Rene Garcia, a nod.
But there was a notable omission in the list: Donna Shalala.
Shalala, the former UM president who won the Democratic nomination in August, was former Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton and president of the Clinton Foundation until 2017. Her supporters (read: puppeteers) portray her as bluer than anyone.
Read related: UM’s Donna Shalala is not going to fool anyone in CD 27
But Obama knows what Ladra and the rest of us voters in District 27 know: Shalala is a Republican at heart.
She was bad on labor, going against unionized sanitation workers who striked at UM because the working conditions were so awful. She was bad on the environment, letting UM sell endangered pine rock lands to a developer who wants to build a Walmart. And just how much did tuition increase during her tenure at UM? Bad on education.
So why is anybody surprised that Obama didn’t endorse her? Ladra is not among them. I am far more surprised she won the primary in the first place.
Party leaders are already doing damage control, especially since Republican nominee Maria Elvira Salazar has painted herself as a moderate and gained some steam heading into the general (more on that later). A Herald reporter tweeted that someone with the DCCC said there was “still room for more Obama endorsements.”
So there’s going to be a third wave? When? After ABs go out? Like, you know, “Ooops, I forgot. But I like these people too! My bad.”
Really? Really?
Did I mention that Nick Duran was on Obama’s yes list? So it’s not like he just overlooked anybody.
Obama didn’t just overlook Beto O’Rourke, who is running against Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in a much more high profile race than this, or New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo or New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, who were also curiously missing from the list.
And he didn’t just overlook Donna Shalala. He intentionally excluded her. Que pena!

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Even though Florida Sen. Annette Taddeo has raised more than twice as much campaign fodder for her re-election as her challenger, Republican superwoman Marili Cancio has more cash in hand, according to the latest campaign reports.
That’s because Taddeo has outspent Cancio, who has only been campaigning since June, by almost ten times.
Cancio has reportedly raised $319,457 between her campaign account and her PAC, Friends of Marili Cancio, according to latest campaign reports filed that tallied through Sept. 14 and Sept. 21, respectively. That’s less than half of the to the $760,408 raised by the sitting senator between her campaign account and her PAC, Fight Back Florida, only counting the funds since she won the seat in a special election in September, 2017.
But Taddeo has spent close to $530,000 since October 2017 and Cancio has only spent about $60K. That means Cancio has a small edge in cash on hand, by the tune of about $20K. Not enough to really make a difference. And she has struggled in the most recent reports, so maybe the donations were early and have been spent.
Read related: GOP’s Marili Cancio vs Dem Sen. Annette Taddeo in ‘year of the woman’
Of course, money is not everything. Taddeo won her seat in last year’s special election against former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz, who had more than three times as much campaign funding as she did.
And also, this doesn’t count outside party money. Like the kind that paid for mailers that arrived in the district last week, courtesy the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee (pro Cancio) and the Florida Democrats Legislative Campaign Committee (anti Cancio). A source involved in the race told Ladra that Taddeo had sent two positive pieces earlier, but this negative attack on Cancio’s support of the Marshall Program that puts guns in schools is the first received by Ladra.
“She’s worried. My campaign is too clean,” Cancio told Ladra in a text message over the weekend.
“You are not going to get mail from me because yo are now a registered D,” she added, with a smiley face emoji. “Focused on NPAs — can’t afford the entire universe.”
It’s true that in her own mail piece, she is appealing to NPAs and trying to come off as moderate. “I am a state senate candidate because I want to bring new ideas and perspectives to the challenges we face in our community, overcoming partisan politics,” the piece from the Senate Campaign Committee says, but in Spanish.
It landed last week in Ladra’s home, but addressed to both of Ladra’s parents, “Hispanics over 60,” an often sought voting bloc. One is Republican but one is registered Democrat, so Cancio’s universe is bigger than she says.
Read related: Jose Felix Diaz outspends Annette Taddeo 3 to 1 plus — but loses anyway
The intro/bio piece, which has waaaaay too much copy on it, has the word “Republican” only in one place — the tiny type disclaimer. It focuses on her community work — stints on the board of Directors at Miami Dade College (it doesn’t say she was appointed by Republican Gov. Rick Scott), the Miami-Dade County Community Relations Board, the Miami-Dade County Hispanic Affairs Board, the Florida Association of Universities and as pro bono attorney for La Liga Contra El Cancer.
“She has always put the interests of our community above partisan politics,” it says.
But who is Marili kidding? This is the Republican Superwoman, a nickname Ladra gave her because of her hard work for the party. She was proud of it before she needed NPA voters to help her win this seat. She constantly defended Trump on Twitter, which is the reason why she has deactivated her old account for a new campaign one — to hide all that partisan Trumpism.
But make no mistake about it, Marili Cancio is as puro GOP as they get. Cancio, who was recruited by the Republican Party, has been involved in local GOP causes, the Women’s Federated Republican club and has been a surrogate for national and state candidates on Spanish TV and radio for years, often providing the Republican voice on This Week in South Florida, where she goes out of her way to defend and promote the GOP agenda.
Of course, the people who vote in District 40 may not know that. Because they don’t know Cancio at all and they are getting very toned down version of her. It’s time Taddeo use some of her funds to let people know who Cancio really is.

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