One of the things I've missed most since I quit writing my blog are the phone calls and emails that I would receive after posting a story that hit a nerve with folks who were either privy to inside information or were tired of the bullshit and would contact me in an effort to explain how to find the trees inside the forest, or connect the dots in ways that would often amaze me since their explanations often revealed the level of chicanery and dogged determination that the Mayor, City Commissioners, City Manager and others at Miami City Hall were engaged in either trying to screw the taxpayers, line their pockets, or both.

Even with my efforts, and the efforts of a handful other other bloggers to break though the fog and misdirection created to hide the corruption, the politicians at Miami City Hall, the corrupt State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle and the ethically challenged members of the Miami-Dade Ethics Commission continued their flagrant and often criminal behavior knowing that the odds of discovery were slim and the chances of punishment zero because among their enablers were the top dogs and stenographers at the Miami Herald and other exalted members of the local news media who seldom showed any interest for, much less desire to engage in aggressive reporting when it came to municipal malfeasance, relying instead on the pablum that they were spoon fed by these politicians and which they turned into propaganda that was often shameless in it's ass-kissing and vapidness.

All of this came back into sharp focus on Friday afternoon after I posted the list of campaign donors to Francis - Mayor Bitcoin Bitch - Suarez' latest PAC, Miami For Everyone, which if there were any requirements for truth when it came to naming PAC's should actually be named, Miami For Everyone With The Money To Buy Me Off.

My encore story - which you can find HERE - was prompted by the latest financial report issued by Suarez's PAC that showed he had raised $4,57 million as of July 31st.

Even for Miami, with it's long and documented history of public and private bribery of elected officials this was an astounding amount of money for a part-time ceremonial mayor to raise with 5 months still left before the election.

More astounding was that he had doubled the $2.3 million that he had raised in 2014 when he had run against 3 candidates who had collectively managed to raise and spend $1200.

What made it all so astounding was Suarez's repeated exhibitions of incompetence, whiny cowardice and lack of accomplishment that had highlighted his first term as mayor.

Here is one of several exchanges over Suarez's first couple of years as Mayor when he whined about not being respected by Commissioner Joe Carollo.

As far as the Miami Herald and the rest of the local news media was concerned this was just another uneventful day at Miami City Hall.

By comparison, in the last few days the Herald has been frothing at the mouth over $62,500 in donations made to candidates for Governor Nikke Fried and Charlie Crist from a dark money group during June and July.

In that same time period Suarez received almost $1 million in donations to his PAC from 40 out-of state donors including $100,000 from Clean-Rite Maintenance of New York, who also gave $100,000 to Miami First, Joe Carollo's PC.

Why would a New York cleaning company give $100,000 each to two candidates running for office in Miami? Better yet, what do they expect as a Return On Investment for that $200 grand?

I'm not arguing that the $62,500 given to Crist and Fried doesn't merit coverage, but I am, and have repeatedly argued that Miami's supposed hometown paper has an obligation and responsibility to focus on how and why someone like the part-time Mayor of Miami has managed to raise a grand total to date of $4.87 million for a election where his three opponents have only raised $13,476.05, but whether some of that money - as happened last year with the $140,000 from a secret Delaware LLC named Pristine De LLC, that was given to Renier Diaz de laPortilla's PAC - came from secret or questionable sources?

It's not like either Suarez or Carollo are in fear of being challenged by anyone with as much, or more campaign money than they've raised, thereby requiring them to go out and raise even more money to remain competitive, so there has to be another reason why Suarez has hired fundraising guru Brian Goldmeier to continue beating the bushes for money.

Here is the list of Suarez's PAC expenditures since June that show that he has paid Goldmeier's company, BYG Strategies $78047.75 in commissions.

Although he lacked interest in facts or policy, he has constantly been preoccupied with the trappings of power including his reliance on multiple bodyguards to enhance a self-entitled sense of importance that had become a topic of discussion from the beginning of his term as Mayor.

It became so obvious that he was abusing the powers of his office by being chauffeured by multiple Sgt-At-Arms/bodyguards and having on-duty police officers assigned to guard his house 27/7, that the questions about the costs involved managed to make it onto several City Commission agendas before Suarez and Commissioner Joe Carollo concluded that the level of corruption and thievery they both aspired to required ignoring the antipathy and lack of respect that they have for each other while engaging in some good old fashioned transactional cooperation and mutual back scratching.

No one knows how much all of these sgt-at-arms/bodyguards cost the taxpayer since Suarez became Mayor, because unlike the State of Florida which several days ago released the costs of security for the Governor and his family, the Miami Police Department has refused requests to provide an accurate accounting of how much Suarez's security has cost by claiming it was a security issue.

In truth, the amount has little to do with security, and more to do with the MPD's history of using on-duty police officers to provide private security for select members of the Family and Friends Plan in the city. (HERE, HERE)

MUSICAL CHAIRS

In May of this year, for the third time during the four years he's been mayor, Suarez left one law firm - Greenspoon Marder - for a new law firm.  As with his previous moves, Suarez's latest move to Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, included his sister Olga Vieira.

Not widely known, and seldom if ever publicly acknowledged especially by the news media, is that each of these career moves by Francis included his sister Olga Vieira, who many consider the legal star of the Suarez family and who some believe that if he didn't have her coattails to hang on to, the chances are he would probably have never gotten further than being an ambulance chaser, hustling traffic ticket and DUI cases.

This time however, the game of musical chairs also included Daddy Xavier Suarez, who having termed out of his County Commissioner seat, replaced Francis at Greenspoon Marder where he, like his son, became, "Of Counsel.

Daddy X is a guy who likes to brag about being the first Harvard educated, Cuban born mayor of Miami but refuses to acknowledge was also the first Harvard educated, Cuban born mayor to be removed from office for Absentee Ballot Fraud.

In a bungled effort to run for Mayor in 2013, Suarez Jr. had his own brush with Absentee Ballot Fraud involving teenage girls in wet T-Shirts, thereby supporting the claim that an acorn does not fall far from the tree.

PRIVATE EQUITY

Within days afer revealing he was changing law firms again, Suarez revealed that he was also going to become the Senior Operating Partner at the private equity firm of DaGrosa Capital Partners.

Having determined after the pandemic hit that becoming a ubiquitous talking head on cable TV was preferable to dealing with the collection of scorpions on the city commission, he demonstrated that he couldn't even do that without revealing that he was less interested in educating himself on the topics he showed up to talk about than making sure his eyebrows were plucked.

Here is one appearance he made in on cable TV that revealed how unprepared he was for prime time.

From the evidence available, the new committee is operating like a classic grifter's con, with a mail drop at a UPS store on Flagler Street, and with a website that some 5th grader could have cobbled together in 5 minutes.

One thing that both Miami For Everyone and Miami Good Government Initiative have in common is that they're operating out of the same office with the same Chairman and Account which raises the obvious question of maintaining an arm's length relationship and collusion when it comes to spending money.

Neither the Herald stenographer who wrote the story, or anyone else in the news media since the story broke has bothered to ask, 'How can you claim this new job will not have any impact on your being mayor - even part-time - when even a dunce would realize that,  becoming "Of Counsel" at a new international law firm, a Senior Operating Partner of a private equity firm, AND a husband and father with two small children would obviously require compromises of time and energy?

In that equation somebody's bound to get the short end of the stick while he tries to juggle these balls, and you can bet it's going to end up being the taxpayers of the city.

If the news of his being hired by Dagrosa was not enough to raise eyebrows, a week later the Herald did a story on the $3.5 million that Suarez's PAC had raised to date, and revealed that within days being being hired by DaGrosa for what had to be a sizable salary and benefits package, DaGrosa had turned around and gave Suarez's PAC $150,000.

For all of the talk about Miami becoming the next New York or San Francisco, the fact of the matter is that Miami is destined through geography, political corruption and a fragmented population of exiles whose hearts, minds and most importantly expendable income will always be committed to their homeland instead of the local economy to continuing to be a place of crippling inequality where hustlers and opportunists will come to pursue their dreams and schemes until the sea water rises to a level that makes it economically and environmentally impossible to live here anymore.

If you're in your 20's and 30's, and have the money to buy off  politicians like Francis Suarez, it can be what it's always been: a sunny place for shady people.

One day however, the pied piper will show up like he's done in the past, and when that next category 5 hurricane arrives and tears Miami and South Florida a new asshole, many of this current generation of cryptocurrency hustlers, private equity and hedge fund schemers and scammers will be the first to get to their private jets and get the fuck out of Miami faster than the three speed dildos used by their girlfriends.

It's Miami, Bitches!

                          A PERSONAL NOTE

While this story represents an encore of sorts, please do not think that it means that I am coming back to writing stories in any permanent way.

My retirement remains in place.

One reason that I decided to write this story, was that one of the biggest bitches I used to hear from the Miami Herald stenographers was that my stories sucked all the oxygen out of the room, pissing everyone off, and that's why they almost never bothered to follow up on any of the big stories I broke.

Well, I left the field 8 1/2 months ago, and there's been plenty of oxygen in the room since then.

The Miami Heard still does a shit job of covering local municipal governments, and they continue to ignore or sweep shit under the rug when it comes to the City of Miami.

There are stories that they do cover competently, and this last year has been a year challenging year in many ways, but what happens inside the City of Miami is a harbinger of the future not only for Florida, but for other parts of the country because the techniques of bribery and corruption that are being practiced in Miami are destined to spread unless there are real efforts to expose them, and then put the corrupt motherfuckers in jail!

The corruption that occurs in Miami involves everyone, from private businesses, to law firms, to public officials, to law enforcement.

So that no one will whine if someday soon I show up with a story with the power to suck ALL the oxygen out of the room, I going to give all the local new media in Miami a big tip.

                    "Operation Bloodstone"

Let's see if anybody has the connections and balls to break that story.

PS: Don't call me asking for more info.

A question that some insiders are now pondering, and one which the news media certainly needs to pay some attention to is what scheme, or schemes does Francis Suarez have up his sleeve that are the real reason he is continuing to raise all these millions of dollars?

If the Miami Herald had spent only a portion of the money, time and manpower they spent in the last 3 years chasing down every rumor of how many underage teenage girls Jeffrey Epstein had tried to screw 20 years ago at his house in Palm Beach and everywhere else in the world but Miami,  into a similar effort to, "following the money," that has exceeded well over $10 million to fund the campaigns of the likes of grifters like Francis Suarez, Joe Carollo, Alex Diaz de la Portilla and Keon Hardemon then maybe they would have actually won the Pulitzer Prize they so slavishly lust for, while actually doing something beneficial for the community.

But they didn't.

GOOD GOVERNMENT MY ASS

May was a propitious month for Suarez. Not only did he change law firms and land what amounted to a third job as a big-shot at a private equity firm, but for whatever reason he decided that in addition to his Miami For Everyone, PAC, he also needed to create a second political committee, called, Miami Good Government Initiative.

In the last three months this committee has collected $305,001.00 from a total of the following 7 individuals, six of which were affiliated with hedge funds and private equity companies