Miami's Cuban Connection

Editorial: Miami Housing Director Should Go

For the public official whose portfolio includes fighting poverty, there are many opportunities for innovative approaches to giving people a leg up. But using one's position to help finance an ex-spouse's hiring and salary with federal-tax dollars is not among them. Yet this was the approach taken by Miami Community Development Director Barbara Gomez, according to a Miami Herald investigative report. If Ms. Gomez hasn't resigned already, then she should be suspended and considered for termination.

Miami Housing Director Steers Funds Toward Ex

Still busy with investigative reporting on the city of Miami's housing agency. Here's the latest report:

The director of Miami's housing agency helped steer more than $1 million in city contracts to two companies that employed one of her ex-husbands, starting weeks after his 2004 release from federal prison, where he served time for smuggling liquid cocaine, The Miami Herald has found.

Miami Community Development Director Barbara Gomez's department provided money to a troubled for-profit caterer and a tiny nonprofit social services agency that both employed ex-husband Ruben A. Santana.

Investigation into Miami Housing

For the last three months or so, I took a bit of a break from Cuba-related issues to investigate problems in the city of Miami's housing agency. The result of our investigation was published Sunday. If you live here and pay federal taxes, it's a must-read.

The package is accompanied by multimedia of all sorts: photos, video, audio, slideshows.

New Times Bestows Honor -- of Some Sort -- on Me

From this year's New Times, Best of Miami:

Best Commie Agent
Oscar Corral
That damn Oscar Corral. First he writes a story informing Miami residents that ten South Florida journalists are on the payrolls of U.S. propaganda vehicles Radio and TV Martí. Then he has the nerve to tell us that none of the $55.5 million in taxpayer money intended to fund Cuban dissidents has reached the island in cash. Instead the bulk was spent in Miami and Washington, or on exorbitant bills to ship goods to the island. And then he reports that most of that local spending was done without oversight or competitive bidding, and that the goods purchased for anti-Castro activists to foster democracy included Nintendo Game Boys, a chainsaw, Sony Playstations, cashmere sweaters, a mountain bike, Godiva chocolates, and crabmeat. He may have been leaking fecal matter and stuffed with tubes, but there was only one man behind this, and he wears an Adidas track jacket and has a beard. Thank God for the freelance columnist at El Nuevo Herald, Nicolas Perez Diaz-Arguelles, who finally put two and two together and took the leap of faith to insinuate what was on all of our minds: Oscar Corral is a Cuban spy. The writer's editor may have cried "blood libel," but when it comes down to it, newspapers are irrelevant to a democracy. Eating truffles while playing Grand Theft Auto That's a slap in Castro's face.