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The city of Miami is at a.

Critical juncture, and district Two looks to be the turning point. With two of five Miami.

Commissioners.

Known to be involved in shady deals and even flat-out corruption, the district Two election is our inflection point.

I'm.

Michael Putney, and that's why I'm doing something I've never done before, endorsing a political candidate for.

Public.

Office.

And that candidate is Damian Pardo.

Michael Putney is right. We are living through one of the most corrupt eras in the history of the city of Miami. That was the voice of Michael Putney, recently retired, really the dean or godfather of local political reporters of Miami news anchors, period, in the modern era. He's doing something he's never done, which is endorse Damian Pardo for city commissioner in district Two. This is against Sabina Kovo, whose song you may remember, along with-.

You know what? I don't know. I have no idea.

I don't know. I don't even know.

Sabina Kovo was elected last February in a special election after Ken Russell resigned, and she has instantly become a part of the Miami mafia. Her re-election campaign against now and a runoff with Damian Pardo is being financed by the Miami mafia, by corrupt Commissioner Joe Correio, by Commissioner Alex Diazla Portia, who was just arrested and removed from office two months ago, who's also running for re-election as well. She has really become a part of the toxic culture of shady backroom deals, quid pro quo, some may argue, bribery. I'm really pleased to be joined by both Damian Pardo, who is running against Sabina Kovo for district Two, City of Miami, and James Torres, who just two weeks ago you guys were rivals. You were running against each other in this general election. Then what wound up happening is Sabina Kovo got the most votes. Damian, you got the second most votes, and you wind up in a runoff now with the incumbent commissioner. But James, I think it's great because it's good for diplomacy. It's good for democracy. It's nice to see you both here. I should say first and foremost, congratulations to you, Damian, on making the runoff.

Thank you, Billy, and thank you for having us here. I can tell you, we were incredibly excited and incredibly honored. We thanked the community, our volunteers, especially because for... What's the idea? The idea that monies and monies that are given to candidates have an undue influence in governing. Those interest, those moneyed interests are not the residents' interests, and they often go against. So the idea that money can affect you in your everyday life, meaning you have more traffic, you have more flooding, the character of your neighborhood starts changing, that was a foreign idea for most people. Now they're starting to understand what when land-used attorneys and lobbyists and all these other people, a lot of them doing good work, but many bad actors as well. And the bad actors get away with murder in the city. And that's what really we're trying to stop. James and I ran very similar campaigns. We were calling out corruption all the time. In fact, we probably were the two people that spent the most time at the polls on the street in front of people. So it's no surprise that we would both be sitting here today.

And that's the disturbing thing, of course, is that Miami is one of the poorest cities in the country. What you have is a government that does not respond to their constituents. They respond to the moneyed interests. They respond to their own self-interests.

Well, what they do is they manage the resident's interests. That's when you hear, Oh, we're going to get a traffic study, and then everybody's supposed to just shut up and go home and wait for this study, which when it ultimately comes out, doesn't really alleviate the problem at hand for most people.

James, you ran in the special election, so you've really been running against corruption, running against Sabina Kovo in particular, the now incumbent for nine months, Damian, you for five months. James, you are the President of Miami DNA, the Downtown Neighbors Alliance. You're here now supporting. You have publicly endorsed, of course, Damian Pardo for the seat. But what I'm interested in is how that started. How did this team up occur?

Billy, thanks for having me. We look at things a little bit different here. We have conversations right before the end of the campaign. We project within ourselves. You make it, I make it. What can we do? Because we all ran against the problem that's there at City Hall, which is the corruption piece, right?

You're punching up.

Correct. I decided at that point, and we made a pack and said, If you win, I win, we're going to support each other.

Who is we?

We. It was Damian, myself, and Eddie Leal, who's not here, who's birds of a feather are flocking together on that side of the camp.

All three of you have been on the show previously. We invited Sabina Kovo to be here. We did not hear back from her. The three of you presumed that one of you was going to come in second and make the runoff against Sabina Kovo. You were right, by the way. The three of you then, Damian, Pardo, James Torres, and Eddie Leal decided, Whoever ends up in the runoff, we are going to endorse and support that person, consistent with really all three of your campaigns.

Correct. Because of the values that we all stood for that were different than what she currently has.

What happened?

Well, someone flew over the cuckoo's nest. Because of Miami. Right, because of Miami. I evaluated everything. I got phone calls after the campaign. Once I got those phone calls, I sat down with both candidates, and we had conversations. Hey, I need your support. Damian was the first one that came to me and not asking for support, asking how he can help. That was an idea to me that said he really wants to make a difference for the community. Attacking the crisis that we have on homeless issue, the traffic issues, and all these other components that aligned with what I believe in. Then I met with Sabina, and it was very dark and grayish in a way. It was, Hey, I need your support. What is it going to take? Can I offer you a position at the Omni CRA as a contractor, making over $120,000?

I'm sorry. She offered you a job in the city government, six-figure position, no less. Correct. By the way, in a city where I think the median household income is what, between $50,000 and $60,000. So she's offering you a job two or three times the median household income of the constituents, of the residents of the city of Miami, in exchange for your supporting and endorsing her. Support and endorsing her. Well, did you have to provide a resume? Did she understand? Not that you're not qualified. I'm just saying a job, a public position like that should be noticed. There should be interviews. There should be legitimate consideration of skill set and education, etc, right?

Right, there is. I was taken aback by that because I'm like, Is this the right thing? It was just weird, right?

Yeah, I'd say so. What did it feel like? How would you characterize it? Is it a bribe? Is it a quid pro quo?

I think it is a quid pro quo because if you look at something here, there's not an Eddie Leal that's here with us today. He is part of that. He's now a sell-up.

That's the fact. Well, what I'm saying is that did Sabina Koval offer a quid pro quo, or I call it maybe a bribe or something in exchange? What do you think? Well, something of value, money, a job. Again, these positions don't belong to the commissioners or the government. These positions belong to the people who pay them, who are the people of the city of Miami, whose tax dollars go into. Listen, you got a billion-plus dollar budget every year, and seven cents of every dollar spent goes into one line item in that budget, which is salaries and benefits. That's quite a slush fund there. If commissioners can just offer them in exchange for votes or support, is that what happened? With Eddie Leal, we could see on the screen now that Eddie Leal endorsed, you came out and endorsed Damian Cardo, which was the that you had made. You're true to your word.

The value, the core of the value was supporting Damian.

Yes. Eddie Leal, who was ripping Sabina Kovo, she's corrupt, she's unqualified, she has no business in this position. She has proven that every single day of the last eight months she's been in office. She hasn't done a single thing she promised to do. She's now lying about her record of fighting corruption, and Eddie Leal is now supporting her why.

James Torres. Why? I look at it as Tammany Hall. He took that. Hetook that route because it's true what you're saying in our campaigns is they were very similar in fighting this corruption. But she was able to convince him to go that route. Why? How? Yeah. He's now alienated all his supporters for a mere job, either in administration or with her. That's the problem that you have.

What do you know about it? What has he told you about it?

What we have conversations about it and from other people as well as that, Hey, I got to look out for me.

Oh.

Okay. Okay. And it's.

All about me. That wasn't the campaign slogan, I don't think.

It's.

All about the me. It's all about the him. It's all.

About the you. I think that the idea was also that he's going to his supporters and saying, Listen, I've created this space of me, and I will still be able to take care of you within my space within this administration. I think the rationale was like- It doesn't add. Right. It doesn't because ultimately he's not in charge.

So he thinks this is going to give him some clout. So he's like, Listen, I told you she's terrible and unqualified- You're with me. -and corrupt and is part of the swamp. Now listen, nothing goes on in the city without the godfather, Joe Correa, approving it. You can't, because if he doesn't want this to happen or wants to block this, it's not happening. He's got to go to Art Noriega, the city man. This whole place operates like a Reco, like a racketeering enterprise and like a mafia, as they say. My question is that Joe is clearly involved in this dirty deal and in this bribery.

I would not doubt it that Mr. Joe Caroyo is involved in pulling the puppet strings. Because for those decisions to be had, Billy, you have to have someone behind the scenes, like the Wizard of Oz, right? Who's behind the curtain? Joe Caroyo is behind this.

Has to be. What do you know or what do you understand? Sabina Kovo or whoever it was, Christian Ulvert, her campaign consultant, Art Noriega, the city manager, Vicky Mendez, the mob lawyer/city attorney. What do you understand that they offered to Eddie that he is now obviously accepted? Legislative aid. Legislative aid. Correct. How much does that pay?

Anywhere from $1.10 to $1.25..

So she has offered him $100,000-plus a year to buy his support and his integrity and his... Hi. Welcome to Miami. Welcome to Miami.

It is unfortunate.

Damian Pardo, thankfully, somebody is running against this cesspool, this swamp, this mafia. In our last 30, 45 seconds here, I want you to make your case for your vision and what you will do on day one to turn around a city that is clearly sinking into the bay under the weight, forget sea level rise and flooding this week, but under the weight of its own corruption and incompetence.

Yeah, listen, I think it starts with a candidate. It starts with one person that's willing to do those right things that immediately sets a contrast. I think it's important that we have an independent oversight body with the power to actually get involved in these situations. It's a culture of corruption that's difficult to change. It starts with one person, and then we need to put all the institutional guardrails, more disclosure, more transparency, more top to bottom. That's the only way to deal with this, and it starts with the candidate. That's one of the reasons I really wanted to run. From day one, I ran against corruption. Before that, I was calling out Joe Caroyo on television for the $63.5 million verdict, and I knew there would be consequences when I was doing that, and they've all materialized. But that's what we need to do. That's what we need to do.

Now, in the interest of fairness, we found out what Eddie Leal got in exchange for his support. Really, it's money and a job, which is pretty dirty. But you did call James Torres and say, How can I help? Hang on. How can I help? You said, What do we need here in our district? What did he tell you that he needs? I don't want to say, What did you promise him for his support? Because he had already pledged to support.

No, it's not to support. Listen, I think he's been very clear about his passions with Bayfront Park Trust, with downtown. It was natural to say, Look, I don't have anything. I'm not in any position. Obviously, you're taking risks to endorse me, and with that risk comes tremendous consideration of your time and talent to become part of whatever we do together in the future. To me, that was just common sense. That's what you would want to do.

That's good enough for you? 100 %. Last question, yes or no. Do you know the Pledge of Allegiance? Yes.

Let's do it together.

You got that lapel, that American flag lapel pin there. It's all about the flag, baby. I want to make sure. James Torres, thank you for being a good sport. Damian Pardo, good luck to you next week at the runoff against Sabina Kovo. You know what?

I don't know. I have no idea.

I don't know.

I don't even know.

We're.

Going to turn now to the dangerous flat.

Flood emergency in Florida. Areas known to flood.

Quickly turning into rivers.

The airport, Fort.

Lauderdale.

Is still shut down.

The tarmac and the runway looking.

More like a lake out here. She's an easy blutter, treating your beaver for a dig at underwater before you know we will be out to sea. She's an easy blooder. Although we've spent hundreds of millions. Our infrastructure is worse than that of third world countries. We've got fourth world infrastructure. It's right for our destruction. Never forget it. Oh, it's pathetic. Building high rise after high rise. Even though the hard times are coming to get us, oh, can't defend it. But we're not changing because we're greedy, we're greedy. We're getting out quick because the shoreline is preceding men who learn to swim or by a boat. Oh, oh, oh. She's an easy flutterer. We've known about this now for decades. We're underwater. There's no escaping the invading sea. She's an easy flutterer. Nature don't care about your feelings. She's here to usher in the embarks from Miami.

These trucks aren't able to bring fuel to.

Gas stations because Port Everglades is literally underwater.

No!

How am I supposed to go to Scarley?

We had.

Nearly 10 inches of rain, Roy, in the last couple of days here in Miami. Flooding, downed trees, sinkholes, power outages, school cancelations, public transit disabled. Just a day that ends in Y here in the tropics.

Yeah, I was in it. My umbrella got flipped inside out. I know that.

You kayaked to work today, Roy?

I took my wife out to.

Dinner and we went to the Book Fair.

Walter Moseley was down here and we got drenched.

Yes, the Book Fair is going on. I saw images of just the outside, those tailgate tents that they set up out there for the book vendors, just all tossed all over the place. We had wind gusts up to 75 miles an hour. Now, peak hurricane season was like a month ago. It's like September 10th-ish. I know its hurricane season goes until the end of this month, November, but usually things slow down about now. John Morales, friend of the show, hurricane specialist for BBC Six, certified consulting meteorologist at Climate Data. John, this was not a hurricane. It was not a tropical storm. It was not a name storm. What the hell just happened here in the middle of November in Miami?

Well, I'll summarize it by just saying another extreme weather event as we're seeing so many more of in recent years. Well, a lot of the images you just played are from the April 2023, mind you, two feet plus of rain that accumulated in Fort Lauderdale. But we also had a tropical storm, Ada, not too long ago. I think it was 2021 or 20, dumping two feet of rain as well over parts of Broward County, especially. Broward has been particularly hard hit. But the bottom line, so what happened?

Sorry, Roy. Roy lives in Broward. Sorry, David. Great.

So definitively, a non-tropical low. So anybody that thinks that the National Hurricane Center is going to do a post-analysis here and find evidence that this was a tropical storm or hurricane, that's not going to happen. And the reason for that is because we knew coming in that there were two different air masses, just like you see at a front. And there was a warm front just to our south with a very moist and tropical air mass down to the south, not necessarily so hot and humid up to the north along that boundary, a small area of low pressure technically called a meso-low because it's mesoscale, meaning it's medium scale, it's relatively small. A mesolo formed along that front. And then here's where I think there's an influence of some of the weirdness we're seeing lately on the planet. The Mezzallah, the small area of low pressure traversed the record hot sea surface temperatures that we're seeing across the Atlantic and many parts of the world, frankly, these days. I mean, we're talking temperatures of the ocean that have never been observed that are the chances of them happening without the influence of climate change are basically have a better chance of winning the power ball than you do if the sea surface temperatures could happen without climate change.

The low traverse those very hot waters and just really picked up steam, really strengthened to the point where we had. And I'm going to make a small modification to your Windgust number there, Billy. Gusts were generally in the mid 50s, 55 or so. That's 75 that you're referring to is the government cut Lighthouse there just offshore Miami Beach. The height of that instrument is eight stories high, and it's a marine environment. So I would discount that 75 and just go with the 55 that we saw. But despite me making that small correction there, let me tell you this is probably our biggest windstorm in South Florida since Irma in 2017.

That's how I felt. I felt if this is not a tropical storm, then what's a tropical storm? I mean, it didn't feel to us any different the conditions, the aftermath. I have to say you mentioned the April flooding in Dave in Broward County, which was even more severe than this. But that's spring. Summer is notoriously wet here in the tropics. That's the rainy season. Now we're in hurricane season, late hurricane season, basically entering winter. My question is, when the hell is dry season here in Miami? We've got spring, summer, now entering winter with conditions that are just completely off the charts. Historic, as it's being called in the Miami Herald, will be experienced this week.

Well, let me prepare you for the following. Well, it's El Niño winter, and El Niño winters in Florida can be wet and stormy. And this low pressure area from where the warm front that I previously discussed came from that low pressure area in the Gulf, crossing from east to west towards Florida, I bet we're going to see a lot more of those this coming winter here in South Florida because of the El Niño, it just makes for a very energetic jet stream across those southern latitudes of the US. And I think we're going to get into some of that this winter, including elevated chances for tornotic activity. So it's something to look out for. It's unfortunate. But again, these things are just getting off the rails so easily. And by the way, this was a very well-forecast event, unlike the April one with two feet of rain or a lot of... Yeah, that one was not expected, right? But this one- You learned your lesson. Yeah. Well, different physics, different dynamics. But this one, for days, really, as we looked at computer forecast models, they had a bullseye right on South Florida for ten plus inches of rain.

And then here comes the weather prediction center, which is a branch of NOAH, and they start putting out these excessive rainfall outlooks, which indicated that we were three on a scale of four for the potential for flash flooding. I think the one aspect, though, that was not forecast by anyone was these tropical storm force winds, which we got not from a tropical storm, but from this mesolo that I've talked about. And I think that was enhanced very much by those very hot sea surface temperatures, which had we not had that, probably this would have been more of a rainstorm, and we wouldn't have tens of thousands of people without power because of the windstorm that we got as well.

Felt like a bit of a mesosopronos to me. But John, this also happened concurrently with peak king tide. Thanks, Ryan. With peak king tide, sea level rise, which, as everybody knows from listening to this program, is known as sunny day flooding. So you can only imagine what happens when there's king tides along with rainy day flooding, particularly nearly what, 9, 10 inches of rain in just a couple of days. How much worse did that make it?

Oh, it made it significantly worse. And there is no doubt that it played a huge role. Listen, last night or the night of the big flood, which was Wednesday night, actually, we had the highest rainfall accumulations happening just as the high tide was rolling in around 10:00 p. M. This is king tide season. It is the part of the year when we get the highest, the springiest tides of the year. And the tides are running a foot to a foot and a half above the NOAH predictions. Now, there's a few factors that go into why they're missing the predictions by so much. One is the fact that we had an onshore windflow, so you have water being driven onshore. Two, sea surface temperatures are so hot that the water expands. It occupies more volume, and therefore it rises and you have sea level rise because of that. There's also evidence that the Gulf Stream is slowing down. This is an effect of climate change as well. If you have the Gulf Stream slowing down, you're not evacuating that water from the Florida current, from the area in our immediate vicinity, and the water just builds up and increments the tide.

And then, of course, underlying all that is accelerating sea level rise. And I emphasize the word accelerating because if you look back at Miami's measurements of tides, right? You go back 100 years.

And you.

See that we've increased a foot in 100 years. You might say, Well, all right, we can adapt to that. We can build and fix that. If we get another foot in another hundred years, we're going to be okay, which by the way, we can't because it's limestone underneath. This is not the Netherlands. We can't build dikes around the area and keep everything protected. It doesn't work that way. But on top of that, let me give you the second statistic. So I told you a foot in a hundred years, right? How much of that foot has happened of late? Well, it turns out a half of it just in the last 30 years.

So it's accelerating.

It's not justaccelerating, no doubt. So it took 70 years to get six inches of sea level rise. Now it's only taken 30 years to get the next six inches of sea level rise. And this is going to continue to accelerate. And we could get another couple of feet or who knows, maybe five or six feet before the end of the century. You know what we're going to royally be if that happens.

Last 60 seconds, King Tide report came out. Really distressing story at the beginning of this month about what our future says. One of the things it said was that certain low-lying neighborhoods in the city of Miami and around Miami-Dade County, there is absolutely nothing that we can do. No amount of money or infrastructure improvements or pumps or anything that we can do about them. We're going to have to abandon them entirely. Do you agree with that? And what's the time frame?

I do agree. And the sooner we realize that, the better it's going to be. Managed retreat is something that is already being practiced in the Florida Kays, which they're worse off, by the way, than Miami-Dade County in terms of this threat you're talking about. Now we need managed retreat in Miami-Dade County, too. I agree with that statement, and this is a big, big deal. And I'm so glad that you keep harping on it because people need to know it's a pocketbook threat, first and foremost, lifestyle threat, and eventually an existential threat.

Manage retreat. That might be the title of my autobiography. Perhaps it'll be the title of this week's episode of Because Miami, John Morales, Hurricane specialist for NBA Six, certified Consulting Metereologist at Clima Data. Thanks so much again for being here. Florida, as we know, is the book banning capital of the United States of America. I should say the free state of Florida is the book banning capital of America. This is the genius of the branding. It's like, say, the opposite of what it actually is. There has been a crisis in the public school system here in Florida, thanks in no small part to the efforts of this legislature over the last really quarter of a century to privatize, subsidize, and brutalize. That is the slogan. Joining us now is Tanya Galanyianos. She was a librarian for nearly a decade at Hopakalaga High School in Kassimi, Florida, also known as Toho High. Kassimi, Florida is in Central Florida, near Disney World. Tanya, thank you for joining us. I say you were a librarian, past tense, because the job started out as one thing for you almost 10 years ago and turned into something else. Can you tell us about that transition and when you realize that maybe you were not long for this job that you loved and hope to retire in?

The job is a dream job. People retire from these jobs. You don't necessarily... 10 years ago, you couldn't find a bot as a librarian. So they were very coveted. And you really had to work hard to get to your position. It was just amazing because you get books in the hands of kids and just seeing the kids light up when they find that book. And so many times the kids are like, I don't like to read this. You haven't found the right book. So just to have that and to make that connection with the kids, with the teachers, it's a dream job. Well, it was a dream job. And I want to say about a year and a half ago, a lot of legislation started coming down the pike for banning books, and they didn't call it a book ban. It was like, this book is inappropriate. One thing that I did notice was that librarians and teachers, but mostly librarian because of the books that we had in our media centers, were being vilified. We were called rumors. We were called pedophiles. I've been told that I shouldn't be around kids, all because I said that students should see themselves in books, that my collection, my library collection needs to represent all the kids, not just a little bit of the kids, but all the kids that we service, all of our community, not just a small portion.

So at the beginning, you're very upset and you fight and you fight and you fight and you fight and you fight. And when you get to the point that it seems like nobody's listening, that's when you have to decide, is it worth it? Is it worth my health? Is it worth not sleeping? Is it worth crying sometimes for hours on end because it's just you feel like nobody else gets it. You're the only one who gets it. So it was just I probably started thinking about leaving the profession altogether about a year and a half ago. I stuck around for the kids and I stuck it out for the kids.

Were you disseminating pornography in the high school media center there in Kassami, Florida?

No, I can tell you with certainty, there's no pornography in any of the media centers in Oceilla County, Orange County. Quite honestly, they take certain passages and they read them. They don't look at the book as a whole. They don't look at the book in context. They just take them out of context, and they just read them oscillations, passages. And sometimes they even make stuff up. Because one of the books that has always been very contested and that has always been a trigger point for everybody is like, oh, Gender Queer. We never had Gender Queer in our media centers. I chose not to carry Gender Queer because it didn't go with my population. I see it more as a book for college kids, but that's my opinion. And as a library professional, that was my job to see what are the books that are the best for my population, for my kids, for my students. And every librarian was able to do that in their own classroom until this year.

Tanya, in this very haunting Washington Post story, headline, The Librarian Who Couldn't Take It Anymore, you talk about how you started to feel like less of a librarian, one who cultivates a love of reading in students, recommends books, checks out books to high school students into a sensor. Can you describe what your, in the last year, year and a half, what your daily tasks turned into as a librarian in a public high school in Florida?

Definitely. The first thing that I had to do every single morning was go into our focus database, which is where everybody's enrollment is. And I had access to everybody in the school, and I had to make a list which one of my kids had no access to the library that their parents had that they cannot check out any books, which one of my kids had limited access. We're a school that has 3,000 kids. And I had to make sure that I knew I had to pull out a report and see which ones did, which ones did not. I had to go over all the collection. And here's the thing, librariansians go over their collections all the time because we're always evaluating our collection. Our collections are supposed to be updated. Anything over 10 years, I either buy a new copy of it, a more updated copy. So we're always evaluating our collections. But this time I'm evaluating my collection for, Oh, is this going to get me to go to jail? Am I going to be arrested for this? Which is totally different than what the job.

Should be. It describes, in the article, 79 pages printed out of new Florida laws about what students should not read and really how you should think about how students should or should not read. That was suddenly the job of a library. I mean, not just you, but every librarian in the state of Florida and a public school. This is why we have the crisis I was describing earlier of a deficit of thousands and thousands of teachers and librarians and professionals in the public school system who are just absolutely fleeing like you are. I have to ask you, before I let you go, you like a lot of women, my wife included, learned a lot about life from the great Judy Bloom. Absolutely. Starting with, Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret. I wonder what... Judy is a Florida resident, lives in Key West, runs the books and bookstore down there. I wonder what current Florida censorship laws would make of her what I know to be a very important body of work for young women.

I'll be honest with you. One of the books that was in my library before I left was Forever by Judy Bloom. And I know that eventually they're going to come after that book because I've done it before. One of the things that I really hesitated before leaving was if I was in doubt, I would leave it in the media center, and I would leave it on the shelves because I stand behind my collection. Every single book that was purchased by me or by the media specialist prior to me, I stand by that collection. There's nothing there that should not be there. So if I have removed a book, it could be because it was, I'll be honest with you, Court of Thorn and Roses. The first book, okay to have in the library. Second book, it's a little racy. I had it in my library for the longest time, and it got to the point that everybody was so nervous about it. And when I say everybody, I'm talking about district. I'm talking about other media specialists that I ended up just taking out the whole series because I was told keep the first book, but the rest of the series is not appropriate.

When I was in high school, I was reading a bunch of stuff that my mom had no clue that I was reading, and it didn't make me into a deviant person. I'm actually a pretty productive number of society. So I had had it. I had had it. And at that point, I was like, Fine, if this is going to create such a ruckus, I'll take it out. And that's another reason that I was like, I can't do this anymore. This is breaking me.

Tanya, my last question, I know this is very emotional. You're leaving a place you spent so many years at. Obviously, there's a connection with your coworkers, the teachers, the administrators, certainly the students. What do you tell your students about why you're leaving and what you're going to do now when they ask?

I told my students that I was opening up a bookstore because the first time that I told them that I was leaving, they were very upset because I do create a connection with them. And I fight for them. They know that. They know that I fight for them. And I had a transgender volunteer a couple of years ago when all this started happening, and he was in my office while we were having a meeting. I come into the office and he's crying. And I was like, What's wrong? And he said, We're not monsters, and thank you so much for fighting for us. And I wish the whole world knew that we're not monsters. And that was why I stuck it out as long as I did. When I left, I basically told them that I was leaving because I was opening a bookstore and I was creating a safe space for everyone.

And you did. It had the added benefit of being true. Tanya Galanianas, owner of the White Rose Books and Moore in Kassimi, Florida. So if you're making a trip to Central Florida, going to Disney World, stop by White Rose Books and Moore. Tanya, thank you so much for being here and best of luck to you and I hope-.

Thank you so much for.

Having me. I'm happy that you're going to continue to cultivate a love of reading and students and adults alike.

Yes, thank you. We're very excited. We are a week away from a runoff in the city of Miami's district one commissioner's seat, suspended incumbent.

Alex Diaz de la Portilla, is.

Hoping to win despite the.

Long list.

Of criminal charges he's facing.

As for the runoff between de la Portilla and Miami.

Businessman Miguel Angel.

Gabela next Tuesday, the incumbent's attorney.

Says it.

Will be up to the voters.

The citizens will.

Decide who is to be their elected official, and he has continued to.

Generate the goodwill of the citizens.

Because of his excellent leadership as an elected official.. That attorney, by the way, was Ben Cuney, Roy, who was the lead counsel defending Joe Corollio in that federal civil trial- Of course, he was. -in which they lost and got a $63.5 million judgment against them. That, of course, is your boy, Alex Diaz La Porta, who was arraigned this week on 14 crimes. Remember, he was removed from office by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just two months ago. The charges include money laundering, unlawful compensation, bribery, criminal conspiracy, official misconduct, campaignfinance crimes and failing to disclose gifts, basically selling his vote and selling out his constituents for about quarter of a million dollars, roughly. He is up for re-election on Tuesday.

This lawyer is a silly ass bow tie, looking like a big, grown out of.

Science guy over here.

Get out of here. Don't never trust a man in a bow tie, Roy. But that wasn't even the worst news for Alex Diazla Portia this week. Incidentally, he did plead not guilty to all 14 of those crimes. I will tell you, he's probably going to jail. I'm going to tell you that. The worst news, though, for DLP this week is on our wheel of despair. What are the.

Categories, Roy? All right, we have Deadbeat DLP, Pay for a prosecution, DeSantis Un Comunista, Suarez, Und Comunista, and the U is Back, Baby.

I sense a theme emerging there. Shall we spin the wheel?

The U is back, baby.

The U.

Is Back, Baby.

Turns out a University of Miami student at the Herbert Business School was paying attention in Hustling 101 class. According to his LinkedIn profile, he is a serial entrepreneur and venture capital catalyst. Catalyst, huh? According to federal prosecutors, he also was involved in a three and a half million dollar scheme. Get this, though. You're going to love this. It's really rather impressive. What he would do is he would hit up an online retailer, which prosecutors don't identify. It sounds Amazon-esque, lots of different retailers and people selling goods and products. He would order the products, get them, and then hack into employee accounts and enter fake tracking information that made it appear as if the shipper had returned the items so they could keep the items, stuff like a $600 electric skateboard, a 43-inch Samsung TV, a $41,000 Rolex President Day date watch, and then also get refunded for those as well. Now, here's the truly enterprising part. He apparently offered this service for sale to other people, marketed as FTID, fraudulent tracking ID. He wasn't just doing it for himself to get stuff and then return it. He was being paid by other people to run this scheme for them, allegedly.

According to federal prosecutors, caused nearly 10,000 fraudulent returns, resulting more than $3.5 million in lost product and sales revenue.

University of Miami education.

The U is back, baby. What's next, Roy? Spin the wheel.

Deadbeat, DOP.

Get this. This week, Alex Diaz Leportia's family home was just auctioned off by the bank. Yes, it was foreclosed upon an auction off by the bank. But here's the thing, Roy. He got a mortgage in 2005, and then seven years later in 2012, stopped paying the mortgage. Deadbeat, welfare queen, Comunista, is living for free in this house since 2012. Finally, after multiple attempts, the bank foreclosed on the property and sold it for $300,000. Here's the problem. He owes the bank $600,000, which means now the bank can go after his ass for the balance that they lost out on. Meantime, the man's got no job, he's got an indictment, and now he's got no house because- Miami.

You already know. Let's roll the dice. Let's spin the wheel.

Desantis, Comunista.

You.

Know how your boy, Big D, has been talking tough on China. He's going to stop Chinese businesses and people from buying property in Florida and all this bullshit because we got to stop the Chinese Communist government. Well, it turns out that he's been taking big money from a Florida company, a third of which is owned by a Chinese state-run company. It is a refrigerant company that imports hydrofluorocarbon from China, from Communist China, mind you, for refrigerators and ACs and cooling systems. They've been donating big money to Florida Republicans, all of whom are railing against the Chinese Communists, but also helping them to generate billions of dollars in revenue that gets sent right back to China, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Oh, that's BS. No, totally BS.

So Florida hypocrisy in full effect. Of course. Roy, do we have any more time for your favorite.

Segment on the No, we don't have any more time. None. Zero. Next.

So before we go, I would like to say something. Last week, my dear friend, Diane Rolson, died. For decades, Diane was a fixture in local politics. She was one of the last of a literally dying breed of true partisans who could work effortlessly and graciously across the aisle and the ideological spectrum. She did it with warmth and wit and increasing rarity in these polarized times. Diane was a co-founder of Dade Days, an annual event when stakeholders from Miami-Dade traveled to Tallahassee during the legislative session to lobby, convince and cajole state lawmakers to send a small piece of the hundreds of millions of dollars and revenue that we send up to them back down here to do some good in our community. It rarely worked, but Diane always helped us try. When we lost her last week, I owed her a callback. It's difficult to describe what a shitty feeling that is now. It's also difficult to think how I may ever get over it, because every time I think about her, I think about how much she meant to me and how I failed to find a few minutes to remind her of that before she was gone.

Please, if you have any friends or family who you've been playing phone tag with or haven't talked to in a while or or haven't had a chance to return that call, do yourself a favor. Podcast is almost over. Call them right now. See how they're doing. Ask them how they're feeling and tell them that you love them. I can promise you it's one less regret that you'll have in your life. Now for something totally aggravating. Our Miami moment took place earlier this week in Miami Beach, Florida, following a Free Palestine rally in South Beach. Someone got a little carried away, and I guess decided to tell some Jewish people what she thought of them, where they could go, and how Hitler had unfinished business because Miami, cocaine's. You guys are taking our fucking money. I think that's.

Going to be the best. That's going to be the best. You're going to.

Have to fucking finish.

The job. We do what the fuck.

We're going to do. Wow.