Someone Call a Doctor!

When self-care meets self-destruction.

Well, naturally, because I just had to shoot my big fat mouth off about peace and tranquility and efficiency, the new city commission decided to make its May 20th meeting a 12-hour marathon featuring a pinch of pleading, a touch of tear shedding, and the most ham-fisted political blunder to be caught on camera since Marion Barry was filmed smoking crack in his DC hotel room. As the perpetually disgraced pay-for-play blogger complicit in said blunder likes to say, more on that later.

Before we get to that, a quick word on the meeting in general: while painfully long, the meeting didn't feel as ridiculously drawn out as many in the past. Apart from a jam-packed protocol section—presumably the result of a post-election bottleneck—the agenda practically brimmed with legislative and policy substance. Almost every item moved the needle of progress to some meaningful degree, most notably item F-16, which resulted in the karmically restorative return of Peter Iglesias as city manager. I'll have more to say about this and the host of other massively impactful actions taken by the new commission in the coming weeks, but for now I'll let almost everything I wrote in 2024 serve as my take on Iglesias' resurrection.

Undoubtedly, the reforms currently being implemented by the ALL majority will bear plenty of fruit once properly rooted. But today's post concerns itself with a different sort of harvest: the overripe spectacle of Dr. Castro, who returned to the dais having seemingly reshaped almost everything about herself except her behavior.

You'll recall how Dr. Castro failed to attend the May 6th special commission meeting due to some kind of unspecified surgical procedure, how righteously indignant Ariel became as a result (he couldn't believe Lago had the audacity to proceed while his colleague was "under the knife"), and how Rip Holmes represented himself as the good doctor's spokesperson in her stead. The way people carried on, with all the morally superior finger-wagging directed at Lago's face, you could be forgiven for thinking she had gone in for open-heart surgery.

So color me surprised when exactly two weeks later, Dr. Castro strolls into the May 20th commission meeting—late as usual—looking positively buoyant, as if a heavy weight had been lifted from her chest, which for perhaps the first time ever she chose to tastefully conceal rather than crassly flaunt, opting for the dignified coverage of a jacket. Her face appeared remarkably rejuvenated too, filled with what one can only assume was a newfound sense of purpose and vitality. Whatever procedure had been so urgent that it justified an attempt to postpone city business apparently worked wonders. Physically, she seemed lighter, brighter, and somehow less…encumbered than before. Sadly, this physical transformation came without any corresponding enhancement to her intellectual contributions, which remained as deflated as ever. Whatever the procedure was, it definitely wasn’t brain surgery.

Look, I have no problem with self-care or people wanting to be—to use a particularly stupid modern expression—"the best version of themselves." What I object to is one cynically weaponizing one’s own vices. It's one thing to skip a commission meeting to have some rather obvious cosmetic work done while relying on the inherent privacy of medical procedures, as well as basic social graces, to deflect scrutiny. It's quite another to transform your own narcissism into a cudgel against political opponents, allowing strategic vagueness about your surgical procedure to generate genuine public sympathy that you and your allies can then exploit to gain a political advantage.

Smile for the camera, scheme for the blog

That said, as far as political skulduggery is concerned, Dr. Castro's clumsy attempt to convert a little nip and tuck into some sort of moral high ground is not the headline story here. It actually gets worse.

As most of you know, I've spilled quite a bit of ink exposing the former KFC's ties to certain members of the local media. Gables Insider, may it rest in peace, was a frequent target of mine until it went belly up for the second time. And while it has struggled to gain traction in its latest incarnation, the surprisingly amateurish Gables Gazette (or as I like to call it, the Gables Insider Gazette) is bound to catch some flak of its own at some point.

But the real apple of my eye has always been disgraced ex-Herald reporter Elaine De Valle of Political Cortadito. Locally notorious for running one of the most aggressive and unapologetic journalistic extortion rackets in South Florida, Elaine has in recent years morphed into a kind of truffle pig for the ethically challenged. She's developed an almost infallible nose not just for the kind of people that will gladly pay to make the beatings stop, but those who want to inflict a few beatings of their own (KFC, CGNA, various public unions, etc.). Hence the central paradox of Elaine De Valle: she's quite adept at exposing some of the very worst elements of local politics, not by who she targets in her blog, but by who she chooses to collaborate with.

Which brings me to Dr. Castro, who ever since being politically ghosted by Ariel post-election, has clearly had to pull more of her own weight. This includes, among other things, defending her own interests, cooking up her own scandals, and, yes, collaborating with operatives like Elaine De Valle.

Unfortunately for Dr. Castro, she's no Ariel. She doesn't have decades of scheming and backstabbing under her belt—at least not within the political arena. This and the fact that she’s about as sharp as a butterknife means that asking her to quarterback a planned political hit job in real time is like asking a capuchin monkey to lead a bank heist. Hence her latest blunder.

Allow me to set the stage: after arriving to the in-progress commission meeting approximately 10 minutes late, Dr. Castro spends the next 30 minutes quietly going through the motions on protocol items. There’s plenty of scowling and eye rolling and paper shuffling and texting interrupted only by the occasional forced smile. Then, at around 9:40 AM, the plot thickens. As the commission honors a beloved retiring employee, each member rises to gather at the front of the dais for a photo. Normally, Dr. Castro would leap at the chance to pose, but this time, she lingers and waits for everyone else to file out first. Then, the moment her colleagues turn their backs, she seizes her opportunity. With a quick glance to ensure no one’s watching, she whips out her phone, snaps a photo of a document on the dais, and appears to fire off a quick text before casually strolling to join the group. See for yourself:

But wait, it gets better. Because while this kind of clumsy, Spies Like Us behavior is suspicious even in a vacuum, it becomes downright damning when you realize that just ten minutes later, Elaine De Valle posts this thirst trap on X for the dozen or so malcontents that read her feed:

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure I can connect the dots here. That patch of brown in the upper right corner? It looks suspiciously like the commission’s bench. That shadow up top? Eerily similar to the microphone looming over it. And that rectangular shadow at the bottom? It screams an acrylic-nailed hand clutching an iPhone. The image itself is slightly off-center and tilted—just like Dr. Castro’s phone when she snapped that sneaky photo. Coincidence? You tell me.

Ok, fine, who are we kidding? Of course that’s Dr. Castro’s photo. No forensics degree required to crack this case. The real question isn’t who, what, or when—it’s why.

Why the cloak-and-dagger routine for a public document? By the time Dr. Castro snapped that photo, the resolution was free for anyone to share. Yet there she was, with all the body language of a candy-bar thief swiping a Snickers at the checkout. Why the sneaky glances and hurried texts? Why “leak” something already in plain sight?

The answer is simple: In Dr. Castro’s mind, she wasn’t just sharing a document. She was feeding ammunition to a notorious propaganda peddler, a longtime ally in her circle of schemers. She was fulfilling her role as one of Elaine’s infamous “malas lenguas,” hiding behind her public servant facade while moonlighting as an anonymous tipster for one of the most toxic and dishonest voices in the local blogosphere. And all in the midst of an official proceeding, no less. Perfectly legal? Probably. Appropriate? Not even close.

Make no mistake, Dr. Castro’s dishonesty is not just brazen, it’s multifaceted. There's something fundamentally fraudulent about flashing fake smiles and clapping half-heartedly while a hardworking city employee receives well-deserved recognition, all while your real focus is coordinating a tepid media hit on the colleague sitting next to you. And there's something profoundly mendacious about doing that on the public's dime.

But the dishonesty actually crosses into potential criminal territory if she doubled down and denied having a public record that everyone knows she has. To be specific, the moment Dr. Castro took that photo of the resolution from the dais during a commission meeting and shared it with someone, she created a public record. A public record that she explicitly denied having in response to a recent public records request submitted to the city clerk:

Just so we’re clear, under Florida Statutes 119.10, any public officer who knowingly and willfully violates the public records law is guilty of a first-degree misdemeanor. This offense is punishable by up to one year in jail and/or a fine of up to $1,000. If the violation is committed with intent to defraud or gain a benefit, it may be prosecuted as a third-degree felony under Florida Statutes 817.569, which carries penalties of up to five years in prison and/or a fine of up to $5,000.

Dr. Castro might have stepped in it with this one (barring her use of a middleman to deliver that photo to Elaine, which could technically keep her hands clean vis-à-vis the request above but also add a new layer of deception), which is rather ironic, since this probably ranks fairly low on the list of material offenses she's committed since taking office. But like an idiotic burglar who looks straight into a Ring camera before breaking into a home, Dr. Castro's recklessness finally caught up with her. There's no such thing as "sneaky enough" when you're in a room literally filmed from all angles. Indeed, she got a little too cute, a little too careless, and allowed her anger, hostility, contempt—and most importantly, the pressure of no longer being in control—to get the best of her.

By the way, for those of you who’d like to put a face to the name, Elaine De Valle, for reasons unknown, opted to participate in public comment by Zoom during this meeting. She freely admits that it’s her first time speaking at a commission meeting. One has to wonder why Elaine, who I hear lives in that little enclave of the Gables called Kendall, would choose this particular meeting to pointlessly chime in. In any event, here is the paragon of journalistic integrity herself selflessly devoting her precious time and energy to preserving the values of our City Beautiful:

On grief and graft

I'd originally intended to make the topic of this last section the focus of this post, but the foregoing was simply too interesting to gloss over, and now my archnemesis—word count—has once again caught up with me.

So I'll cut to the chase. Shenanigans aside, the most damaging blow sustained by Dr. Castro at the May 20th meeting came when her permit-expediting pilot program was put on hold by the new majority. I won't belabor why it was a poorly conceived, poorly timed idea. ALL did that work effectively themselves. The real significance here, particularly within the context of this post, lies in Dr. Castro's suspiciously extreme reaction to this setback.

She wasn't merely upset. She wasn't merely disappointed. She was thoroughly devastated, so much so that she had to flee the dais for a good ten minutes. When she returned, you could see she'd been crying—not the artful single tear of a seasoned politician, but the red-eyed, puffy-faced aftermath of genuine distress. She spent much of the rest of the meeting shellshocked, staring into the middle distance with that thousand-yard gaze reserved for trauma victims and people who've just watched their entire world collapse.

This was all after she literally begged—and I mean begged—Lara to allow her expediting program to move forward, her voice cracking with desperation.

At best, this was an alarmingly immature reaction to a relatively trivial political loss. At worst—well, I’ll get to that in a second. But suffice it to say that Dr. Castro’s becoming distraught to the point of appearing physically unwell (hence the title of this post) as the result of a fairly insignificant policy setback doesn’t quite add up.

This idea that she was upset because of all her wasted time and effort and hard work is just silly. What hard work? It was a pilot program that had yet to begin. As an initiative, it was as conceptually simple as it was flawed. It’s not as though Dr. Castro had spent months scribbling equations on whiteboard before finally solving the once-intractable problem known as ‘bureaucracy’ only to have all her efforts evaporate into thin air because her colleagues decided to merely hit pause. She hadn’t led the Manhattan Project. She had her staff make her a powerpoint presentation. The end.

Even more ludicrous is the idea that Dr. Castro was crushed purely by concern for the common good—that her initiative was so transformative, so essential to human flourishing, that its delay triggered an existential crisis about her civic legacy. We're supposed to believe that a woman so indifferent to public service she couldn't be bothered to vote in a presidential election suddenly became so invested in good governance that she literally wept at the thought of bureaucratic inefficiency continuing for another few months?

Give me a break.

In my experience, only one thing places people in that kind of catatonic, shell-shocked state—and it isn't a blow to their commitment to some abstract ideal of public good. It's a blow to their livelihood. Their way of life. It's the state of shock people enter when they take a massive financial hit, when they realize they won't be able to keep it all together, to maintain the existence they've built. There's a reason people leap from windows when the stock market crashes.

None of this is rooted in some secret knowledge that I possess, although there are a great many who believe Dr. Castro had a special arrangement with Carlos Penin, the president of the private contractor Dr. Castro handpicked to administer her expediting program—the same man who, incidentally, provided a few strategically timed quotes to Elaine De Valle in the days leading up to the meeting. And no matter how you slice it, Dr. Castro's program would have institutionalized her influence over the very department that interfaces with her business.

When viewed through this lens, you could see how Dr. Castro might have had far more than just her political legacy on the line. Through this lens, her inexplicable grief becomes a lot less inexplicable. A true public servant disappointed by a policy setback might express frustration, might argue their case more forcefully, might even show some irritation. But they don't collapse into inconsolable grief. That's reserved for moments when the money stops flowing.