In addition to giving their personal manservant, City Manager Arthur “Duke” Sorey, an undeserved raise of $13,800 a year (plus an additional $19,000 for a second retirement plan come October), North Miami Beach Commissioners Michael Joseph, McKenzie Fleurimond, Paule Villard, and Daniela Jean, a/k/a Team Apocalypse, also voted to give themselves an additional approximate amount of $10,000 in the form of “direct payments for full premium of medical, dental, vision and life insurance benefits of elected officials pursuant to Section 2.3 of the City Charter.”

Never mind that they are already being compensated for health insurance benefits.  Their greed knows no bounds!

On September 26, 2019, less than a year after Michael and Paule managed to swindle enough votes to get elected, the Commission passed Resolution R2019-87, which increased their salaries to include “the cost of health benefit costs in accordance with City Charter Section 2.3.”

This would never happen in a normal City, of course.

But North Miami Beach is now the mirror image of the outrageously corrupt City of North Miami.

In North Miami Beach elected officials will get free health insurance after a split vote, the Miami Herald reported, “City Manager Arthur “Duke” Sorey, who was hired by the commission in April, said he was aware of the 2019 change but felt that rising healthcare costs warranted a more generous offer.”

What he really meant was, “There is no way this new Resolution is remotely ethical or justified.   But, hey!  They’re giving me a raise I haven’t earned and don’t deserve, so I owe them.”

The Herald also reported, “He estimated that, if all seven elected officials choose to accept the benefit, the cost to the city through the end of this fiscal year would be about $49,000.  For the next full fiscal year, Sorey said, the cost could be between $85,000 and $166,000, depending on which premiums officials select and whether dependents are also enrolled in the city’s plans.”

What he really meant was, “Paying 100% of the health insurance premiums for the ruling class and their families will cost the taxpayers a fortune.  Too bad, so sad.  All you commoners who can’t afford your own health insurance better suck it up and kiss their royal asses.”

Mayor Anthony DeFillipo told the Herald that being compensated again for something they already received in 2019 is “double-dipping.”

McKenzie Fleurimond on the other hand, who still hasn’t figured out how to math, told the Herald, “The city’s current approach is flawed because every elected official gets the same amount of money, regardless of whether or not they’re actually enrolled in the city’s plan.”

So, McKenzie obviously thinks equal pay is a bad thing.

Although Mayor DeFillipo emphatically stated, “I don’t take the insurance now and I won’t take it later,” we strongly encourage him to change his mind.

Right or wrong, as long as his four colleagues initiated and passed this unethical money grab, Mayor DeFillipo, as well as Fortuna Smukler and Barbara Kramer, are just as entitled to the same exact benefits that the rest of his colleagues on the dais receive.

After all, what’s fair is fair!

Whether McKenzie Fleurimond approves or not.

Commissioner Fortuna Smukler rightly noted that the City’s full-time employees have to contribute to their own health insurance premiums, yet the Commissioners, who are supposed to be part-time employees, are “being treated above the employees.”

Then again, Commissioners McKenzie Fleurimond, Paule Villard, and Daniela Jean are apparently unemployable and have no real jobs outside their elected positions.  They need to grab as much money as they can from the suckers who put them in office.

As expected, Team Apocalypse ignored the wishes of those who spoke against the Resolution during public comment, and they all voted to pillage the residents’ hard earned tax dollars like the pirates they are.

In order to understand the overblown sense of entitlement of these four con artists, you have to understand the history of their homeland, Haiti — a country that ranks number 170 on the world corruption scale.  Only nine countries are more corrupt than Haiti, including such hell holes as Yemen, Syria, and Somalia, with South Sudan being at the top of the list.

According to Wikipedia, “Corruption is a severe and widespread problem in all levels of government.  Robert Klitgaard, an expert on the subject, wrote in 2010 that corruption in Haiti ‘is not the activity of a few rogue officials or politicians’ but is more like ‘organized crime’, with corrupt procurement deals arising through collusion and kleptocratic racket.”

A January 14, 2010 article in the Guardian, Haiti: a long descent into hell, explains, “In Haiti, the last five centuries have combined to produce a people so poor, an infrastructure so nonexistent and a state so hopelessly ineffectual that whatever natural disaster chooses to strike next, its impact on the population will be magnified many, many times over.”

Historian Alex von Tunzelmann told the Guardian, “Haiti has had slavery, revolution, debt, deforestation, corruption, exploitation and violence.  Now it has poverty, illiteracy, overcrowding, no infrastructure, environmental disaster and large areas without the rule of law.”

The article continues, “It needn’t, though, have been like this.  In the 18th century, under French rule, Haiti – then called Saint-Domingue – was the Pearl of the Antilles, one of the richest islands in France’s empire (though 800,000-odd African slaves who produced that wealth saw precious little of it).  In the 1780s, Haiti exported 60% of all the coffee and 40% of all the sugar consumed in Europe: more than all of Britain’s West Indian colonies combined.  It subsequently became the first independent nation in Latin America, and remains the world’s oldest black republic and the second-oldest republic in the western hemisphere after the United States. So what went wrong?”

Although Haiti declared its independence from France on January 1, 1804, the next two centuries ushered in one corrupt regime after another.  To make matters worse, 98% of the country has been deforested since the 1950s, which left the country even more vulnerable to the natural disasters of hurricanes and earthquakes.

In 1957, François ­”Papa Doc” Duvalier came into power, and was “widely seen as one of the most corrupt and ­repressive in modern history.  He ­exploited Haiti’s traditional belief in voodoo to establish a personal militia.”

The article continues, “During the 28 years in power of Papa Doc and his playboy son and heir, Jean-Claude Duvalier, or Baby Doc, the Tonton Macoutes and their henchmen killed between 30,00 and 60,000 ­Haitians, and raped, beat and tortured countless more.  Until Baby Doc’s ­eventual flight into exile in 1986, Duvalier père and fils also made themselves very rich indeed.  Aid agencies and ­international creditors donated and lent millions for projects that were often abandoned before completion, or never even started.  Generous multi­national corporations earned lucrative contracts.  According to Von Tunzelmann, the Duvaliers were at times embezzling up to 80% of Haiti’s international aid, while the debts they signed up to ­accounted for 45% of what the country owed last year.  And when Baby Doc ­finally fled, estimates of what he took with him run as high as $900m.”

The Guardian article concludes, “Compare Haiti with its neighbours, equally prone to natural disasters but far better equipped to cope because they are far better functioning societies, and the only conclusion possible, says Von Tunzelmann, is that it is Haiti’s turbulent history that has brought it to this point.  For the better part of 200 years, she argues, rich countries and their banks have been sucking the wealth out of the country, and its own despotic and corrupt leaders have been doing their best to facilitate the process, lining their own pockets handsomely on the way.  Approach Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic and the lush green of the forest begins again: this is a wealthier place.  An earthquake here has less impact because constructions are stronger, building regulations are enforced, the government is more ­stable.”

An article published on November 29, 2018 by the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Anatomy of Corruption: Haiti, reports, “A network of corruption permeates all sectors of public governance, the magnitude of which is confirmed by Transparency International’s 2018 Index ranking Haiti as the second most corrupt country in the hemisphere after Venezuela.  This impacts all sectors of political and economic activity, such that the 2018 Global Competitiveness Report Index, measuring the quality of institutions and the ensuing human capital and economic ecosystem, ranks Haiti second from the bottom out of 140 countries.  These statistics reflect a perennial challenge for succeeding governments despite a significant commitment by a wide spectrum of the international community—notably the United States—since the late 1980s.  The current government of President Jovenel Moïse is no different. It started off badly with the president himself being accused of money laundering even before his inauguration in February 2017, and then muddied the waters further by subsequently firing the head of the government unit investigating the allegation.”

Even more recently, an October 4, 2019 Miami Herald article, That there is corruption in Haiti isn’t a surprise. But then a senator admitted it openly, reported, “A pro-government Haitian senator recently went on the radio and made an unexpected admission: The Haitian government, of which he is a part, runs on corruption … And Augustin’s statement highlights the current state of the Caribbean nation’s volatile politics: Corruption is no longer a secret but an open and accepted practice, and whatever shred of public trust there was in government has evaporated.”

Haiti’s current administration has been plagued with scandals that include vote-buying, graft, money-laundering, bribery, and spending nearly $2.5 million on water and coffee.

Parliament Senator Willot Joseph admitted that he and four others “accepted $100,000 each to confirm President Jovenel Moïse’s latest pick for prime minister, Fritz William Michel,” and that he “saw nothing wrong with doing so.”

Worse, as the Herald article points out, “Critics say Haiti’s constitution is part of the problem.  Adopted in 1987 after the fall of the nearly 30-year dictatorship of the Duvalier family, the constitution gives lawmakers stranglehold control over the executive branch, which they have used as a threat to get kickbacks and other unwarranted advantages, such as imposing often-unqualified family members, friends and allies in high-level government posts.”

Today’s political climate in North Miami Beach, as well as North Miami (where the Circle of Corruption originated), is eerily reminiscent of Haiti’s corrupt government.

Consider Team Apocolypse’s recent predecessor, Frantz Pierre, who was arrested in 2018, removed from office, and convicted in 2020 on eleven of twelve felonies.

This is not surprising since, as we reported two years before he was finally brought to justice, Frantz Pierre’s own father was a corrupt, Duvalier regime-appointed judge in Haiti.  When he came to America in 1986, and eventually sought positions in government, Frantz naturally emulated his father and repeated the very same corrupt practices in his adopted country.

Haitian politicians born and/or raised in a corrupt political climate, such as North Miami Mayor Philippe Bien-Aime and Councilwoman Mary Estimé-Irvin, are no strangers to the practices of bribery, kickbacks, and especially, vote-buying, in order to win elections and stay in power.

Former North Miami Clerk and Mayoral candidate, Michael Etienne, told VotersOpinion that unfortunately, second generation Haitians, who should know better, eventually succumb to the pressure put on them by their predecessors to either play by their rules or stay out of politics.

North Miami Beach Commissioner Paule Villard, who was first recruited to run for office in 2015 by her good friend, Frantz Pierre, and who is now being “counseled” by their corrupt mutual friend, former North Miami CRA Director Lesly Prudent, is a perfect example of the “Haitian-born” corrupt politician.  She has no idea what the City’s Charter forbids her from doing as an elected official, nor does she care.

For example, Article II, Sec. 2-9 expressly prohibits Commissioners from suggesting or recommending “any person for appointment or removal by the City Manager for any position under the exclusive control of the City Manager.”

And yet, from the moment she was sworn into office, she began pressuring then-City Manager Esmond Scott to hire Haitian police officers for high-ranking positions in the City’s award-winning Police Department.  It doesn’t matter to her whether or not these people are qualified for the job — it only matters that they are Haitian.

In fact, the reason she engineered the removal of Esmond Scott was because he refused to give in to her demands.

Duke Sorey, on the other hand, was specifically hired to do her bidding.

He said so himself on May 14, 2021, when they both appeared on Island TV, and he admitted his job was to hire more Haitians.

Paule Villard, who is clearly the least intelligent person ever to hold office in North Miami Beach, is so arrogant that she really does believe she’s above the law.

Her colleagues on the dais, Michael Joseph, McKenzie Fleurimond, and Daniela Jean, none of whom were born or raised in Haiti, have unfortunately followed Paule down the rabbit hole of old school Haitian politics.

Just as the Guardian article noted about the corruption in Haiti, “It needn’t, though, have been like this.”

While there is no hope for the malevolent Michael Joseph, who is the devil incarnate, McKenzie and especially Daniela, the only intelligent one of the bunch, both had the golden opportunity to represent the best interests of all the City’s residents.

Instead, they took the low road.

Thanks to their quid pro quo backers like non-NMB residents, Jewish activist Alan Sakowitz and mega-lobbyist Ron Book, who stand to gain a hell of a lot more than the taxpaying residents of North Miami Beach, these four corruptocrats are continuously enabled to legislate unethically with impunity.

In the meantime, actual residents of North Miami Beach continue to get screwed by Team Apocolypse and their corrupt hired guns, Duke Sorey and City Attorney Hans Ottinot, who were hired to protect them from the consequences of their illegal actions.

Rest assured, however, that we here at VotersOpinion will not rest until the NMB Pirates of the Caribbean are held accountable for the raping, pillaging, and looting of the hard earned tax dollars of each and every North Miami Beach resident.

Stephanie