2013 Grammy Awards Recap

Mumford & Sons, Gotye & Kimbra, Kelly Clarkson, Zac Brown Band and Fun. were just a few of the big winners at the 55th annual Grammy Awards telecast, hosted by LL Cool J and broadcast live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Read on for the recap...

For the Complete List of Winners CLICK HERE.

The Winners

Album of the Year went to Babel by Mumford & Sons; Record of the Year went to Gotye & Kimbra's Somebody That I Used To Know; Fun. won Best New Artist, and their We Are Young (featuring Janelle Monae) was named Song of the Year; Kelly Clarkson's Stronger was named Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Country Album was awarded to Zac Brown Band's Uncaged.

Other big accolades handed out during Sunday night's telecast went to Carrie Underwood (Best Country Solo Performance: Blown Away); Frank Ocean was the Best Urban Contemporary Album Winner for Channel Orange; The Black Keys earned Best Rock Performance for Lonely Boy; Best Rap/Sung Collaboration went to No Church in the Wild by Jay-Z and Kanye West featuring Frank Ocean & The-Dream; and Adele nabbed Best Pop Solo Performance for Set Fire to the Rain (Live).

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The Music

Taylor Swift opened the show with the wild circus-themed We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together; Ed Sheeran and Elton John teamed up for Sheeran's The A Team; Fun. sang Carry On; Dierks Bentley and Miranda Lambert sang Over You and Home; Miguel sang Adorn; Mumford & Sons, introduced by Johnny Depp, strummed I Will Wait; Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z went black-and-white for the rappin' 'n' groovin' Suit & Tie, followed with JT's new Pusher Love Girl; Alicia Keys and Maroon 5 united to perform Girl on Fire and Daylight; Rihanna crooned Stay with newcomer Mikky Ekko; The Black Keys were joined by Dr. John and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band for a rousing version of Lonely Boy; Kelly Clarkson sang a beautiful rendition of Tennessee Waltz in honor of the late Patti Page, then knocked Carol King's (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman out of the park; Sting joined Bruno Mars to sing Bruno's toe-tappin', reggae-tinged Locked Out of Heaven and The Police's Walking on the Moon, then Rihanna and Ziggy Marley took the stage to tribute Bob Marley with Could You Be Loved...

The Lumineers got the audience on their feet for Ho Hey; Jack White and Ruby Amanfu rocked Love Interruption, then erupted with Freedom at 21; Hunter Hayes played Wanted, and Carrie Underwood belted out Blown Away and Two Black Cadillacs; Stanley Clarke, Chick Corea and Kenny Garrett paid tribute to the late, great Dave Brubeck with Take Five; Elton John dedicated a tribute to the late Levon Helm, The Weight, to Levon and the late children of Sandy Hook, singing with gospel queen Mavis Staples, T-Bone Burnett, Brittany Howard of The Alabama Shakes and Mumford & Sons; Juanes performed Elton's Your Song in English and Spanish; Frank Ocean ran with Forrest Gump;  and to close the evening, LL Cool J put on his rapper cap with Chuck D, Tom Morello, Z-Trip and Travis Barker for the pumped-up (I Got) So Much Trouble In My Mind) and No Sleep Till Brooklyn tribute to the late Adam Yauch.

Video: Music Stars Share Their Biggest Influences

Other Highlights

LL Cool J kept the proceedings swift and social-media current, calling the event "Music's biggest and most tweeted night," while pointing out, "A Grammy isn't just a shiny thing to hold onto, a Grammy is a dream come true." He also made sure to call out hashtags throughout the night to keep the conversation going, a Grammy first.

Those remembered in memoriam included Dave Brubeck, Andy Williams, Donna Summer, Chuck Brown, Robin Gibb, Patti Page, Earl Scruggs, Davy Jones, Dick Clark, Herb Reed, Andy Griffith, Marvin Hamlisch, Patty Andrews, Jenni Rivera, Doc Watson, Ravi Shankar, Adam Yauch and Levon Helm.

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Wheels coming off

Betsy McCaughey

The central parts of ObamaCare don’t roll out until 2014, but the wheels are already falling off this clunker. The latest news from four federal agencies is that 1) insurance will be a lot less affordable than Americans were led to expect, 2) fewer people than promised will get insurance and 3) millions of people who have coverage through a job now will lose it, thanks to the president’s “reforms.” Oh, and children are the biggest victims.

The Affordable Care Act is looking less and less affordable.

Start with the IRS’s new estimate for what the cheapest family plan will cost by 2016: $20,000 a year to cover two adults and three kids. And that will only cover 60 percent of medical bills, so add hefty out-of-pocket costs, too.

The next surprise is for parents who thought their kids would be covered by an employer. Sloppy wording in the law left that unclear until last week, when the IRS ruled that kids won’t be covered.

Starting in 2014, the law will require employers with 50 or more full-time employees to offer coverage or pay a penalty. “Affordable” coverage, that is — meaning the employee can’t be told to contribute more than 9.5 percent of his salary. For example, a worker earning $40,000 a year cannot be required to pay more than $3.800.

But the law doesn’t specifically mandate family coverage — and now the administration says that won’t be required.

You can see why: If the lowest-cost family plan (again, two adults and three kids) is to run a whopping $20,000, and if the employee’s contribution is limited to $3,800, the employer’s tab would be $16,200 — adding about $7.40 an hour to the cost of that employee. Wisely, the IRS announced on Jan. 30 that employers won’t have to pay for dependents.

But the Congressional Budget Office’s much-cited prediction that ObamaCare would leave only 30 million people uninsured by 2016 was based on the assumption that kids would be covered by employers. At the very least, employers insuring their workers for the first time to avoid the penalty are unlikely to do that.

So how will the kids be covered? They won’t. The IRS shocked the law’s advocates by announcing that the insurance exchanges won’t provide subsidies for a child whose parent is covered at work.

Nor will these parents be penalized for not insuring their children — the IRS will kindly consider the kids exempt from the mandate.

Also exempt are millions of people who’ll stay uninsured because their state is wisely choosing not to loosen Medicaid eligibility.

Some background: Despite President Obama’s promises to help solve the problem of the uninsured by making private health plans more affordable, the law expands coverage mainly by forcing states to loosen their Medicaid eligibility rules. But the Supreme Court ruled that the feds can’t command states in this way.

At first, the CBO said that ruling would only prevent 4 million people from gaining coverage — but more states than it expected are refusing to go along; it could well be 8 million more without coverage.

Oh, and the CBO last week also doubled its previous estimate on how many people will lose the health coverage they now get through work, upping the figure to 8 million by 2016 and 12 million by 2019. Several top consulting firms put the figures even higher.

Yet the biggest setback is that most states are refusing to set up insurance exchanges. The exchanges are supposed to sell the government-mandated plans and hand out taxpayer-funded subsidies to most enrollees.

Here’s the glitch. The law says that in states that refuse, the federal government can set up an exchange. But the law empowers only state exchanges, not federal ones, to hand out subsidies. The Obama administration says it will disregard the law and offer subsidies in all 50 states anyway, but the case will likely go to the Supreme Court.

If the courts uphold the clear language of the law, then some 8 million people in the affected states won’t be eligible for subsidies to cover that $20,000 (or more) insurance bill. That’s another 8 million without coverage.

All in all, at least 40 million people could be uninsured in 2016, only 9 million fewer than before the law was passed.

Expect the momentum for repealing this law to grow as its flaws, perverse incentives and faulty predictions come to light.

Betsy McCaughey is the author of “Beating ObamaCare.”

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Green cards for sale at a South Beach hotel: Competition is on for EB5 investment visas

If David Hart gets his way, South Beach’s 42-room Astor Hotel will be on a hiring spree this year as it adds concierge service, a roof-top pool, an all-night diner, spa and private-car service available 24 hours a day.

New hires will be crucial to Hart’s business plan, since foreign investors have agreed to pay about $50,000 for each job created by the Art Deco boutique.

The Miami immigration lawyer specializes in arranging visas for wealthy foreign citizens under a special program that trades green cards for investment dollars. Businesses get the money and must use it to boost payroll. The minimum investment is $500,000 to add at least 10 jobs to the economy. That puts the pressure on Hart and his partners at the Astor to beef up payroll dramatically, with plans to take a hotel with roughly 20 employees to one with as many as 100 workers.

“My primary responsibility is to make something happen here over the next two years that will create the jobs we need,’’ Hart said a few steps away from a nearly empty restaurant on a recent weekday morning. “It’s all going to be transformed.”

Though established in the 1990s, the “EB5” visas soared in popularity during the recession as developers sought foreign cash to replace dried-up credit markets in the United States.

Chinese investors dominate the transactions, accounting for about 65 percent of the nearly 9,000 EB5 visas granted since 2006. South Korea finishes a distant second at 12 percent and the United Kingdom holds the third-place slot at 3 percent. If Latin America and the Caribbean were one country, they would rank No. 4 on the list, with 231 EB5 visas granted, or about 3 percent of the total.

Competition has gotten stiffer for the deep-pocketed foreign investors willing to pay for green cards. The University of Miami’s bio-science research park near the Jackson hospital system raised $20 million from 40 foreign investors under the EB5 program, most of them from Asia. The money went into the park’s first building; visa brokers are waiting to see if the second building will proceed so they can offer a new pool of potential green-card sales.

In Hollywood, the stalled $131 million Margaritaville resort had hoped to raise about $75 million from EB5 investors before ditching that plan last year to pursue more traditional financing. A retail complex by developer Jeff Berkowitz in Coral Gables also launched a program to raise $50 million in EB5 money for the project, Gables Station. Hart worked with other EB5 investors to back pizza restaurants in Miami and South Beach. A limestone mine in Martin County also was backed by EB5 dollars.

This year, the city of Miami itself is expected to get into the business by setting up an EB5 program to raise foreign cash for a range of city businesses and developments. The first would be the tallest building in the city — developer Tibor Hollo’s planned 85-story apartment tower, the Panorama, in downtown Miami.

With a construction cost of about $700 million, Miami’s debut EB5 venture hopes to raise about $100 million from foreign investors, said Laura Reiff, the Greenberg Traurig lawyer in Virginia working with Miami on the EB5 effort. “This is a marquis project,’’ she said.

The arrangement is a novel one for Miami, with the city planning to help a private developer raise funds overseas for a new high-rise. And it would allow Hollo and future participants to tout the city of Miami’s endorsement when competing with other Miami-area projects for EB5 dollars. “We will have the benefit of the brand of the city of Miami,’’ said Mikki Canton, the $6,000-a-month city consultant heading Miami’s EB5 effort. “A lot of these others are privately owned and they won’t have that brand.”

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Miami-Dade mayor disappointed at Major League Baseball over All-Star Game

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez was swept into office in part because of his opposition to the public financing for the Marlins’ new baseball stadium.

But that doesn’t mean he was happy when Major League Baseball awarded the 2015 All-Star Game to Cincinnati. Marlins President David Samson said last year he hoped to host the game, continuing a streak of All-Star games at new ballparks. That was before the team decimated its roster and chopped its payroll after last season.

After MLB Commissioner Bud Selig made the Cincinnati announcement last month, Gimenez sent him a letter expressing his disappointment. And the mayor phoned Selig last week, according to Gimenez’s calendar.

“[N]ow that the facility is built and operating, it is my responsibility to ensure its greatest benefit to our residents,” Gimenez wrote.

“Public sentiment regarding the Stadium is at an all-time low, and now we are further disappointed by the recent announcement...[I]t is clear that Miami has been benched once again, this time by Major League Baseball.”

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Chris Brown Car Collision

ET has learned that Chris Brown was involved in a solo, non-injury traffic collision in Beverly Hills at noon today, blaming the paparazzi for losing control of his Porsche and colliding with a wall.

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A statement from Lieutenant Lincoln Hoshino of the Beverly Hills police details the incident: "On February 9, 2013 at approximately 12:03 p.m., entertainer Chris Brown was involved in a solo, non-injury traffic collision in the 600 Block Bedford Drive/Camden Drive alley. Mr. Brown was the driver of the vehicle and collided with a wall. Brown stated that he was being chased by paparazzi causing him to lose control of his vehicle. Brown's Black Porsche was towed from the scene at his request."

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Earlier this week, Brown visited an L.A. courthouse with girlfriend Rihanna on to oppose a motion to revoke his probation stemming from his 2009 assault on Rihanna. Prosecutors claim Brown did not show sufficient evidence that he completed his required community labor sentence. 

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‘Gay? Roids?’ You don’t know squat!

Beloved Mets catcher Mike Piazza comes out swinging in a new memoir — confronting rumors about being gay and taking steroids, detailing his romantic home runs and finally settling the score with his hated rival, Roger Clemens.

The book, “Long Shot” (Simon & Schuster) comes a month after Piazza, arguably the greatest hitting catcher of all time, fell 98 votes short of being voted into the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. Many think he missed because of persistent rumors he used performance-enhancing drugs during a 16-year career.

The 44-year-old makes no bones about holding a grudge against Clemens for beaning him during a July 8, 2000, game, and for the infamous bat-throwing incident later that season against the Yankees during the World Series.

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The 98-mph fastball to his helmet could have been deadly.

“I truly believe that if I hadn’t gotten my head down at the last instant, Clemens’ two-seamer would have struck me in the eye and possibly killed me,” he recalls.

The Yankees hurler called the Mets dugout to apologize during the game, but Piazza wasn’t hearing it.

“I grabbed [the phone], threw it and said, ‘Tell him to go f--k himself,’ ” Piazza said.

“Roger Clemens had near-perfect control. I wouldn’t have batted an eye if he had just brushed me off the plate — of course that’s what he said he was trying to do . . . But to stick it in my forehead, that’s another story altogether.”

Piazza tells how he mapped out a plan for revenge — taking karate lessons and visualizing the next time they would go at it.

“I would approach with my fist pulled back. I figured he’d throw his glove out for protection. I’d parry the glove and then get after it,” Piazza writes.

He would get his chance in October — when the upstart Mets met their crosstown rivals in the World Series. The coming confrontation between the Mets’ 12-time All-Star catcher and the Bombers’ hard-case hurler was the talk of the city.

The climactic moment came at Yankee Stadium, during Clemens’ fourth pitch to Piazza in the first inning of Game 2. The sizzling fastball sawed Piazza’s bat into three pieces, with a shard flying toward the mound. Clemens picked up the splintered barrel and, inexplicably, chucked it in Piazza’s direction as the hitter ran down the first-base line.

“What the f--k is your problem?” Piazza, still holding the handle of the broken bat and walking toward the pitcher’s mound, asked Clemens. But Piazza went no further — and never realized his dream of revenge.

“There were complications,” he recalls. “The least of them was the realization that Clemens was a big guy, and I stood a pretty fair chance of getting my ass kicked in front of Yankee Stadium and the world. That was a legitimate concern.”

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Mega mansion frenzy: Buyer snaps up Pat Riley’s $16M home to level it, rebuild

Miami Heat President Pat Riley sold his spectacular bayfront mansion in gated Gables Estates for $16.8 million last March.

The 12,856-square-foot Mediterranean-style dream house at 180 Arvida Parkway has a theater, wine cellar, library, and a sprawling pool with waterfalls and an aqua bar.

But that’s all coming down.

Turns out the lure was the lot: a rare fingertip of prime land, nearly two acres, jutting into the turquoise waters of Biscayne Bay.

In December, the buyer — listed as 180 Arvida LLC represented by Miami attorney Mark Hasner — presented the city of Coral Gables with plans to tear down the home, built in 1991, and erect an even grander estate along the 900 linear feet of bayfront.

“Most people would move in and be perfectly happy, but clients are looking for perfection — really good stuff,” said Jorge Uribe, a senior vice president at One Sotheby’s International Realty, who wasn’t involved but sold an even bigger trophy property last year: a $39.4 million estate at 14 Indian Creek Dr., on Indian Creek Island in Miami Beach, dubbed “Miami’s Billionaire Bunker” by Forbes magazine.

“The trend in the last several years is a demand for very high-quality product. People are looking for really good locations, really good materials, and they’re willing to pay for it,” Uribe said.

Miami’s ultra-luxury market is on fire. Prices for the fanciest single-family homes and condominiums have soared to levels never before seen in the area, fueled by strong foreign demand and renewed interest from New Yorkers and others in the Northeast.

With Miami’s global image burnished by Art Basel Miami Beach and the debut of other cultural and entertainment venues, the city is emerging as an even greater magnet for the world’s super-rich.

In January, a penthouse at the Setai Resort & Residences on Miami Beach fetched $27 million, a new high for a Miami-Dade condominium. “Every building we do business in is at its highest price of all time,” said Mark Zilbert, president of Zilbert International Realty, which represented the buyer in the Setai deal.

Last August, a sleek, new home, built on spec at 3 Indian Creek Dr., sold for $47 million, a record high for a Miami-Dade residence. The buyer, whose identity has not been revealed, is Russian.

“People are realizing how valuable the bay waterfront is,” said Oren Alexander, co-founder of the Alexander Group at Douglas Elliman Real Estate, who co-listed the 3 Indian Creek property with The Jills team at Coldwell Banker and represented the buyer for the home. His father, Shlomy Alexander, developed the property with partner Felix Cohen.

Shlomy Alexander is working on two more extravagant spec homes — one at 30 Indian Creek Dr. and a second that is set to break ground shortly at 252 Bal Bay Dr. in Bal Harbour, his son said. Plans envision a tropical modern-style project that fuses the indoors and outdoors — a concept popular in Brazil.

The elder Alexander recently traveled to Italy to shop for exclusive stone for the projects, said the son.

“It’s really trending to the ultra-luxury. All sorts of exotic materials — exotic woods, exotic marbles, exotic stones,” said Sean Murphy, an executive vice president at Coastal Construction, a major builder of luxury hotels and condominiums that also has erected some of the most extravagant mansions in the region. “Everything is so exotic.”

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In South Florida, canceled flights leave Northeasteners stranded

Northeasterners taking cold weather respite in South Florida right before the storm scrambled when they faced flight cancellations and couldn’t get home.

At Miami International Airport, 30 to 40 flights had been canceled as of Friday night. At Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, 69 flights were canceled and 31 were delayed.

Despite the cancellations, Greg Chin, a spokesman for Miami International Airport, said it looked like a normal day.

“I think the word got out about the storm early enough for people to make other plans,” he said. “It wasn’t a surprise to anybody.”

Several South Florida hotels had lobbies bustling with travelers who needed to extend their stays.

The Hyatt Regency Pier Sixty-Six in Fort Lauderdale was busier than usual, with guests staying longer to avoid the storms, while The Delano Hotel in Miami Beach was sold out and had to turn away guests needing a room for a few more days.

South Florida events continued as planned, with a few exceptions. A jazz show featuring band 3 Cohens in the Rose and Alfred Miniaci Performing Arts Center had to cancel for Feb. 9 because of the storm.

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Khloe Kardashian: Kim Just Wants to Move On

Khloe Kardashian tells ET that sister Kim "just wants to move on" with her life and wrap up divorce proceedings with ex Kris Humphries, saying, "Honestly, she is so happy with her life right now, she just wants to put this behind her and move on."

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Kim, who is pregnant with Kanye West's child, filed a declaration in Los Angeles Superior Court last month seeking dissolution of her short-lived marriage to the basketball star. She is hoping to have it over and done with by the time she has her baby, due in July, but claims that Humphries is "stalling" the process.

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Khloe spoke with ET at a meet-and-greet to promote her new fragrance with hubby Lamar Odom, Unbreakable Love, at the Sears in Downey, CA. Khloe says her husband was the one who wanted to make the fragrance in the first place, one that they could both wear, making them the first celeb couple to have a unisex fragrance.

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The Dow at 14,000: not as good as gold

What an illuminating week for Wall Street — the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been bobbling just above and below the record high 14,000 mark, even as the country comes to grip with the reports that its economy has actually been slumping, with GDP shrinking 0.1 percent in the last quarter of 2012.

The Obama administration is trying to put a bright face on things — but the rest of us feel like we’re smoking more now and enjoying it less.

Well, guess what: While the Dow Jones Industrials have been edging past 14,000, the actual value of those stocks has been going down.

Bernanke: Has kept the Dow floating high by sinking the dollar’s value.

By this, I mean that if you take one share of each of the stocks in the Dow index, their combined value as measured in gold is lower than it used to be. The price in paper money may be going up, but the real value is slumping.

At about 14,000, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stands at nearly twice the 7,949 at which it stood on the day in January 2009 when President Obama first took the oath of office. But value of the stocks in the index has drifted downward; a portfolio of one share of each stock is worth only 8.3 ounces of gold, down from 9.3 ounces on Jan. 20, 2009.

There are those who will say that this is a trick, that no one measures things in ounces of gold anymore. Not since 1971, when President Richard Nixon finished taking America off the gold standard — which then still defined the dollar by law as a 35th of an ounce of gold.

Nixon’s move put us on a system of fiat money, in which the dollar isn’t backed by specie but nonetheless must be accepted in payment of debts.

Throughout history, though, people all over the world thought of gold and silver as the real money — and thinking of it that way can still be illuminating.

In his weekly radio address two years ago, the president spoke on soaring gasoline prices, saying there is “no silver bullet” to solve the problem.

It was a funny choice of words. It turns out that the value of gasoline — measured in ounces of silver (or gold) — hadn’t been going up at all. It had been going down.

In other words, it wasn’t the price of gasoline that was going up. It was the value of the United States dollar that was going down.

This is the part of the policy partnership of Barack Obama and Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernankethat no one likes to talk about. What it means is that there’s little joy on the street — Wall Street or (especially) Main Street — even in a week when the Dow Jones Industrial Average touches a historic high of 14,000.

Track the Dow in terms of gold, and you see what a collapse it’s been: The index was valued at 41.3 ounces of gold as recently as 2000.

Rep. Ron Paul is practically alone in Congress in paying attention to this warning. He confronted Bernanke with the question at a congressional hearing two years ago. The Fed chairman dodged by suggesting that consumers didn’t want to buy gold.

That was a funny argument to make at a time of soaring gold prices. And it’s a hard sell at a time when the Dow Jones average is at a historical high, yet the value of the stocks in it is slumping in terms of gold. Call it “the fiat Dow.”

It’s not just gadflies who are sounding these warnings. John Taylor, one of America’s savviest economists, argued in The Wall Street Journal this week that the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” policy has not only failed to solve the economic problems in the country but has actually made things worse.

If you want to draw your own conclusions as to whether he’s right, track the value of your IRA or pension fund in terms of ounces of gold.

Lipsky@nysun.com

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