Guest Author, Author at Florida Politics - Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government.

Guest AuthorFebruary 24, 2014

Corruption shrinks from sunlight; disclosure is the key to accountability. The public has long known that to hold elected officials and candidates accountable, we must be able to follow the money. In 2013, true to Florida’s laudable open-government history and culture, our Legislature enacted a package of significant campaign finance reforms. Championed by House Speaker […]

Guest AuthorFebruary 24, 2014

The Armed Occupation Act of 1842 gave 160 acres of Florida land to anyone who could fight the Seminoles and hold his ground for seven years. The congressional legislation was designed to increase the nonnative population of Florida. In 2005, the Florida Legislature approved the “stand your ground” provision of the self-defense law ostensibly to […]

Guest AuthorFebruary 23, 2014

The curtain is about to go up on the 2014 session of the Florida Legislature and perhaps the top story is not what our leaders will accomplish, but what they will ignore. Since the enactment of term limits, legislators know when they are leaving from the day they are elected. The election night tally begins […]

Guest AuthorFebruary 23, 2014

In recent years thousands of Americans have moved from states plagued by high taxes and stifling regulations to states such as Florida and Texas, where entrepreneurship is encouraged and residents get to keep more of what they earn. Even so, a study newly released by The Institute for Justice (IJ) and The James Madison Institute […]

Guest AuthorFebruary 20, 2014

The departure of Florida State University President Eric Barron to join the Penn State University system was met with much surprise, as was the leaving of former State University System Chancellor Frank Brogan, also recently migrating to Pennsylvania, and before him the move of John Cavanaugh from the University of West Florida to this same […]

Guest AuthorFebruary 20, 2014

One of the most bitter and painful religious controversies in American history was waged between 1979 and roughly 1995 in the Southern Baptist Convention. Known as the “conservative resurgence,” among other names, it was an internal political fight for control of the convention’s leadership, its agencies and its seminaries, with a conservative wing that had […]

Guest AuthorFebruary 20, 2014

It’s time that we shift the medical and judicial focus regarding marijuana. In 2010 there were 38,329 deaths caused by drug overdose: 22,134 from pharmaceutical drugs, 16,651 from pharmaceutical opioid analgesics and zero from marijuana. This year, three initiatives are moving forward in Florida that can help control the quality, quantity and delivery of a […]

Guest AuthorFebruary 19, 2014

Our elected officials get a plethora of input from phone calls, e-mails and desperate testimony in town halls and committee meetings. But, most likely, the decisions they make are done in those quiet, introspective moments when they process all that they have read and heard. But sometimes, they reach out for guidance from higher authorities. […]

Guest AuthorFebruary 19, 2014

There it was in The New York Times: schmutz. In an article on the efficacy of raising the height of the Bayonne Bridge connecting New York’s Staten Island with New Jersey, no less a maven than the executive director of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey made a point by stating: “The […]

Guest AuthorFebruary 19, 2014

It is well known that Florida has difficult challenges in delivering oral-health services to low-income children. Yet progress is being made. Florida’s prepaid “carved out” dental-health plans are able to maximize dollars received from the state and boost provider participation in their networks. They are directly accountable to the state government. This progress will be […]

Guest Author
Image via AP.

Lester Abberger & Marilynn Wills: Put all campaign finance reports online

Andrew Skerritt: ‘Stand your ground’ is a 19th century solution for a modern problem – incivility

John Grant: ‘Bulldozer politics’ is good for politicians, bad for citizens

Robert McClure: Fla. business climate’s big flaw: occupational licensing and regulation

Ed Moore: Higher education in Florida, from paradise to Pennsylvania

Cary McMullen: A survey of Florida Southern Baptists may surprise you

Gary J. Stein: A medical marijuana bill ‘written in the spirit of the constitutional amendment’

Gary Stein: Some pols are praying for guidance on medical marijuana

Rich Sloane: Read this if you want to be a ‘maven’ on Yiddish terms

Dr. Frank Catalanotto: State’s dental carve-out works, should be continued