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

Guest AuthorOctober 31, 2013

Gov. Rick Scott and our state lawmakers tried to make Florida welfare recipients submit to drug testing. Scott also wanted state workers to be drug tested. School boards across the state have instituted random drug testing for students and teachers. The new state symbol could easily become the urine specimen collection cup, especially if Gov. […]

Guest AuthorOctober 31, 2013

Iguanas and chickens. There was a time when one could start a lively — if not particularly enlightening — Key West cocktail conversation with the invocation of just one of our free-ranging critters. No longer. Iguana and chickens are so last year. We are onto squirrels. You know, those cute things with the fuzzy question-mark […]

Guest AuthorOctober 30, 2013

Florida’s enthusiasm for disenfranchising voters is an authoritarian’s theme park. The state is dallying in an on-again-off-again hate affair with early voting. It regularly conjures up fantastic tales of voter fraud that never happened. It treats ex-felons like ex-citizens forever robbed of their voting rights. And outdoing even bogus democracies like Iraq, it treats voter […]

Guest AuthorOctober 30, 2013

There is a tectonic shift taking place in our country right now, and I’m not talking about gay marriage or adults moving back home with their parents. Many studies have concluded that our nation’s love affair with the automobile appears to be coming to a screeching halt with the demographic group called Generation Y or […]

Guest AuthorOctober 30, 2013

Political momentum, on the national stage, is like the tides, coming and going and constantly changing. It often brings in flotsam and rarely takes any of the detritus away. Almost weekly you can hear the pundits claiming the tides have shifted in favor of — insert political party here — only until the next scandal […]

Guest AuthorOctober 29, 2013

Earlier this month, one of the country’s great politicians of our day, Congressman Bill Young, died while serving his 22nd term in office. Young was a career politician, the longest serving Republican in the House of Representatives. He was remembered as a devoted public servant, eulogized not only as an important advocate for the American […]

Guest AuthorOctober 29, 2013

The nondescript, two-story, white bungalow at 928 N. Main St. in Rockford, Ill., seems an illogical incubator for the 1990s neo-Confederate rhetoric that has shape-shifted into the Tea Party and Evangelical majority within the Republican Party. Today, 928 N. Main is the home of the Rockford Institute, a 37-year-old, internationally recognized, very private, paleoconservative think […]

Guest AuthorOctober 29, 2013

I can’t help but smile when I read in Varietyabout the mayor of Los Angeles begging film and television studios not to take work out of his city. A recent study by Film Works LA finds that movie production in Los Angeles has plummeted 60 percent since its peak 15 years ago. Increased taxes and regulations […]

Guest AuthorOctober 29, 2013

Imagine you are sitting at home watching TV and suddenly the phone rings. You mute the TV and answer the phone. “Mr. _______?” “Yes?” you quizzically reply, as it’s always slightly startling when someone knows your name and phone number without you recognizing his voice. The person on the phone is calling to help you […]

Guest AuthorOctober 28, 2013

Florida started to privatize its economic development functions in 1992 with the enactment of Enterprise Florida Inc. and abolished the Florida Department of Commerce in 1996. In 2011, Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature created the Department of Economic Opportunity. One of its responsibilities is to manage the state’s contract with Enterprise Florida. The president […]

Guest Author

Rick Outzen: I will, if you will, Governor Scott

Linda Cunningham: Key Westers have moved on from iguanas and chickens to squirrels

Pierre Tristam: A county’s economic development affront to voters: drop dead

Steve Robinson: America’s romance with the automobile ‘on the skids’

Ed Moore: Politicians and pundits should not treat governing like a sporting event

Steve Kurlander: Legacy of Bill Young: term limits not answer to fixing system

Linda Cunningham: Tea Party movement demonstrates unhealed legacy of Civil War

Gus Corbella: Keep Florida’s film industry booming

Dennis Ross: Your information, your choice, your protections

Dan Krassner: State lawmakers should give Enterprise Florida an overhaul