Florida Politics - Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government.

Daniel TilsonFebruary 22, 2014

Unless your annual income ranks near the top 1 percent in Florida, the economic news coming out of two major new reports released last week is not good. On Wednesday the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute released “The Increasingly Unequal States of America,” with a dedicated section called “Lopsided income Growth in Florida“. Key takeaways include: […]

Daniel TilsonFebruary 19, 2014

Here they go again. A determined cohort of elected officials in our Legislature is trying to turn working and retired people against each other, to better the odds of a dangerous bill becoming destructive law. As reported in The Florida Current, the Senate Community Affairs Committee Tuesday passed a bill by a 5-4 vote that […]

Martin DyckmanFebruary 17, 2014

Even as a television plot it would be implausible. A white man enraged by loud music coming from their car shoots 10 bullets at four black teenagers, killing one. But the jury is able to find him guilty only of the shots that missed. Once again, Florida is a theater of the absurd. There are […]

Julie DelegalFebruary 16, 2014

The wind and rain plunged us all into the bone-chilling 40-degree range. But the weather didn’t keep the leadership apparatus of the Republican Party of Florida — or its Jacksonville loyalists — from showing up for Charlie Crist’s book signing. Crist, a former Republican governor now running for his old job as a Democrat, is […]

Martin DyckmanFebruary 12, 2014

The Florida Bar is all but begging lawyers to apply for once-coveted memberships on the panels that nominate judges for the governor to appoint. With too few applications on hand for 12 of the 20 judicial circuits and one of the five district courts of appeal, the Bar has extended the deadline from Feb. 11 […]

Guest AuthorFebruary 10, 2014

Where is the outrage? The news that University of South Florida anthropologists found 55 bodies buried on the property of the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna prompted the usual anger from former inmates and relatives of boys who died there. But the silence from our state’s legal and political establishment is disconcerting. Attorney General […]

Daniel TilsonFebruary 9, 2014

Last week there was yet another example of the enduring, unethical effort by forces in our Florida government to make it harder or impossible for some of us to vote. This time around, college kids are the targets. Students at the University of Florida in Gainesville thought increasing civic engagement at their publicly owned school […]

Guest AuthorJanuary 29, 2014

Is anyone in Tallahassee smarter than a fifth-grader? Anyone? It sure doesn’t seem so and the Florida Department of Education announcement last week about the Florida version of Common Core doesn’t help. Common Core is unpopular with many conservatives — Gov. Rick Scott’s base — who view it as federal intrusion into the state education […]

Guest AuthorJanuary 21, 2014

The GOP is in need of a unifier in a bad way! There seem to be Republicans who believe they have proprietary rights about who is allowed to call themselves a Republican. Let’s get one thing straight — one wing of the party cannot determine who and who is not a Republican any more than […]

Peter SchorschJanuary 20, 2014

For a full decade, a measure filed in the Legislature was doomed before bill drafting entered the final line. The proposal — to give in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants living in Florida — was unthinkable in Florida’s two Republican-controlled chambers. Remember, these elected Republicans were to answer to their Republican constituents every election cycle, and […]

Tag: Rick Scott
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Daniel Tilson: Bad news last week for Florida middle class…and GOP?

Daniel Tilson: Fla. Legislature must stop 2014 attack on public employee pensions

Martin Dyckman: ‘Loud music’ killing is another stain on the ‘Gunshine State’

Julie Delegal: Blame our uncivil politics on gerrymandering and ideologues

Martin Dyckman: Scott is trying to pack the courts with compliant judges

Andrew Skerritt: Where is the outrage over the bodies at Marianna?

Daniel Tilson: Floridians must unite to fight voter suppression

Shannon Nickinson: Lurching from one benchmark to another hurts schools

Jamie Miller: Who is going to unify the GOP?

Peter Schorsch: Odds good for in-state tuition for undocumented students