Digital Domain Media Group's collapse last week made victims of all Florida taxpayers. To the tune of $20 million. But few of those taxpayers will feel the pinch quite as directly as the long-suffering citizens of Port St. Lucie.
Teacher tenure, performance pay and standardized tests often drive the Florida public education debate, but the quietest revolution may well be the growing legion of parents who now choose their childrens schools.
Even as Florida Democrats gathered in Charlotte, N.C., to nominate President Barack Obama for re-election, they were still mindful of a target closer to home: Republican Gov. Rick Scott.
Party officials and activists are clearly animated by the prospect of defeating Scott, who emerged from one of the closest elections in Florida's history to become one of the most unpopular governors in recent memory. And while Scott's numbers have improved recently, Democrats are still hopeful that 2014 will bring their first victory in the race for governor in 20 years.
President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have spent the last several months trying to portray their rival Republicans calls for more limited government as some rallying cry for libertarian extremism.
Republicans have gone from a preference for market-based solutions to an absolutism when it comes to the marketplace; a belief that all regulations are bad; that government has no role to play, the president said in a speech back in June.
This time four years ago, there was a lot of talk of "hope and change." This week, President Obama exhorted Americans to continue to hope rather than to make a change.
And a Florida politician had his own kind of change on display. Charlie Crists change of heart, from "Ronald Reagan and Jeb Bush Republican" to an Obama-backing speaker at the Democratic National Convention, brought the expected calls of derision from his former Republican brethren who said he really hasn't changed and is just the same old opportunistic Charlie.
WASHINGTON -- With two extravagant entertainments under way, it is instructive to note the connection between the presidential election and the college football season: Barack Obama represents progressivism, a doctrine whose many blemishes on American life include universities as football factories, which progressivism helped to create.
There may have been little complaining in public about federal bank regulations or the need to acquire bank loans, but that hasnt altered Floridas chief financial officer's mind about the 2010 Wall Street overhaul through Dodd-Frank.
CFO Jeff Atwater said he was getting such comments in private as he hosted nearly 200 small-business owners, from diverse backgrounds, from across the state in Tampa on Thursday and Friday.
Nominating Barack Obama as the candidate of the liberal party for president, Bill Clinton dwelled upon the need for cooperation.
The Supreme Court of Florida heard oral arguments Friday morning in an appeal by Republican Gov. Rick Scotts administration of a March ruling by a circuit judge overturning key elements of the Legislature's 2011 reform of the state employee retirement system.
