Floridas unemployment rate dropped to its lowest mark since March 2009, with numbers for January down 10 percent since November, according to the state Department of Economic Opportunity.
For the first month of 2012, the seasonally adjusted unemployment mark for the Sunshine State was 9.6 percent, down from 9.9 percent a month earlier and 10.9 percent a year earlier.
Gov. Rick Scott stated he was pleased with the latest numbers.
U.S. Rep. John Mica turned up the heat on the Transportation Security Administration Tuesday, prodding the agency to allow more airports to privatize their screening operations.
Speaking at Orlando-Sanford International Airport, whose "opt-out" application was denied by the TSA last year, Mica said the federal agency "attempted to shut down this cost-effective and more efficient screening model for airports."
Sixteen airports operate under the Screening Partnership Program, and others are interested in doing so, but Mica said the TSA has dragged its feet.
SENATE RELEASES REDISTRICTING SESSION SKED
Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, issued a proposed calendar Monday for the special redistricting session set to get under way Wednesday. The Senate will begin at 1 p.m. Wednesday, with the Reapportionment Committee meeting 15 minutes after that day's session wraps up. The panel will meet again the following Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. to approve a new map. That plan is set to be considered on the floor Thursday and Friday of that week.
PROGRESS, ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS SETTLE
There have been many frauds of historic proportions -- for example, the financial pyramid scheme for which Charles Ponzi was sent to prison in the 1920s, and for which Franklin D. Roosevelt was praised in the 1930s, when he called it Social Security. In our own times, Bernie Madoff's hoax has made headlines.
Bouncing back from tough times, Florida is now among the nation's top job creators.
A Goldman Sachs survey found that job growth in four sand states -- Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada -- is outpacing the rest of the country.
I was a little bit surprised, said Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs and lead author of the report. Whats particularly interesting is the contrast this new data provide between now and where we were a year ago, when [job growth] was still below the national average.
Update: Rick Santorum Wins Close Battles in Alabama and Mississippi.
Eyes turn toward the Deep South on Tuesday as Alabama and Mississippi hold their Republican presidential primaries -- and polls released Monday show that both states are close.
There are 50 delegates on the line in Tuesday's Alabama Republican primary and, according to a poll released on Monday from American Research Group (ARG), Newt Gingrich holds a small lead.
With a successful legislative session now in the rear-view mirror and the states biggest business lobbying groups awaiting the governors signature on the bills they backed, attention is shifting to this years election cycle.
The Florida Chamber of Commerce soon will release its annual "How They Voted" publication -- a legislative report card that grades each member of the Florida Legislature on his or her pro-jobs, pro-business legislative action.
Going into the once-a-decade redistricting session, while starting it with a budget deficit, the conventional wisdom was that not much else would get done this year.
With the need to cut spending and the difficulty of redrawing political boundaries always a tough balancing act fraught with more challenge this year because of two new constitutional amendments that said it had to be done without taking party politics into account the opening of the year came with the promise of acrimony, infighting, and some painful lessons about who everyone's friends were.
In the cold, gray numbers of election returns and exit poll percentages, a reader with some imagination can find clues to people's deep feelings, their hopes and fears, their self-images and moral values.
