Columns

There’s a chink in Orlando trial lawyer John Morgan’s reputation as Florida’s champion for the $15 minimum wage.

Two years ago, I sold one of the last American offshore drilling vessels to a foreign buyer. The Ocean Titan was an obsolete jack-up rig, an equipment platform for deepwater exploration and development. Over its forty-year lifespan, American shipbuilding had been ravaged by rivals abroad and burdensome regulations at home. Today, the industry falls grievously short of the hope expressed by the drafters of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920: “that the United States shall have a merchant marine of the best equipped and most suitable types of vessels.”  

Twenty-five years ago on Nov. 3, 1992, William Jefferson Clinton was elected president of the United States -- and Hillary Clinton is still trying to take his place.

We saw milquetoast before in the form of Alex Sink. Heck, Gwen Graham actually reminds me of Sink, only Sink doesn’t run around saying, “Dad did this, and dad did that”.

Needing a victory to validate their majorities, congressional Republicans have chosen not to emulate Shakespeare's Henry V before Agincourt. He advocated stiffening the sinews, summoning up the blood and lending the eye a terrible aspect. The Republicans would rather define victory down.

Beware the low-level volunteer.

On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., took the Senate floor to urge expanding the child tax credit be included in its tax reform efforts. Rubio and U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, are backing legislation to expand the child tax credit. Rubio said the following on the Senate floor:

What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive ourselves into believing that corporate welfare can be seemly. Consider the caper, both amusing and depressing, that began when mighty Boeing sought protection behind the skirts of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

What kind of wild world has just been revealed? 

Latest to the vandals goes Teddy Roosevelt, whose bronze likeness astride a horse in front of New York's American Museum of Natural History recently received a splash of red paint upon its base.

Is there something in the water down there in Weston? Debbie Wasserman Schultz's Democratic National Committee endgame simply won't end. 

Maybe Richard Corcoran can apply his transparency legislation this session to stop local governments allowing unions to rip off taxpayers to the tune of millions of dollars.

Other stories will get bigger headlines, but Gov. Rick Scott's announcement Wednesday that he has proposed $63 million for teacher supply grants in his 2018-2019 budget deserves recognition.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., the chairwoman of the U.S. House Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee, weighed in on the Trump administration’s handling of the nuclear deal with Iran at a subcommittee hearing on “The President’s Iran Decision: Next Steps" on Wednesday.  Ros-Lehtinen said the following:

Both major news sources in the two Ricks' backyard, the Tampa Bay Times and Florida Politics, were all over the latest TV ad in the St. Pete mayoral race.