The winds have died and the mopping up has begun. Businesses are reopening as people head back to work while dealing, at least for now, with their new realities. I know people whose homes were badly damaged by this storm, while others – myself luckily included – had only minor inconveniences. No matter whether Irma dealt you a mighty blow or a glancing scratch, we’re all in this together.
Florida’s members of the United States Senate don’t agree on much, but with a Category 5 hurricane bearing down on Miami and the east coast, Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio are standing shoulder-to-shoulder in advocating for their state. Well done.
Floridians generally are a cocky bunch when it comes to hurricanes. A lot of people take the batteries-and-beer approach to these things: make sure you have plenty of both. Fill up the propane tank on the grill, fill the cooler with ice, and ride it out. Not this time.
My Republican friends (yes, I have them) loathe being called the party of mean people, and I completely understand why they feel that way. What some see as mean, others see as principled. That’s particularly true with programs like Medicaid expansion in Florida, which many Republicans say costs too much and doesn’t work well enough. I respect that point of view because it’s not looney, even if I don’t agree. But when it comes to so-called Dreamers – the children…
I guess I should be scared that North Korea wants to vaporize us, but just now watching a nasty lady named Irma churn her way through the Atlantic, maybe toward us, has priority on my freak-out list. I fear for the wonderful U.S. Virgin Islands, where I just visited about six weeks ago. They appear to be in the hurricane’s path. But after that, I can’t help wondering if this isn’t the “one” that could turn coastal Florida into the…
House Speaker Richard Corcoran is right on the money, so to speak, with his latest fiscal gambit. Corcoran has put 12 tourism development agencies throughout Florida on notice that they better have an accurate and public accounting of how they spend taxpayer dollars — and quickly. That includes big ones in Miami, Orlando and Tampa Bay.
The polls have former St. Petersburg mayor Rick Baker fluctuating around six to eight percent ahead of current mayor Rick Kriseman in the race to the city’s next mayor. That’s a solid lead, but a bit short of the 50 percent threshold Baker must cross to avoid a runoff. Most learned pundits seem to believe that’s where this race is headed. I know that’s sound logic, but I’ll crawl out on a limb and say after the ballots are counted today, it…
