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Tom Jackson - page 2

Tom Jackson has 30 articles published.

Recovering sports columnist and former Tampa Tribune columnist Tom Jackson argues on behalf of thoughtful conservative principles as our best path forward. Fan of the Beach Boys, pulled-pork barbecue and days misspent at golf, Tom lives in New Tampa with his wife, two children and two yappy middle-aged dogs.

Tom Jackson: A week on the trail to political eternity

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

It’s said in politics; a week is an eternity. Some weeks, maybe. Not the one just behind us. The reason I know this for a certainty is that last week was precisely when I took a mind-cleansing break from the day-by-day hubbub that is this year’s precedent-setting, stomach-turning election. The cause, both recreational and restorative, was joining with several other fellows in an annual breakneck tour of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail in Alabama. The Trail, part of the…

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Let’s be careful out there, even on Matthew’s ‘safe’ side

in The Bay and the 'Burg by

In the greater Tampa Bay area, we’re the lucky ones just now. Hurricane Matthew is churning north, bearing down on Florida’s eastern flank, threatening the coasts with their charming names: Gold, Treasure, Space, First … now suddenly sounding like the beaches of Normandy — Utah, Omaha, Juno, Gold, and Sword. So much likely destruction, so much potential human suffering. Hours before the core of the storm was scheduled to strike the state, Thursday the outer bands already had knocked out…

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Tom Jackson: Donald Trump lost, big league … or did he?

in 2017/Top Headlines by

Paraphrasing the driver in “Taxi” when he approached the gorgeous blonde in the bar: “You look like the kind of voter who’s heard every debate takedown in the book. … So I guess one more won’t hurt.” Let’s begin by conceding that nobody knows anything anymore. There’s not a single conventional thinker who thought Donald Trump would make it as far as the Iowa caucuses, let alone wind up the center of the balloon shower at the Republican National Convention.…

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Tom Jackson: Appeal puts poor students under FEA’s boot

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

Now that the Florida Education Association has chosen to appeal its legal double-drubbing over the state’s scholarship program for students from low-income families, the question that leaps immediately to mind is this: Why does the teachers’ union hate poor kids? Seriously. About 92,000 students from modest circumstances are attending private schools through the 15-year-old Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, but the FEA wants to cut them off and haul them back into a system that, for far too many, is…

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Tom Jackson: In Pasco, all roads lead to Mike Fasano

in The Bay and the 'Burg/Top Headlines by

Whatever else we might be tempted to say in the aftermath of last month’s recent primary election, for those who live and/or work in Pasco County, this, above all, is beyond dispute: Pasco is Mike Fasano’s county. Everyone else is just visiting. Who but Fasano, the nudging, empathetic, perpetually beatifying champion of the “little guy and little gal” could have done in the Republican race for Pasco County property appraiser what he did with the fundamentally flawed Gary Joiner? That…

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Tom Jackson: TBX meets the Star Trek test

in The Bay and the 'Burg by

As someone who lives near a thoroughfare in a constant state of construction, I sympathize with anyone who looks upon the approach of road expansion with dread. It’s noisy. It’s dirty. It’s inconvenient. It’s hard on tires and suspensions. It impedes traffic in ways that seem to outweigh any eventual benefit. And all but the last is demonstrably true, because when that stretch of improved multi-lane boulevard opens, all smooth and wide and freshly striped, it is as if the…

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Tom Jackson: Maybe if we thought of primaries as playoffs …

in The Bay and the 'Burg/Top Headlines by

The impression I get is people have the wrong idea about primary elections. To apply a sports analogy, people — I’d call them voters, except they’re plainly not — think of primaries as the exhibition season. This is not without solid foundation. I mean, they do sort of look like the preseason. Starry-eyed unknowns hoping to take down the veteran; once-storied hotshots looking for one last hurrah. (I’m looking at you, Jim Norman.) And the way we treat it, it’s…

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