Tag Archives: Florida
Flashback Friday: Civil Rights, Southern Manifesto and Voting Rights in Florida
In light of recent Civil Rights related controversies a look back at some of the sorry history of Florida members of Congress during the Civil Rights era. The Southern Manifesto (1956) from Florida. According to the official US House of Representatives site: ” Howard Smith of Virginia, chairman of the House Rules Committee, introduced theSouthern Manifesto in a […]
Flashback Friday: Florida’s first African-American member of Congress
Republican Josiah T. Walls was Florida’s first African-American Congressman, and a powerful symbol of the Reconstruction era in the state. Walls was born into slavery in Virginia and captured by the Union Army during the Peninsula Campaign. Eventually he was discharged in Florida after the Battle of Olustee and settled in the Gainesville area. Following […]
Flashback Friday: Charley Johns, The “Pork Chop” Gang, The Purple Pamphlet and the shame of Florida’s circa 1960’s Legislature
Senator Charley Johns (D-Starke) is one of the best known figures in the Florida Political History for multiple dubious reasons. The leader of the infamous “Pork Chop Gang”. Johns became Governor in 1953 after Governor Dan McCarty the first Governor elected from southern Florida died just months after taking office. Prior to 1968, Florida had […]
Why Democratic activists do not trust Florida’s Democratic Party leaders
Less than 24 hours after losing with an incumbent in one of the most visible positions in the state, Florida’s Democratic Party leadership is again taking it on the chin from armchair pundits across the state. While many FDP backers have taken to Twitter and Facebook to downplay the party’s failures and throw stones at […]
Some Republicans still denying reality on Cuba
President Obama’s attempts at détente with Florida’s southern neighbor Cuba have been well-received throughout the nation and by many in Florida. Approval for the policy change has been wide-ranging and controversy at a minimum. That is unless a zealot has power in some capacity, as Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart currently has in the US House. Diaz-Balart has […]
SINE DIE not a completely crazy move by the House
The Florida House irresponsibly cut its session short on Tuesday afternoon at 1:15. Or did it? First off let me state that the House position on Medicaid expansion is irreconcilable with the responsibilities of a western industrialized nation. Were Florida to continue down this current path, our state’s health care system will more closely resemble […]
Florida’s Testing Era Ends & the Book Closes on Jeb’s Grand School Grading Experiment”
By Dr. Rachel Pienta In another year, Florida might be buzzing over a special session on schools. Concerns related to funding and testing continue to be hot button issues. This year, however, education has taken a back seat to health care and Medicaid expansion. That said, it does not mean that the executive or legislative […]
Flashback Friday: The American Conquest of Florida
Florida was formally annexed into the United States by the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 between the US and Spain. However, Florida’s move from Spanish Colony that spanned from the Mississippi River to the Keys after the 1783 Treaty of Paris to American territory happened piecemeal between 1810 and 1819 and involved more than anything the […]
The Florida Legislature, Marco Rubio, hypocrisy and the naked ideology of an Oligarchy
On a day when former State House Speaker Marco Rubio announced his intentions to run for President of the United States as a candidate of the right, no better time exists to look at the behavior of the Florida Legislature. Since the late 1990’s Florida’s Legislature has drifted further and further from the mainstream of […]
Flashback Friday: The End of the Civil War in Florida
This week marked the 150th Anniversary of the end of major hostilities in the Civil War. Throughout much of the war, union forces occupied Pensacola and Key West the two most strategic locations in the state. But the capital, Tallahassee which was the size of a large village at the time was never captured and […]
The Florida Squeeze 