FLORIDA POLITICS
Since 2002, daily Florida political news and commentary

 

UPDATE: Every morning we review and individually digest Florida political news articles, editorials and punditry. Our sister site, FLA Politics was selected by Campaigns & Elections as one of only ten state blogs in the nation
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Welcome To Florida Politics

Thanks for visiting. On a semi-daily basis we scan Florida's major daily newspapers for significant Florida political news and punditry. We also review the editorial pages and political columnists/pundits for Florida political commentary. The papers we review include: the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, St Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and, occasionally, the Florida Times Union; we also review the political news blogs associated with these newspapers.

For each story, column, article or editorial we deem significant, we post at least the headline and link to the piece; the linked headline always appears in quotes. We quote the headline for two reasons: first, to allow researchers looking for the cited piece to find it (if the link has expired) by searching for the original title/headline via a commercial research service. Second, quotation of the original headline permits readers to appreciate the spin from the original piece, as opposed to our spin.

Not that we don't provide spin; we do, and plenty of it. Our perspective appears in post headlines, the subtitles within the post (in bold), and the excerpts from the linked stories we select to quote; we also occasionally provide other links and commentary about certain stories. While our bias should be immediately apparent to any reader, we nevertheless attempt to link to every article, column or editorial about Florida politics in every major online Florida newspaper.

 

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The Blog for Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Piercing the Hype ...

    on Okeechobee:
    On Monday, Gov. Bush announced a $200 million plan to stop killing Lake Okeechobee and stop poisoning the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers with water dumped from the lake. The words are nice. A bill that makes the plan state law would be better.

    The plan Gov. Bush and others call "bold and aggressive" actually includes old projects such as reservoirs and filter marshes to hold and clean polluted water before it enters the lake and the rivers. New ideas include yet-to-be-made rules that would require farmers and homeowners in the lake's watershed to use low-phosphorus fertilizers by 2008, make developers hold and clean runoff in new projects, and ban the spreading of sewage sludge on farm fields by 2011. The governor also backed the idea of keeping lake levels lower all year — that would help grasses the lake needs to survive — and a 2007 deadline for limiting pollution in tributaries leading to the lake.

    All the ideas are good, even if it took Gov. Bush more than six years to care about Lake Okeechobee. ...

    One big problem with the governor's plan is putting the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs in charge of changing and enforcing rules on fertilizers. The department also has the job of promoting farming, and can't even enforce laws governing use of pesticides. Another is that, as Gov. Bush noted, he will be gone in 15 months, and with him the Department of Environmental Protection secretary who is supposed to be in charge of the lake cleanup.
    "There oughta be a law to save Lake Okeechobee".

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