Archives: January 2024
Excerpts on Florida from Reason's vaults
11 years ago
February 2013
"In October police arrested Joseph Harris of Bradenton, Florida, for employing two unlicensed telemarketers at his air conditioning business. Calling people without a license is a third-degree felony in Florida, legally equivalent to cocaine possession, battery of a police officer, or burglary of an unoccupied structure. Harris faces up to five years in jail and a $5,000 fine. The Florida Telemarketing Act requires businesses that solicit sales over the phone to pay an annual fee of $1,500 and an additional $50 for each telemarketer. If salespeople use a script, it must be cleared by the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services."
John Ross
"Telemarketer Tax"
23 years ago
March 2001
"For any constitutionalist, the proper reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court's majority opinion in Bush v. Gore is dismay. In dispensing with the Florida high court's efforts to resolve a confusing election-code tangle, derailing the election-contest process in Florida, and sidestepping the constitutionally established mechanisms for deciding disputed elections, the U.S. Supreme Court has done more than exceed the bounds of -limited judicial power—it also confirmed the most cynical view of how the nation's top court operates."
Mike Godwin
"The Supreme Court Shot Itself in the Foot While Shooting Down Al Gore"
31 years ago
January 1993
"Miami, like any other large American city, can be a tough place, full of urban alienation, ethnic tension, and criminal violence. Columnist Dave Barry once wrote that when he first moved to Miami, neighbors kept leaning over his back fence and greeting him: 'Hola! Mucho gusto a conocerle! No voy a matarle!' ('Hi! Nice to meet you! I'm not going to kill you!') But as Hurricane Andrew retreated into the Everglades, Miami—without the help of human-resources counselors, urban development grants, or racially balanced neighborhood advisory boards—became a community."
Glenn Garvin
"Reaping the Whirlwind"
40 years ago
November 1984
"By 1970, the Cubans were securely established in the city. The census counted some 291,000 of them, or 23 percent of the population in Dade County. During the next decade—those stagnant years of the 1970s so pregnant with change and growth—the number would more than double, rising to 41 percent of the citizenry. Through most of this period, however, the Florida economy grew far faster than the rest of the country's, with lower unemployment and smaller welfare burdens. Every new influx of Cubans brought new fears and alarms, new demands for federal aid and management, while the Miami economy continued to expand far faster than those of the regions from which the aid was solicited. Despite the unimpeachable lessons of the long history of American immigration, the American people greeted each new siege as an economic problem rather than the economic boon it demonstrably became."
George Gilder
"Miami's Cuban Miracle"
49 years ago
October 1975
"It is, I presume by now well known that Walt Disney World is full of marvels. The city has, for example, a smoothly functioning mass transit system, no pollution to speak of, a garbage disposal system which defies belief (garbage is not picked up by trucks—it is disposed of by a network of pneumatic tubes leading to an off-site processing plant), an area for alligators and ecological researchers to admire each other, and fire sprinklers in the buildings. I hope it is not necessary to mention that all this is unusual."
David Levy
"Learning Economics From Walt Disney World"
51 years ago
October 1973
"In July the Florida Supreme Court ruled that The Miami Herald must provide equal space for a rebuttal to political candidates whom the paper had opposed editorially. Thankfully, the Herald is appealing the case to the Supreme Court, but the fact that a state's highest court could rule so boldly against the First Amendment shows how far we've come."
Robert Poole
"The New Censorship"
