Florida Tops In Public Corruption

The report concluded that Florida had 781 public corruption convictions between 2000 and 2010, tops in the nation. California and Texas were close behind, with New York fourth. But Florida’s corruptions history also contributed to it having three cities listed this year among Forbes’ magazine’s ‘most miserable,’ with Miami #1,
West Palm Beach #4 and Fort Lauderale #7.
here

GOP's Plan To Disenfranchise Voters In Florida

Downtown Mural

Finding Tampa

Stop Illegally Purging Florida Voters

We have to stop Governor Scott today—he is embarrassing Florida and corrupting the electoral process. His reckless acts have local and national implications. So let's ring his office's phones off the hook until he stops his racially-targeted attack on voting rights.

Will you call Scott right now? Tell him, "Stop illegally purging Florida voters."
Here's where to call.  Rick Scott: (850) 488-7146

Ride Hart Be Smart

The 2001 Odyssey Hopes To Entice RNC Patrons

The 2001 Odyssey strip club in Tampa, Florida has revamped its online marketing strategy in hopes of attracting some of the nearly 50,000 people expected to attend the 2012 Republican National Convention.
here

Tampa Bay Homeless

Homeless Living In Tampa

What Stogie Had For Lunch

Chicken and Waffles
$4.99 At Tampa Luv, 8426 N Florida Ave in Tampa
Eat Local!

Allen West Discusses Obama Using Blow

Protest RNC

Wear what’s on your mind. And do it in style. Check out our latest protest gear!
Get ready for August. And tell your friends!
here

Yuengling To Build New Brewhouse in Tampa

Yuengling announced Thursday that construction has begun 
on a new brew house in Tampa.
here
Yummy! Stogie's Favorite.

Tampa Cuban Sandwich Festival

Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer

Hillsborough County — which has almost 700,000 registered voters — has decided to abandon its voting purge after finding that at least six local people on the list supplied by Tallahassee were in fact U.S. citizens in good standing. The county’s Supervisor of Elections Office had received from Tallahassee a list of 72 “noncitizens” in mid-April. The Elections Office sent each of those persons a certified letter saying they were ineligible to vote, and if they disputed that claim, they’d have to prove it.
here

Hillsborough County Unveils New Website

Hillsborough County launched a new government website Wednesday that's touted as being quicker and easier to use than the old site.
here

Justice Department Orders Florida to Stop Voter Purge

Occupy St. Pete Seniors Endure The Rain To Protest

It’s been less than a month since Bank of America’s annual shareholders meeting and protesters say they haven’t made any changes to benefit their customers. So members of the Occupy movement called for people to “Move Your Money”
 at a rally in downtown St. Pete.
here

Humane Society of Tampa Bay

Positively Tampa Bay: Local business man Bob Reina of Talk Fusion
 donates more than $1 million to Humane Society.

Tampa Bay Homeless

Meet Donna
She has been homeless since 2010, She is from Chicago.

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn

Today’s caption contest asks you to identify what you think
Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn is targeting with that .50 caliber machine gun.
 Leave your answers here.

Sign The Petition

Here we go again. They did it for George W. Bush in 2000, and now the Republicans are working to steal the 2012 Presidential election for Mitt Romney in Florida.

It's straight out of Katherine Harris' playbook. Florida Governor Rick Scott is currently deploying a massive and systematic effort to purge up to 182,000 Floridians who are likely Democratic voters from the state's voting rolls.
more

Welcome to VoteForEddie.com

I am VoteForEddie.Com an Independent candidate for U.S. House of Representatives District 25 in South Florida. I am running on a platform of "New Energy, New Ideas". My main issue is securing energy independence through a renewable energy only initiative.

Vote For Eddie
He is running against Right Winger and enemy of the Cuban people Mario Diaz Balart.

Edward Condry, Jr., Of Fort Meyers

Tampa Police arrested a Lee County man Tuesday morning for child neglect after he left his toddler unattended in a car while visiting a Tampa strip club.
here

Obama's New Spanish Ad In Florida

Big Truck

Auburndale

Florida Seniors Lobby for Legal Marijuana

Robert Platshorn served nearly 30 years in prison on federal drug charges. Since getting out four years ago, he's been promoting medical marijuana use to seniors in Florida.

Money Car

Tampa

Pam Bondi

Future Job Training

What Stogie Had For Lunch

Bacon Burger
With Fries and Rice
$5.00 At Dino's Drive In in Winter Haven
Eat Local!

Protest RNC

T-Shirts
here

Obama 2012

We Can Do It!

Republican Picnic

Tampa

Tampa Bay Homeless

Homeless Living In Tampa

St. Pete PD A Paramilitary Organization

Management at the St. Pete PD will tell you they are a paramilitary organization. They follow command protocol. The rules are the law and they follow the rules.
here

A Pro - Obama Veteran

Recent polls seem to indicate that a majority of older military veterans support Mitt the Romney over President Obama. Well, hot damn, they didn't ask me!
here

Brandon Areana

Local Babe!
more

March On The RNC

March On The RNC

20,000 Political Prisoners Arrested in Tampa

Like the other 19,999 prisoners that were rounded up and taken away, I had no idea what hit me until the moment the trap was sprung and I certainly had no idea that I had unwillingly participated in helping the government round up thousands of my fellow Domestic Belligerents…until it was too late.
here

This Week In The War On Voting: Florida, Again

Tampa Bay Homeless

Homeless Living In Tampa

President Obama and the Fight for LGBT Rights

Glee star Jane Lynch narrates this documentary about LGBT rights in America. The video features a candid interview with President Obama, who speaks about the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, why he supports marriage equality, and what's at stake for the LGBT community in this election.

What Stogie Had For Lunch

Something Yummy
At The Yummy House, 2620 E. Hillsborough Avenue, Tampa
Eat Local!

Rick Scott's Florida Unemployment Reform Shortchanges The Jobless

Two legal groups want the federal government to investigate Florida's treatment of jobless workers following reforms that made the Sunshine State's unemployment insurance program the stingiest in the nation.

more

Tampa Bay Homeless

Meet Lonnie
He is a local. He has been homeless 19 years.

Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park

Finding Tampa

Florida Governor Purges Voters From Voting Rolls

Governor Rick Scott is questioning the eligibility of the thousands of Florida voters, but his methods are being questioned by officials on both sides of the aisle.

What Stogie Had For Lunch

Fried Chicken

$4.95 at Dodge's in Dunedin

Eat Local!

Cuban Sandwich Showdown: Miami or Tampa?

Tampa can lay claim to the original Cuban Sandwich, but with a population of more than 1 million cuban residents, Miami believes it deserves to be considered the Cuban Sandwich Capital. You be the judge as we feature a Cuban Sandwich Showdown between Versailles restaurant of Miami and The Columbia in Ybor City.

The End of Florida Progressive Coalition?

In 2004, after the re-election of George W. Bush, which was shocking to me, I was kind of at a loss as to what to do in terms of blogging. I had been blogging since 1998, mostly about national topics. But the national blogosphere was clogged and I wasn’t covering national politics from any kind of angle that others weren’t covering better than I was. And it was clear that I needed to try to do something that would have more of an impact, otherwise I wouldn’t feel satisfied with my place in the political world. So, after talking to a number of other bloggers around the state, Florida Progressive Coalition was launched. I shifted my focus to state-level politics, something that was being very poorly covered both by the mainstream media and by bloggers. FPC launched in 2005.

Two major problems were identified. One, that people didn’t have enough information about state and local politics. The media did a poor job of covering it and since state politics was drastically different from national politics, most of us, me included, didn’t have enough inherent knowledge about how things worked. In order to do a good job of covering Florida politics, bloggers needed to increase their knowledge of the players in the system, the rules of the system and the issues important to the state. A second major problem was that there wasn’t much money being put into covering politics, be it the media or blogging, and without some kind of influx of cash into the system, few, if any people, would be able to devote enough time to learning about the system to do it justice.

More than six years later, these problems have never been solved. Media coverage of state and local politics is much worse now than it was then. And because of silly laws like term limits, the system is so frequently changing that I’ve found, personally, that my knowledge of state politics is actually getting worse. And I don’t have the time or resources to fix that problem. Few state-level bloggers in the country have found models of funding that allow them to devote serious time to state and local politics. The overwhelming majority of bloggers from the 50 states that were invited to a state-level blogger summit in 2007 are no longer blogging about state politics. Only a few blogs that cover state and local politics can pay their bills, much less pay salaries to their writers.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t solve either of these problems. I’ve tried numerous different approaches to it and none of them have worked. Some of that is the difficulty of the problems, which are widespread across the country at the state level. Some of it is because of my own personal failings. Since 2009, I’ve been divided among numerous projects and have never been able to devote the time to FPC that I need to, usually because paying gigs have to take priority. And because other FPC writers also have to have paying gigs and I never found a way to pay them or a way to inspire them to work extensively for FPC for free (except for a few people over the years for periods of time), FPC never became what it could’ve been and what it needed to be. And I see no way that is going to change.

On top of that, one of the key reasons, as I mentioned above, that I moved my focus to state politics was that my voice wasn’t adding to the national conversation. Now that I have been writing for Crooks and Liars on labor issues (and other topics) for nearly nine months, that’s not true any more. Thousands of people read my national writing each week and I regularly see my posts get picked up by other blogs and websites. And there are only a few national bloggers focused on labor issues. And there are a lot more labor stories that we need to cover than are currently covered. And labor issues are truly one of the key battlegrounds in American politics these days and one of the most important battles we have to win. So, I have decided that I am ending my time as executive director of Florida Progressive Coalition and, barring someone else stepping up to take over, the blog will end. I’m not going to take the site down, but I won’t be publishing any future content.

I’m willing to entertain offers from others if they are interested in taking over and maintaining FPC in whatever way they see fit and I’m certainly hoping that someone will pick up on the wiki and continue to add content to it, since it is a valuable resource for Floridians. One thing I know is that I can’t do it anymore and I have to shift my time and efforts more fully to the battles that I know more about and I have more of a chance to successfully pursue. FPC no longer fits that description. The last things I will post here will be the continuation of the 2012 Florida Netroots Awards, and after that I will entertain offers to take that over, too. It’s been a great few years and I’ve learned more than I ever expected and met more great people than I could’ve imagined, but it’s time to move on to other projects.

Occupy Tampa TV

Tampa Bay Homeless

Homeless Living In Tampa

What Stogie Had For Lunch

Palomilla Steak
With Collard Greens Soup and Rice
$7.95 At Arco- Iris, in West Tampa
Eat Local! 

Roadside Preacher

Tampa

Tampa Bay Homeless

Homeless Living In Tampa

St. Pete Dems Picnic

Sunday, May 27 12-4pm
War Veterans Memorial Park
9600 Bay Pines Boulevard, St. Pete
All you can eat for just $10. Veterans eat for free!

The Road We've Traveled

THE MIAMI MODEL

Wednesday, May 23 @ 8:30pm
Cafe Bohemia, 937 Central Ave. St. Petersburg

Go

Florida School Sets World Record For Recycling

Kids at Sugg Middle School in Florida don't just learn about history -- they make it. For the last four years, students and faculty at Sugg have celebrated Earth Day by hosting the Recycling Round-Up, an event aimed at collecting as many plastic bottles as possible from throughout the school district over an eight hour period.
here

Occupy Tampa takes to the Hillsborough River

Occupy Tampa has been in and out of the spotlight since relocating to West Tampa in December. Members gathered to Occupy the Hillsborough River on Saturday, to have fun and to remind Tampa they are still here.
here

Help President Obama

Kickoff for the Paris Project

Join us on Saturday May 19th at  712 15th Avenue South, St. Pete
info

Can the Friendship Trail Bridge Be Saved?

A volunteer group fighting to keep the Friendship Trail Bridge from
being demolished received good news at a conference held at the foot of the bridge.
more

Occupy Tampa, Occupy Wall Street, Bank of America

Spotlight on Government: Kevin Beckner

WMNF: Cocktails For A Cause

The Cuban Sandwich Crisis: Tampa vs. Miami

Most food historians agree the sandwich was invented in Tampa's Ybor City. But that doesn't matter in Miami. Call it the Cuban Sandwich Crisis. Two cities, Tampa and Miami, are locked in a battle to claim the Cuban sandwich as its own. It's a battle for hearts, minds and bellies. And you get to weigh in.
Read on!

American Third Parties Presidential Debate

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