By Jim Bleyer In outlining her vision for Hillsborough County’s mass transit future Friday, Pat Kemp found herself in the trenches alongside activists on the opposite side of the political spectrum. The rookie county commissioner, a Democrat, shares many of the same views as self-styled conservatives who during the past …
By Jim Bleyer The Tampa Bay Times this month forfeited its right to be perceived as a fair, serious journalistic entity. The newspaper sent its designated first-string political writer to a well-publicized forum last Friday on mass transit featuring three high-profile opponents of light rail. The overflowing Cafe con Tampa …
By Jim Bleyer Timothy Leary would have riffed, “Drop in, turn off, tune out.” The three citizen activists most instrumental in defeating Greenlight Pinellas and Go Hillsborough, the most recent ill-fated local transit proposals calling for higher sales taxes, spoke Friday morning to an SRO, mostly pro-transit crowd at Cafe con …
Donald Trump L. Ron Hubbard By Jim Bleyer Donald Trump does not believe in science-but he does believe in Scientology, its tactics, truth twisting, and totalitarianism, if not its tenets. He cavorts regularly with its followers and sympathizers, utilizes the …
By Jim Bleyer The Florida Department of Transportation plan to widen Interstate-275 with an express toll lane, known as TBX, faces burgeoning opposition from social and environmental activists as well as those who believe it is poor transportation policy. The DOT’s …
By Jim Bleyer Tallahassee’s lightning-rod mayor, Andrew Gillum, calmly continued to lead his city back to normalcy Wednesday, five days after Hurricane Hermine unleashed her fury on Florida’s Big Bend. With work crews deployed around the clock, electricity was restored to 92 percent of residences as of 11 a.m. …
By Jim Bleyer When Hurricane Hermine roared through Tallahassee last week, trees, roofs, and power lines weren’t the only casualties. Bipartisanship and the truth took a lashing as well. Mayor Andrew Gillum, a rising star in the Democrat party who took charge of the recovery and restoration effort in the …
By Jim Bleyer Gwen Graham Chris Latvala Even for someone with a reputation for disparaging political opponents, belittling women, and consummate hypocrisy, State Sen. Jack Latvala sunk to a new low Friday. Speaking at Cafe con Tampa, the weekly informal parley …
By George Niemann Guest Columnist Sadly, this story out of South Florida points to what citizens have to deal with on a daily basis. They have to hope that their elected officials don’t “sell” their vote to land developers for campaign contributions and campaign workers. In addition, they have to …
By Sharon Calvert Not only did the county commissioners vote last month at the second sales tax hike public hearing against any sales tax hike referendum, they also voted to pursue Commissioner Sandy Murman’s proposal to fund our roads and transportation needs within our growing existing budget. We are …
By Jim Bleyer Promoting local sales tax increases for transit projects will always be a losing struggle in Florida, a group of transportation strategists agreed this week. They attributed voter mistrust of government as the insurmountable barrier to referendum-based tax hikes. That unequivocal assessment was expressed at a funding …
By Jim Bleyer The 65th anniversary celebration of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University’s pharmacy program next month will commemorate excellence as well as longevity. Begun as a modest component in the chemistry department in 1951, FAMU’s College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences has blossomed into a nationally acclaimed center …
By Jim Bleyer When Floridians vote this fall, they will enjoy the most far-reaching ballot access in the state’s history, one of the country’s most experienced and high-profile election officials affirmed this week. Ion Sancho, who is retiring this year after serving seven terms as Leon County Supervisor of …
By Jim Bleyer Three weeks after 265 Tampa Tribune employees were abruptly fired in a numbingly cold-blooded mass dismissal while the man directly responsible for the carnage hunkers down in a fabricated foxhole shunning questions. Paul Tash, publisher of the Tampa Bay Times has never been at a loss …
By Jim Bleyer Former staffers of the late Tampa Tribune threw themselves a helluva blast Friday, only 10 days after their jobs were abruptly erased in a series of double deals that makes a Three-card Monte con seem like Old Maid. The event was anything but a pity party. …
By Jim Bleyer The public interest and sanity prevailed last night as the Hillsborough County Commission voted 4-3 to jettison the ill-advised, corrupted half-cent sales tax referendum for mass transit infamously known as Go Hillsborough. The decision basically forces the …
By Jim Bleyer The transparent smear campaign by pro-light rail public officials and supportive media outlets against opponents of a Hillsborough County sales tax increase boomeranged on a gargantuan scale this week. The embarrassing fallout traveled 650 miles from Raleigh to Tampa. North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, who tried to …
By Jim Bleyer The Tampa Bay Times, without a shred of dignity, ethics, or conscience, continues to bombard the public about the Go Hillsborough transit plan with incomplete, inconsistent, and wildly inaccurate information. It is part of a concerted propaganda effort to confuse voters into taxing themselves for …
By Jim Bleyer “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching”—C. S. Lewis The rap sheet for the proposed mega-controversial Go Hillsborough referendum grew longer than “War and Peace” this week. Adding to the legacy of cronyism, secrecy, and misinformation was a spurious investigation that …
By Jim Bleyer With only a vague mass transit plan and no demonstrated need for one involving light rail, Hillsborough County politicians and their corporate cronies who stand to benefit from a $3 billion plus sales tax increase have been resorting to lies, distortions, character assassination, and backroom finagling …
