Latest
Check here for the latest topics not shown in the featured section.
The Ballot-Box Bureaucrat: Why Electing School Superintendents Is a Governance Nightmare
The push to force a partisan elected superintendent referendum onto Hillsborough County isn’t a grassroots movement for voter empowerment; it’s a deliberate structural hijacking. In our latest piece, we look at the reality behind this cynical effort to turn a highly specialized, professional administrative role into a hyper-partisan popularity contest. The data is clear: electing the top executive of a massive metropolitan school system has zero statistically significant impact on student achievement. What it actually delivers is a microscopic local talent pool and a system-wide governance nightmare of locked-up school boards and parallel legal counsels.
The hypocrisy of this legislative push is laid bare by its chief sponsor, State Representative Michael Owen. Owen has built a career voting to strip cities and counties of their home-rule authority through state-level preemption bills, yet he suddenly claims a deep devotion to local voter control when it comes to controlling a metropolitan school system. If Owen and his allies want to argue that a partisan knife fight is the secret sauce for academic excellence, they are arguing against the entire map of American education. The states that consistently deliver top-tier results treat school administration as a profession, while the only two states that stick to elected superintendents—Alabama and Florida—rank 43rd and 24th in public school quality. True accountability isn’t a row of campaign signs along a highway shoulder; it’s a system run by qualified professionals who can be held to high standards and removed when they fall short.
Politics
All the hot-button topics about government, state, local, and federal the courts, and the election.
Tallahassee Keeps Telling Local Communities to Sit Down
There is a word in Florida politics that sounds dry enough to cure insomnia but is quietly reshaping life in our communities: preemption.
Preemption is what happens when Tallahassee tells local governments they are not allowed to solve local problems. In recent years, the Legislature has used it to block local worker protections, weaken local control over zoning and development, and shift more decisions away from the people who actually live with the consequences.
My latest article examines this growing pattern, including Florida’s ban on local heat protections for outdoor workers, recent development bills that override local planning, and the legislators who keep voting to shift power away from communities and into the state’s hands. This is not just a procedural fight. It is about whether local democracy still means anything when powerful interests want it out of the way.
Science
This includes discussions on scientific topics that include the environment, weather, medicine, and space.
Society
We lump a lot under this category including crime, corruption, education and hate groups. This category runs the gamut.
Culture
Posts on cultural activities such as theater, art, holidays, and music.
Religion
This is our section for articles related to religion, especially Methodism, and the Evangelical movement.
Choosing Enough
We live in a world that is very good at convincing us that more is always better. More food, more comfort, more information, more outrage, more things. Our phones are built to keep our attention just a little longer. Our culture treats abundance as harmless and excess as normal. But when everything is available all the time, the real question is no longer what we can have. It is what we should choose to take in, and what it is quietly costing us.
Temperance offers an unfashionable answer. Not denial. Not purity. Enough. It asks us to notice our appetites, not just for food, but for attention, certainty, comfort, and stimulation. It invites us to consider whether what we consume is actually nourishing us, or simply keeping us busy and restless. In an age engineered to keep us reaching, choosing enough becomes a quiet act of freedom, one that clears space for presence, joy, and a life that feels more truly our own.
Technology
Discussions on software, hardware, apps, and gadgets.
LGBT Issues
Here we discuss the politics of the LGBT movement, stories of events in the community, and anything else related to the LGBT community.
Fun Stuff
This is a bit of a collection of stories about family, food, friends, and travel.
The Economy
Here are topics on the economy, trade, and business.
When Justice Outruns Wisdom
“I told her I was ready to give up. I wasn’t. I was frustrated.”
What began as a communication bottleneck in a church office became a lesson in leadership. When drafts moved without review and a public link went live incorrectly, urgency surged. The concern was legitimate. The tone was not. Justice rose quickly. Wisdom lagged behind. Where has urgency outrun wisdom in your week?
In this new essay, I contemplate what the Stoics understood about anger, discipline, and leadership—and why the same dynamic I saw in myself is evident at the highest levels of national leadership. Anger is a signal. It is not a strategy. Wisdom must organize justice, or institutions begin to fray.
Read: When Justice Outruns Wisdom.
Steel-Toed Integrity
When something breaks in the real world, you don’t call a politician to give a speech; you call someone with a toolbox to fix it. That is the leadership Brian Nathan offers Senate District 14. A Navy veteran and IBEW electrician who chose Tampa as his home during the Great Recession, Brian brings a craftsman’s perspective to a political system that is deeply broken.
Read about Brian’s vision for “steel-toed integrity”—a philosophy born on the job site that prioritizes practical solutions for working families over political theater. He is running to fight for affordable housing, good-paying local jobs, and quality education.
The High Price of “Nice”: What Karen Gonzalez Pittman is Actually Costing South Tampa
Is your State Rep costing you money?
On paper, Representative Karen Gonzalez Pittman fits South Tampa perfectly. She’s polished, presentable, and active in the community. If you met her at a Palma Ceia mixer, you’d think, “Now, there’s a reasonable person.” But for the wealthy and aspirational residents of District 65, voting for Pittman has become an expensive illusion. You think you’re voting for stability, but you’re actually paying a premium for a representative who consistently prioritizes Tallahassee’s culture war performance art over your bank account.
The most glaring receipt is your property insurance bill. For years, the Republican supermajority, of which Pittman is a loyal member, has promised that if we protected insurance companies from lawsuits, rates would trickle down. Pittman voted for every one of those protections. Yet, while your premiums have doubled, she and her colleagues have spent the legislative session banning books and policing bathrooms rather than fixing the financial crisis that is actually threatening our property values.
There’s a high cost to the “anti-woke” agenda, and South Tampa homeowners are paying it. This is a clear example of Patrimonialism: the state is run for insiders, while regular people get worse service and pay more. It’s time to see what her “nice” image is really costing you.
MoviesView All
Articles related to places important to me or the places we visit.
Media
Covers things like the web, blogging, Radio and television, and print media.
Places
Here we talk about topics specific to Tampa, Kings Mountain, and other places I've lived or visited.
