10 Stories to Read

This is our regular feature where every day I do a post with the top 10 blog posts that I think people should read from the previous day. Posts are included here and ranked based on a combination of originality, focus on Florida, length (longer, more thorough analysis is better), quality of writing and impact of the story.

1. Alan Farago - Crimes against the state: the Florida Mortgage Crisis: "It is also perfect timing for the editorial boards to connect the dots between the failure of the Florida Office of Financial Regulation and the dominant political ideology of the past decade that abjured regulation in favor of 'the free market'. This may be easier to do, now that real estate advertisement revenue from the Growth Machine has dried up."

2. Dan Gelber - Forecast: Darker skies ahead: "This Friday, Florida's Revenue Estimating Conference will convene to present their official budget forecast for the upcoming year and beyond. Prior to Friday they believed Florida's declining revenue might show a slight uptick. Prepare yourselves for more bad news as conditions have only worsened and their forecast is likely to reflect darker skies."

3. FLA Politics (FDP) - How Did We End Up With The Looming Space Flight Gap? Just Ask John McCain: "McCain's NASA stance went from 'downright schizophrenic' to outright delusional yesterday with his campaign boasting of his influence on space policy in his former role as Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation - without mentioning that, under McCain's watch, the impending five-year gap between the retirement of the Shuttle and the development of the next generation vehicle was created, putting thousands of Space Coast jobs at risk."

4. Progress Florida (Ray Seaman) - High Noon at the Florida Supreme Court: "The fate of 3 key right wing backed amendments to the Florida constitution will be decided by the Florida Supreme Court in the very near future."

5. Progress Florida (Ray Seaman) - Who Will Fill the Widening Press Gap?: "I can't say I've ever really been a fan of the press. There are some really great reporters and columnists which still operate in the traditional press, but I lament the sheer lack of coverage of state and local politics that has existed even before this latest round of layoffs. The traditional press has been largely complicit, and indeed an enabler, in a lot of the failed politics and policies of the last quarter century."

6. Eye on Miami (gimleteye) - Have courage, Governor Crist...: "We, the public, don't have the full story on 'who knew, what' about the US Sugar buyout offer that Governor Crist proposed. One thing is for certain: Governor Crist took an intractable problem-- an Everglades restoration plan that cannot work-- and proposed a big step in the one direction that has the chance, at some point in the future, of helping the Everglades."

7. Florida Politics - The elephant in the room: "It is worth recalling that Florida's current system of public finance is a house of cards built by pusillanimous pols owned and operated by the no-taxes under any circumstances crowd (a/k/a the Chamber of Commerce, the Associated Industries of Florida, and other such denizens of the Jeb!'s hole in the ground). Now, with no backstop, we Floridians get exactly what Jebbie's patrons bought and paid for..."

8. Southern District of Florida - Juror research: "Julie Kay examines the new trend of investigating jurors here..."

9. Incertus (Brian) - Evolution and the Classroom: "Olivia Judson makes (as usual) a compelling case for teaching evolution in the classroom. It bothers me greatly that this is even an issue, considering how poorly US students do on the world stage in math and science scores--deliberately handicapping them by allowing nonsense like ID and Creationism in the public schools is criminal in my mind."

10. spacecoastweb - FDP promotes Kosmas with push poll in FL-24: "Could this be a subtle way for the FDP to prompt Democratic voters into supporting the establishment’s chosen candidate? It might as well have been. There was no mistaking the intent behind this call. I wasn’t being asked whom I supported; Instead, I was being led to accept the FDP’s suggestion."