Starting With Florida Tonight
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| Florida's Capitol Building |
While there’s a lot to be aware of on the international scene (the continuing Iranian conflict and its spread into Lebanon, its on-off negotiations, its dispute as to who actually can control the Strait of Hormuz, and the defeat of strongly pro-Trump and pro-Putin Viktor Orban in Hungary by a more democratic centrist), we should not ignore what are, at least to Floridians, significant local problems.
With that in mind, as well as G.O.P. efforts to make it more difficult for Americans to vote, let’s start with SunSentinel Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet’s column from Sunday’s newspaper, both printed and online. Its final paragraph offers a suggestion to the State’s usually downtrodden Democrats. So let’s focus on Florida for a few minutes.
Cost of living is Democrats’ best argument
By Steve Bousquet | South Florida Sun Sentinel - April 11, 2026 at 8:38 AM
“The race is on.
Democrats running for Congress, state Legislature and other offices are frantically raising the millions they will need to pay for a barrage of mailers attacking their Republican rivals this fall. Like everything else in Florida, those mailers are expensive, and Republicans can answer more forcefully because they have vastly more to spend.
But here’s a way for Democrats to make their case to voters and save money.
Forget the glossy card-stock mailers with distorted images, designed to make your opponent look like an ax murderer. You really want to scare voters?
Simply download a new report by the business-backed research group Florida TaxWatch.
Its title is “Cost of Living in Florida: A Mid-Decade Check-In.”
It’s packed with numbers, a TaxWatch trademark, so it’s a bit dense. But it still packs a punch.
“Florida has held the nation’s highest residential home insurance premiums since 2020, averaging $2,794 per year through (September) 2025 — a 63 percent increase since 2020,” the report says. “Average asking rents climbed from 16th-highest nationally in 2020 to 6th-highest by 2025, reaching $2,208 per month.”
On and on the TaxWatch report goes, listing higher and higher costs of housing, groceries, rent, utilities and child care. Property taxes keep rising. Factor in inflation, TaxWatch says, and costs “have begun to reach astronomical levels.”
A TaxWatch graph (shown above) shows how prices in South Florida are outpacing Tampa Bay and the southeastern U.S.
It’s a grim picture in a state where Republicans have been in control for 30 years.
“Not only has Florida become incredibly expensive compared to the rest of its region, but also compared to itself just five years prior,” TaxWatch reports. “Living in Florida is becoming more expensive year by year.”
The report is online at floridataxwatch.org/Research/Full-Library.
TaxWatch simply amplifies what we already know: Florida has become truly unaffordable and, by implication, Republicans won’t address it. (“State policy must step up,” the report says, which is TaxWatch-speak for Republicans are failing.) In fact, the GOP has made things worse, with tax policies favoring corporations over working people, a refusal to expand health access through Medicaid and keeping some of the lowest unemployment benefits of any state.
In about a week, Gov. Ron DeSantis will call the Legislature back to work for his version of a “mid-decade check-in” — a rigged redrawing of political boundary lines to help keep the Republicans in control of Congress at a time when Democrats are gaining traction in Florida. Fixing the economy won’t be on the agenda. Again.
If TaxWatch is not your thing, then cruise the website of the real estate industry, a bulwark of the Republican Party. A recent headline on realtor.com said: “Floridians Feel the ‘Sunshine Squeeze’: Nearly 50% Want To Move Due To Affordability.”
Citing a widely reported FAU poll, the Realtors’ article began: “Living in Florida is becoming punishingly unaffordable.” This is from an industry whose members’ livelihood depends on making Florida as attractive as possible.
If you’re not moved by the Realtors’ pitch, consider a third source: Florida’s senior U.S. senator, Rick Scott. The former “jobs governor” cited an uptick in Florida’s unemployment rate to 4.5%, two-tenths of a point higher than the national average, and a full point higher than a year ago. The state is losing jobs at a rate of 9,000 over a 12-month period.
On social media, Scott sent a blunt message to DeSantis: “Florida shouldn’t be losing so many jobs, and we shouldn’t be surpassing the national unemployment average for the first time in years … A good-paying job is life-changing, which is why I’m concerned about this report. Florida shouldn’t be losing so many jobs, and we shouldn’t be surpassing the national unemployment average for the first time in years. Creating more jobs needs to be PRIORITY #1!”
Seven months out, it looks like anxiety and frustration over the high cost of living could finally explode at the polls. Put me down as skeptical, because Florida Republicans have a registered-voter advantage over Democrats of 1.5 million, and Republicans are more reliable voters. Also, don’t discount Republican efforts to suppress the vote by denouncing or restricting voting by mail.
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| Floriduh Voter |
What’s more, in Florida, people too often maddeningly vote against their self-interest. Rural, poor voters eagerly support candidates who flaunt their devotion to big-city business interests such as utilities or real estate developers. Still, economic worries can be a winning issue for Democrats. But criticism of the status quo isn’t enough; they need to propose solutions. At least merely recognizing the depth of the crisis will show empathy for people, which is far more than DeSantis and the Legislature have done.
(Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (850) 567-2240.)
JL
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Orban Defeated
The defeat of Viktor Orban in Hungary’s election revealed that his government had been helping to fund CPAC in this country. It never was a secret that Orban had been at Vladimir Putin’s beck and call.
As the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) brought Orban’s Christian Nationalist flavor to the Republican Party, it also involved this hidden connection with Russia’s leadership. These were indeed strange bedfellows.
Peter Magyar, likely to be the new Hungarian Prime Minister, is certain to put an end to this, turning away from Moscow, and it is hoped will introduce democratic reforms as did Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s in this country. Professor Heather Cox Richardson sheds some light on this in her ‘Letters from an American’ dated April 13 and 14 where what appear to be isolated events work together in the mosaic of history. Click here or copy and paste https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ on your browser line for what amounts to a comprehensive history lesson.
JL
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Marlins No Longer a Cable Choice
The absence of Miami Marlins baseball from the Hotwire basic cable package that is provided to residents of my community, and other similar cable menus as well, bothered me for a while until I saw the pathetic attendance figures for their home games thus far this season, mostly below 10,000 except for opening day.
Just because they’re winning some games, that just doesn’t warrant purchasing a ‘streaming package’ to see them.
With such ‘minor league’ attendance numbers, its only a question of where and when they depart from Miami for greener (the color of money) pastures, so building temporary loyalties seems to be a waste of time.
Meanwhile, the MLB channel, part of most basic cable packages, provides daily exposure of the rest of the major leagues, where Marlins fans, once the ‘Fish’ are gone, can find another team to root for, although seeing them every day still will require purchasing a streaming package. But at least there will be loads of people in the stands, an uncommon sight at LoanDepot Park.
My guess is that the Marlins will end up in Charlotte, Nashville, Portland or the San Antonio/Austin area of Texas within a few years. Whoever gets the Marlins, though, will have to build a stadium with a major league seating capacity, since none of these cities have one. My bet would be on Texas.
Montreal, a city that was once the home of the Expos (they moved to Washington in 2004) does have a major league size statium, but seems to be out of the race for a place where the Marlins might land because of its sorry experience with the Expos. If politics allowed it, Havana might be a good choice as well, but I wouldn’t bet on that.
JL
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Beware of a Power-Hungry Artificial Intelligence
It's unavoidable that the world we live in is eventually going to be dominated by Artificial Intelligence. A hint into that future is the pressure made by many banks and other billers that you go ‘paperless,’ trusting in their impersonal systems.
Initially, AI is developed by human beings but eventually acquires the ability to create and re-create itself. Just like your children and grandchildren. To be one of these original inspired ‘human beings’ requires at least the veneer of doing something that benefits all of humanity as well as possessing a strong individual drive to do so.
That drive can be nourished by the opportunity to acquire enormous and unbelievable amounts of money, but only up to a point. Beyond that, a growing sense of tremendous personal accomplishment is required to continue to fuel it. Acquiring the power to do that becomes an unending task of its own for Artificial Intelligence and its original human designers (if they still are around), even surpassing the quest for monetary rewards.
To achieve that level of accomplishment, ethical compromises may have to be part of Artificial Intelligence’s structure, giving a higher priority to allowing, if not demanding, a continuing increase in its power to increase its accomplishments. AI has a built-in appetite, if not a hunger, for doing that. It’s sort of like eating cashews. Given a few cashews on a plate, can you eat only one? Please try!
Once Artificial Intelligence’s appetite or hunger for such power is satisfied, if ever that point can be reached, even the ‘human beings’ who developed it in the first place may have lost control of everything.
Please pay attention to the increasing number of articles appearing in print or online dealing with the different approaches to AI being taken by the several companies developing Artificial Intelligence tools and their connections to the business community and government agencies. Your future may be in their hands.
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
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More on the Sources of Information in Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘printed’ newspaper (now the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors, including the New York Times and other respected journals.
Be aware that when I open that email, I first quickly glance at and screen out those sent to my very old former email address and those considered ‘promotional’ by Gmail’s system as no more than advertisements or requests for donations. Besides emails, I also utilize the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want.
Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri.
Following such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than any AI summary. It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect.
Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence. Always!
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