It’s not completely their fault. Many live inside bubbles filled with staffers and lobbyists who constantly tell them they’re brilliant. (And attractive. And hilarious joke-tellers.) Plus, they’re surrounded by a bunch of other politicians. So it’s not too tough to shine.

I mention all this because Republican legislators are resuming one of their long-running crusades, trying to make it harder for you to set the policies and priorities you want in the state in which you live. And they do so because they think you’re too dumb to be trusted — at least when it comes to changing state laws.

See, if 50.1% of voters put a politician into office, that politician usually believes voters have demonstrated the wisdom of Solomon.

But if 60% of you vote for something they dislike — like medical marijuana or a higher minimum wage — then they’re convinced you don’t understand what you’re doing. You’re an idiot. So the politicians want to protect you from yourself.

Republican lawmakers began this crusade about two decades ago. Florida voters had already used the constitutional amendment process to demand things like smaller class sizes — and it really ticked off lawmakers.

So the politicians teamed up with deep-pocketed donors, like Publix and the Florida Association of Realtors, to fund a campaign to raise the threshold for future amendments from 50% to 60%. And it worked.

But the politicians and special interests had a problem: You people — the annoying voters — kept on voting for things they disliked by margins of 60% or more.

So now GOP lawmakers want to raise the bar to 66.7%.

You already live in a state where the minority rules. Now they want to make it the superminority.

This is why I think it would be simpler if these guys were just honest about what they really want — for you people not to vote at all.

Just let them run the show. They’re smarter. And they will protect you from your own bad ideas … like quality pre-K programs for all.

Voters should play as little of a role as possible in democracy. That’s the basic idea from Rep. Rick Roth, a Republican from Palm Beach, perhaps by way of Pyongyang or Havana.

Roth is the sponsor of the bill to raise the amendment threshold to 66.67%. And he has a lot of support within his party. Almost all of the Republicans in the State House supported Roth’s bill last year. It was the Senate that said no.

House Republicans called their 67% bill an effort to demand “broader support.” Yet would you like to guess who didn’t receive “broader support” at the polls? Most of the legislators who supported this bill.

Local reps Doug Bankson, Tom Leek, Rachel Plakon, Susan Plasencia, Tyler Sirois and David Smith were all among the House Republicans who voted for the supermajority requirement for issues but fell short of that in their own personal campaigns. They, of course, still felt quite comfortable taking office.

Give those guys a 51% victory, and they consider it a mandate. But a 63% vote for Fair Districts? Well, you dumb voters just didn’t understand what you were doing.

Many lawmakers also claim the amendment process should be tougher because the Florida Constitution is some sort of sacred document whose hallowed words should not be altered by mortal men — an argument that is a total crock. The Florida Constitution wasn’t handed down to Moses on a mountaintop thousands of years ago. It was last ratified in 1968 when the Beverly Hillbillies was still on TV.

And lawmakers themselves have tried to ram all sorts of half-baked ideas into the constitution in recent years,  including a non-binding rant against Obamacare they wanted to insert in 2012.

That they find worthy of inserting into our state’s supposedly sacred constitution. But not restoring civil rights to former felons.

Amendment 1: Floridians Will Get Their Say on Obamacare, But Only Symbolically

The reason Roth’s push to make the amendment process tougher is getting extra attention this year is that GOP lawmakers are extra nervous about abortion. All over America, moderate Republicans are uniting with Democrats and independents to pass laws guaranteeing the right to abortion access.

Kansas particularly freaked these guys out. When they saw that nearly 60% of voters in that very conservative state supported abortion rights, they knew they needed to change the rules in Florida so that 60% would no longer be considered a victory.

If you can’t win the game on the field, move the goal posts.

But again, it seems like it’d be simpler for these politicians just to ban voting altogether.

Instead of moving the threshold of victory from 50% plus one — which it’s been since the beginning of time — to 60% and then 67% and then who-knows-what later on, just tell citizens they can’t vote anymore.

After all, the politicians are obviously smarter than the rest of us. Just look at the deft way they’ve handled property insurance and things like unemployment benefits.

Citizens, with their silly notions about democracy, fairness, civil rights and quality education, just tend to get in the way.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Laughter seems plausible, particularly since we had no children yet when he casually worked its mention into our conversation. But my sense of home-schooling at that time was mostly that it was for families on the cultural fringe — that is, not us.

Yet, here I am years later, not only a home-schooler but finding that our decision to educate our children outselves isn’t fringy at all.

It’s actually increasingly mainstream, if not slightly cool.

According to a new analysis from the Washington Post, home-schooling is the fastest growing form of education in the U.S. — not just in conservative states like Texas.

And it’s not exclusive to conservative enclaves, either. In New York City and Washington — famously bastions of progressivism — home-school communities are growing and flourishing.

Indeed, home-schooling is now a less ideological practice with more diverse practitioners, attracting families across the political spectrum and across various racial and ethnic communities.

That’s probably because today’s home-school families are motivated by an assortment of factors, not just moral and religious education but also physical and emotional safety, social environment, curriculum, family flexibility and accommodating kids’ special needs and education goals.

For most families, like mine, it’s really a combination of reasons.

And alongside traditional home-schooling models, micro-schools, hybrids and co-ops have also exploded, providing families with a parent-lead learning environment that also provides social outlets as well as needed structure and support.

Indeed, home-schooling’s newfound social status should be seen as a challenge to the long-held notion that a quality education can only occur inside a traditional school environment.

It’s not exactly news that home-schooling ballooned during the pandemic.

Those were the days when COVID protocols (too strict for some and too lenient for others) and virtual learning provided a proverbial window into what was being taught in public schools and what wasn’t, much to the chagrin of parents who began seeking alternative options for their kids.

The Washington Post data shows, however, that while the number of children being home-schooled has declined slightly since its pandemic-peak, the growth of home-schooling remains stable and significant.

Before the pandemic, estimates suggested that about 1.5 million children in the U.S. were home-schooled.

The latest data suggests that number is now somewhere between 1.9 million and 2.7 million, although, because of the dearth of reporting requirements in many states, it’s likely that number is even higher.

This is not a blip but a fundamental shift in how our culture views education.

Unsurprisingly, not everyone is pleased.

Home-school critics argue that the loose or nonexistent regulation will inevitably result in substandard or parochial education.

But one only need look at standardized testing results in a district like Fort Worth ISD, where minority students in particular consistently cannot read or perform math at grade level, to recognize that attending school in no way guarantees that a student receives a quality education.

Then there are the detractors who deride home-schoolers for the same reasons they criticize private school participation — that it takes resources away from public schools.

Public schools do indeed serve an important role in our communities, but they have never been a panacea.

And with more and more families finding that public schools do not meet the needs of their individual students and circumstances, it behooves state governments to support alternative forms of education, like home-schooling.

Parents deserve choices in their children’s education.

Cynthia Allen is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The dominating narrative regarding higher energy bills is that they’re directly related to the higher outside temperatures, but this ignores the greed of investor-owned utilities (IOUs) and minimizes the intersection of climate change, energy and race.

Every Floridian deserves access to electricity, regardless of one’s racial or socioeconomic background. However, IOUs often prioritize profits over people, leading to higher utility bills, low-grade infrastructure and inadequate service in many communities of color.

Communities of color often experience higher utility rates, burdening them with a greater financial strain. Studies have shown that these disparities are not coincidental; they are a result of historical redlining and discriminatory practices that have left these communities with fewer resources to invest in infrastructure improvements.

IOUs have a history of prioritizing investments in more affluent, predominantly white neighborhoods while neglecting the upgrade and maintenance of systems in communities of color. This neglect leads to more frequent power outages, longer emergency response times and a lower overall quality of service. In some instances, it can even put lives at risk, as we’ve seen in the aftermath of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

In Florida, IOUs operate as monopolies, meaning customers don’t get to pick their power provider. In exchange for their service territory, utilities are regulated by the Public Service Commission (PSC), a board of Gov. Ron DeSantis appointees who are responsible for ensuring that the utilities provide reliable and affordable electricity. IOUs’ continual dependence on nonrenewable resources not only raises bills for consumers but also contributes to rising temperatures, and further exacerbates climate inequalities across communities.

According to leading climate scientists, we must cut greenhouse gas by 50% by 2030 and significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions to stabilize global temperatures and reduce extreme weather events. Unfortunately, in this past legislative session, Florida lawmakers voted to pass numerous bills (HB 1645, SB 250, HB 1281, SB 170 and HB 125) that set us back even further.

However, there is still hope. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change asserts that we have options across all of our sectors in order to achieve these emissions goals, thus we must call on our colleagues in the Legislature and municipal governments to champion the following demands:

• We demand municipal authority of utilities. Municipal utilities are publicly owned with a community-elected board. They do not operate on a for-profit basis, which often means lower rates for residential customers. With Duke’s lease in St. Petersburg set to expire in 2026, we are presented with a timely opportunity to enact this change on a local level.
• We demand a publicly elected Public Service Commission. If the PSC’s mission is to provide reliable and affordable electricity for its customers, then we should have a say in who is defining “affordable” and “reliable” on our behalf.
• We demand renewable, clean energy that is backed by research. Carbon capture and storage, hydrogen power and biomass are not sustainable and efficient solutions, nor are they equitable. In the Sunshine State, we choose solar.
• We will not further marginalize the communities that have borne the brunt of environmental injustice. Latino and Black communities are exposed to 63% and 56% more environmental pollution than they produce, while non-Hispanic white Americans are exposed to 17% less pollution than they produce. As we build out the infrastructure for clean energy, we must do so in a way that is clean for all of our residents, not just the privileged few.

For more information about the Florida lawmakers that spent the 2023 legislative session fueling corporate greed and the ones who championed their communities’ best interests, visit “The Corporate Greed Report” at StopCorporateGreedFL.com.

Dr. Chelsea Rivera is a policy organizer at Central Florida Jobs with Justice, which is a coalition of labor unions, community-based organizations, faith-based and student groups coming together to build power for worker rights. State Rep. Michele Rayner is a Democrat from St. Petersburg representing House District 62, which includes parts of Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.

This opinion piece was distributed by The Invading Sea website (www.theinvadingsea.com), which posts news and commentary on climate change and other environmental issues affecting Florida.

Mary Jo Cain Reis tearfully recalled the story of her father’s medical care and eventual death. After experiencing a stroke, Thomas Cain spent nine months in several hospitals and a nursing home, developing painful bed sores and contracting MRSA and pneumonia, which eventually claimed his life on August 19, 2020. Reis wanted to file a claim for medical malpractice, but attorneys told her Florida law only allows that for spouses and minor children. She got a quick lesson in the Florida “Free Kill” law. Reis wants the public to contact lawmakers and call attention to this law, so she is putting up billboards around the state. The first one is in Orlando. She knows that repealing the “Free Kill” law will not help her, but in her father’s memory, it might help others in the same situation.

Nevertheless, there have been attempts to abolish the “Free Kill” law in Florida. On October 19, 2021, Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez introduced the bill known as SB 560: Recovery for Wrongful Death. Sadly, on March 14, 2022, it died in Judiciary. If it had become law, the bill would have deleted the prohibition on adult children of certain decedents recovering specified damages by filing a lawsuit. In 1990, lawmakers prevented anyone over the age of 25 from suing doctors for pain and loss judgments in malpractice suits over the death of a parent if they were unmarried or divorced. The law allowed claims by surviving spouses or minor children. This controversial law is described as Florida’s “Free Kill” law because it eliminated a major consequence — huge cash payouts to surviving family members — after botched surgeries or medical treatments.

A Lake County family believes a mistake that was made during what should have been a routine medical procedure for their adult, special-needs son led to his death, but because he had no spouse or children, they have no recourse under Florida law. Medical records show the man was admitted to the hospital on March 20, 2023, for breakthrough seizures, a fever, and a malfunctioning of his feeding tube. The notes show the plan was to replace the tube the following day, but complications kept him there longer. Six days in, the records show his stepmother raised concerns about staff feeding her stepson through the wrong port of his tube. This might have led to vomiting and, eventually, aspiration pneumonia. Clinton had to be intubated and ultimately moved to the intensive care unit, and he never returned home.

Similarly, a bill was proposed to end this problem as well. On September 20, 2021, Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez introduced the bill known as SB 262: Damages Recoverable by Parents of an Adult Child in Medical Negligence Actions. If it had been signed into law, it would have deleted the provision prohibiting parents of an adult child from recovering damages for mental pain and suffering in a medical negligence lawsuit. Nevertheless, this bill also died in the Judiciary on March 14, 2022. This Florida law prevented parents of unmarried or childless adult children from suing for those judgments. During those times, lawmakers claimed they were trying to hold down the rates of medical malpractice insurance and discourage physicians from moving their practices to other states with friendlier business climates.

Because these two attempts to change Florida’s “Free Kill” law failed, the situation might not change in the near future. This is very alarming, as many people are entitled to recover the damages they deserve for the death of their adult children or parent.

Sean M. Cleary is a lawyer who provides assistance to victims of medical malpractice. His practice is headquartered in Miami.

The fact that this no-bid contract went to one of the state’s top ethics officials was vintage Florida.

But it turns out that was the tip of the insider-dealing iceberg at the former Reedy Creek district.

As the Sentinel revealed Sunday, another political pal scored a no-bid deal under even more suspect conditions when the district’s board chairman helped award a $495-an-hour legal contract to a lawyer who helped the chairman get his powerful post overseeing Disney in the first place.

Yes, back when Martin Garcia wanted to impress the state Senate, which confirms all of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ appointments to the Disney board, Garcia listed plugged-in GOP attorney Jason Gonzalez as a reference. Then, after Garcia got the job, he voted to give Gonzalez’s law firm a $495-an-hour contract without letting other firms even apply.

Seems the most magical thing about this new Disney board is how it made any premise of ethical government disappear.

And there’s more. As the Sentinel’s Skyler Swisher reported, a former board member who helped district director Glen Gilzean score his $400,000-a-year job was also the best man at Gilzean’s wedding.

This looks less like a public agency and more like a fraternity of political profiteers — the Florida chapter of Tappa Tappa Trough, where the only thing being chugged is tax dollars.

Political insiders get fat paychecks, big contracts from DeSantis’ Disney district

When I first heard about the legal contract last week, I wanted to see if it was as bad it as it sounded. So I asked if the board really hired the board chair’s buddy without any kind of open-bidding process.

The response I got was … interesting. First, district spokesman Matthew Thomas Oberly wanted me to know that the previous Disney district “ran the district with little transparency” and demonstrated “underhanded actions.”

If you’ve ever parented a naughty child, that response may feel familiar. You ask your son if he stole a cookie, and he responds by accusing his sister of stealing three cookies weeks ago.

Anyway, after trashing the former board, Oberly stressed that Florida law doesn’t require the district to solicit competitive bids for such legal contracts. “There is no requirement for the District to get the cheapest lawyer,” Oberly wrote in an email, “nor is such a good practice.”

That, my friends, is what’s known as a straw-man argument. Nobody said the district should hire the cheapest lawyer. I sure didn’t. But it might want the most qualified. And that’s what public solicitations for services can help you find.

Or you can just go with the guy who helped you get your political post — a guy who formed his new law firm less than a year ago.

Gonzalez, a Federalist Society leader who has advised DeSantis and other GOP governors, founded the firm in January with a couple of other politically connected attorneys, including Alan Lawson, who left the state Supreme Court after a relatively short stint to go into private practice.

There may be no law requiring public agencies to solicit bids for legal services. But many do. Why? Because it’s a solid business practice.

Just last month, the leaders at Orlando International Airport decided to solicit bids for that agency’s legal contracts. Board member Craig Mateer said relying on a single firm without aggressively encouraging other firms to apply wasn’t good enough. “We can do better,” said Mateer, who’s also a DeSantis appointee. “There’s a lot of money flowing through here.”

(Side note: If you’re a Florida law firm with expertise in construction, finance or purchasing law, now is a good time to reach out to the airport about its open-bidding process.)

That’s how it should be vs. hiring your own resume reference. Or a fellow wedding-party member.

These are small-town antics, except with big money. And it looks like political patronage may have been one of the main goals all along with this district takeover.

See, the aspect that always stunk most was the way DeSantis set it up — replacing one special district with another special district run by his political pals.

DeSantis had vowed to make Disney “follow the same law that every other company has to follow in the state of Florida.” I liked that idea. But that’s not what he did.

Instead of making Disney answer to Orange County government, the way other companies do, DeSantis set up a special district to control Disney’s fate and then stocked it with political cronies. Now those cronies are helping other cronies cash in.

No wonder experienced staffers are fleeing as the district invests less on roads and infrastructure — the kind of work it’s supposed to be doing.

Disney district mess: Employees flee. No-bid contract stinks | Commentary

I give credit to the beneficiary of the last no-bid deal we wrote about — communications firm owner and state ethics commissioner Freddie Figgers — who gave up his $242,500 contract after it’s no-bid nature was revealed.

Figgers said he preferred to “err on the side of caution” and seems to realize how swampy all this looks. The rest don’t seem to care. They seem content to thumb their noses at best practices and help their buddies cash in for one reason — because they can.

Of course DeSantis hasn’t shown any interest in cleaning up this swamp, because he’s the one who stocked it with swamp creatures.

And as long as he has a Legislature and political base full of sycophants who don’t care about ethical government, that swampiness will continue.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

As scrutiny mounts, DeSantis’ Disney district cancels no-bid 911 contract

That well-timed news release was a forward-looking way for Bob Iger to enjoy several days at the Gulfstream fly-in with corporate leaders, investors and a few celebrities.

“Time and again, Bob has shown an unparalleled ability to transform Disney to drive future growth and financial returns successfully,” said Mark Parker, Disney Board chair.

While Bob Iger is adding two years to his previously agreed-upon 24-month term, which began in November 2022, many CEOs are leaving. Challenger, Gray, and Christmas Inc., a global outplacement and executive coaching firm, reported that 1,425 CEOs left in the first nine months of 2023, up 47% from the 969 CEO changes during the same period in 2022.

Problems vary for different businesses, but turnover at the top puts everyone in the same crowded boat — how to prepare for and implement leadership succession. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, only 54% of boards were actively engaged in developing a successor to the CEO, and 39% had no viable manager to step in to replace the CEO in an emergency.

Why is CEO succession so hard to accomplish?

The Disney Sun Valley announcement didn’t mention that the company’s worth of $160 billion is less than half what it had been when Bob Iger left in 2021. What must have caught the Board’s attention is that one year into Iger’s return, they were running into Murphy’s Third Law — everything takes longer than you think it will. And another law says that whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.

By Bob Iger’s admission, the company’s problems were “greater than anticipated.” A Hollywood script with the complexities facing Disney (streaming; cable; film studios; a clash with Nelson Peltz and Isaac Perlmutter, former head of Marvel Entertainment) was never likely to materialize.

When Disney shared its full-year and fourth-quarter 2023 financial results last Wednesday, the role of balancing assets so that any decline in one area can be countered by success in another was on full display. This performance caused the entertainment giant to exceed analysts’ expectations, achieving a 5% increase in quarterly revenue and 7% annual growth.

“Our results this quarter reflect the significant progress we’ve made over the past year,” Bob Iger said. “While we still have work to do, these efforts have allowed us to move beyond this period of fixing and begin building our businesses again,” he added.

Iger’s priorities are making streaming a profitable business, building ESPN for a digital future, expanding its live experiences business (investing $60 billion in parks and cruises over the next ten years), and improving the output and economics of Disney film studios.

There’s one crucial item missing from that list — CEO succession.

This omission brings us back to Disney’s new board chair—Mark Parker, a former president and chief executive officer at Nike, Inc., and its current executive chairman. Perhaps Parker’s most important responsibility is chairing the newly formed Disney Succession Planning Committee. That group is tasked with advising the Disney Board on possible successors.

The critical questions for Disney governance — what lessons, if any, has the Board learned from the biggest failure of Bob Iger’s previous tenure, recommending Bob Chapek as his successor? And where was the breakdown in Board due diligence?

There are reports that Iger will name a Disney president at some point, but how well did that turn out before?

Of all the challenges facing The Walt Disney Company longer-term, none is greater than finding a qualified internal or external successor or successors (think Michael Eisner and Frank Wells) to Bob Iger.

A CEO gets most of the attention. But when it comes to a change at the top or a different look for this creative but complex enterprise, keep an eye on the Disney Board chair, Mark Parker.

Russ Bredholt Jr. is president of Bredholt and Co., Winter Springs.

For many, this month serves as a stark reminder of the persistent issue of hunger.

November 13-21 is National Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week and provides an opportunity to reflect on the importance of giving back and supporting those in need.

According to CNBC, nearly 13% of American households were food insecure in 2022. That means some 17 million families, or 1 in 8 U.S. households, struggled to meet their nutritional needs at some point in the year, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Here in Central Florida, Feeding America found that 18.3% of children live in food-insecure households. That means one in every five children in Central Florida leaves school on a Friday afternoon and doesn’t have food again until they return to school on Monday morning.

Blessings in a Backpack is a nonprofit that mobilizes communities, individuals, and resources to provide food on the weekends for elementary school children who might otherwise go hungry.

School lunches play a crucial role in promoting social equity. They ensure that all students, regardless of socioeconomic background, have access to at least one nutritious meal daily. This helps level the playing field for students with insufficient food resources at home.

Blessings in Backpack Orlando serves students in Orange, Seminole, Osceola and now Lake counties, filling that 65-hour weekend meal gap to ensure kids have the nutrition they need to show up to school Monday morning nourished and ready to learn.
As the managing director of Blessings in a Backpack Orlando, I see firsthand the need as families continue to be burdened by increased prices at the grocery store. Principals in our service areas in Central Florida call requesting our support for families in need in their schools. We are often forced to place schools on waiting lists as the need grows and resources remain limited.

Currently, 18 schools are on our waiting list across the four counties we serve. That means nearly 1,800 children need weekend meals in our community this school year.

We applaud our partner, Orange County Public Schools, for introducing free breakfast and lunch for all students earlier this school year.

This continues to be a huge support for so many families.

Blessings Orlando looks forward to continued collaboration with our school district partners to keep filling the weekend meal gap.

I am encouraged by the efforts of government, nonprofits, and the individuals and volunteers who support our mission daily. But more still needs to be done to ensure no child goes hungry this school year. Food insecurity deprives children of the nutrition they need to grow, learn, and thrive. It’s a problem beyond food scarcity — it impacts a child’s physical health, cognitive development, and overall well-being.

As concerned citizens, we have a moral obligation to address this issue and work towards a future where no child has to experience the pain of hunger well beyond the holiday season.

Sarah Carlson is the managing director of the Orlando Chapter of Blessings in a Backpack. 

In recent weeks, the Biden administration has submitted two supplemental spending requests to Congress. The first is $106 billion for “security” items, and the second is $56 billion for “domestic” programs.

That’s a $162 billion wish list of spending increases. The budgetary approach taken by the administration and many members of Congress is, to put it mildly, profoundly irresponsible.

Yes, some aspects of the requests, such as helping Israel in its fight against terrorism, addressing the crisis at the southern border, and the ongoing debate about aid for Ukraine, are important matters for Congress to discuss.

However, by seeking to place all $162 billion of requests in the “emergency” category, the administration hopes to dodge the bipartisan spending limits agreed to this spring. That means the entire amount would be financed through deficit spending.

This would be problematic under normal circumstances. Today it’s downright dangerous.

That’s because America is still suffering the economic consequences of the $7.5 trillion spending spree that Congress went on from 2020 to 2022, using the pandemic as an excuse to throw money at a variety of special interests.

The incredible volume of deficit spending helped drive inflation to multi-decade highs, reducing purchasing power by thousands of dollars per household.

In response, the Federal Reserve has dramatically increased interest rates, disrupting financial markets and making home mortgages unaffordable for millions of families. This has also affected the skyrocketing cost of interest payments on the national debt, which could hit $1 trillion over the next year.

That means it’s vital to reserve the “emergency” label for situations of national importance that were unforeseen at the start of the annual spending process. Responding to the barbaric attacks by Hamas on innocent Israelis is an example of a genuine emergency.

In contrast, the administration’s spending requests are loaded with provisions that were well-established at the start of the year, such as the war in Ukraine. But claiming that items such as broadband internet subsidies, communications infrastructure and child care benefits – however important they may be – warrant “crisis” funding strains credulity to the breaking point.

The reason for such requests is that the administration and its allies are addicted to deficit spending. Thus, they’ll take every opportunity possible to exploit budget loopholes and deliver your hard-earned tax dollars to special interests.

This isn’t how a household budget works. If an unplanned expense such as a car accident or a broken appliance pops up, a responsible family will respond by cutting back on eating out or delaying travel plans.

It’s increasingly clear that Washington is allergic to responsible budgeting. Rather than responding to genuine emergencies by reducing or eliminating spending on corporate welfare schemes and boondoggle projects, too many legislators behave as if all existing programs and bureaucracies are sacred.

Unless something changes, the worst is yet to come. The gross national debt is now $33.6 trillion. Major programs such as Social Security and Medicare face unfunded liabilities of over $75 trillion. That means the national hole is over $800,000 per household.

If Congress can’t break its reliance on deficit spending, the country will face a future of elevated inflation, higher taxes, slower wage growth and more economic uncertainty.

A step in the right direction would be for Congress to limit “emergency” spending to real emergencies. Our leaders should have the common sense to separate what’s truly urgent, such as supporting Israel, from items that can go through normal appropriations, like broadband subsidies.

Otherwise, we’re all going to wind up paying the price – literally.

David Ditch is a senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation’s Hermann Center for the Federal Budget.

Engoron, however, was mistaken. It was a courtroom and a political rally.

Trump turned his time on the stand into a tub-thumping recitation of the themes he hopes will carry him into a second term: that the deep state is persecuting him for his popularity and his election would constitute retribution for him and his supporters.

Trump’s testimony was first and foremost a high-stakes legal showdown in a civil case that threatens to impoverish his family and decimate their brand. And from a legal vantage point, he was routed.

The judge has already found in favor of New York Attorney General Letitia James that Trump and his company committed fraud. The fight now centers on the extent of the Trumps’ liability for a series of comically inflated valuations of their properties, chiefly to secure loans.

Trump’s testimony included a series of damaging admissions within a dust cloud of attacks on the judge, the attorney general and the entire process. It scored many important legal points for James and none for Trump.

In response to questioning by state attorney Kevin Wallace earlier this week, he acknowledged more than once that he had reduced the valuation of assets such as his Westchester County, N.Y., estate that he considered “too high.” He also conceded that he tended to look at valuations more broadly: “I would see them, and I would maybe on occasion have some suggestions.”

Trump also acknowledged understanding that the financial valuations he signed were meant to secure loans.

You can bet that Engoron will highlight these admissions as demonstrating that Trump knew the valuations he signed were false.

Trump did interject a few homegrown supposed defenses, either unaware of or indifferent to their legal irrelevance.

He insisted, for example, that because the Trump Organization repaid the loans, “there was no victim.” That’s a nonstarter as a defense because the charge of knowingly submitting false valuations doesn’t require the banks to have lost money. The important point is that the false statements enabled Trump to get better terms.

Expert testimony earlier in the trial suggested the company’s lies saved it $168 million in interest. Look for Engoron to order Trump’s company to disgorge that and more.

Legally, Trump began in a hole and proceed to dig straight downward. Almost every observer of the trial anticipates a verdict that will be devastating to Trump and very possibly eviscerate what remains of his business empire.

And yet there’s no getting around the sense that not only did Trump bring this legal harm on himself, he did so on purpose.

Consider the bitter diatribes he spewed at various targets at spontaneous intervals. He told Wallace, the state attorney, that he should be ashamed of himself; he pointed to James and screamed, “The fraud is her!”; he proclaimed, “This is a very unfair trial. Very, very.”

He ranted and raved in a way that would have landed many other witnesses in handcuffs. But Engoron by and large let it go, cautious not to take the bait and create an issue on appeal. And Wallace was content to let Trump rail away for the nuggets of damning testimony embedded in his raging.

I am not one of those who believes in Trump’s secret strategic genius, and I don’t see his unhinged fulminations as a calculated political masterstroke. But the whole spectacle was the clearest illustration to date of the most bizarre feature of Trump’s legal troubles: Every motion, every testimony, every legal theory is wholly political — a political rally in a courtroom.

Trump is a one-trick pony whose approach to every situation is the same toxic brew of grievance, vanity and hate. His legal strategy is identical to his political strategy.

We can expect him to have even worse legal days as he confronts ever more serious threats to his fortune and liberty. We can count on him to continue to respond in ways that harm his legal prospects but delight his followers as he seeks to make a joke of the legal system. We can only hope that the system has the last laugh.

Harry Litman wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times.

Since open carry was banned (at the urging of then-Dade County prosecutor Janet Reno), we haven’t seen a great reduction in crime. We can, however, analyze several incidents where honest citizens had their rights violated because of this policy.

Take a recent incident in Columbia County late last year, where James Hodges, who is legally blind, was reporting for jury duty. While walking to the courthouse, he was stopped, harassed and ultimately charged with obstruction without violence. His crime: carrying a folded seeing-eye cane for his visual impairment — but to the deputies on scene, the law-abiding citizen who was doing his civic duty appeared to be openly carrying a firearm.

More recently, in Volusia County, a father was openly carrying a firearm on his own property (the one situation where legal to do so) when his neighbor’s pit bull got loose. With his six-year-old daughter at his side, John Leggett had reason to be concerned since the dog was being aggressive towards his daughter, but Daytona Beach Police happened to arrive on scene at the same time for a welfare check on the neighbor, and upon seeing Leggett armed, the officers arrested him in total violation of existing law.

As a former cop, I can speak directly to the real issue at hand: the state’s ban on open carry puts police in confusing situations that normally wouldn’t even matter. Hodges would not have been so aggressively confronted near the courthouse on a public sidewalk, and Leggett would not have had his civil rights violated while he was protecting his daughter if our lawmakers had been willing to change course and join the near unanimous crowd of states that allow open carry in one form or another. While the authorities have dropped charges in both cases, that still cannot make up for the wrong that was committed.

This past legislative session, Senate President Kathleen Passidomo claimed her opposition to open carry was because Florida’s sheriffs are against it. Yet, the current head of the Florida Sheriff’s Association, Bill Leeper of Nassau County, has previously stated his support for open carry, as have other Florida sheriffs like Wayne Ivey of Brevard County.

These lawmakers need to get their act together. Current State Supreme Court precedent, which dates to 2017, makes clear that under existing state law, citizens do not have a right to openly carry, rather, it is a privilege that can be granted by the state. This ruling now may directly contradict the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling from last year, which overturned several onerous state carry laws.

Yes, the Legislature managed to pass some semblance of pro-gun policy last year with permitless concealed carry, but that still leaves police stuck with a confusing exception and “We the People” in small and very liberal company.

The current ban has a racist past, is rightfully opposed by our governor, and deserves to be sent to the scrapyard of history. It doesn’t stop criminals from breaking the law, but instead simply prevents honest law-abiding Floridians from fully exercising their civil rights.

Just like a rattlesnake, a person openly carrying sends a message to would be bad guys: don’t even bother. Our lawmakers need to get their act together and give us the full-fledged rights the citizens of this free state are demanding.

Luis Valdes is the Florida State Director for Gun Owners of America, a no-compromise grassroots gun lobby with approximately 2.5 million members. He resides in Brevard County and is a former police officer and detective.