Tagged: business

If you follow U.S. 1 to the very end of the Florida peninsula, veer onto Card Sound Road, and make your way through the mangrove swamps, you’ll find it.  A wooden shanty with a roof but no walls: an open-air bar and restaurant.  It’s the very last place on the U.S. mainland.  And it’s called Alabama Jack’s.

David's Café in Miami Beach is a popular campaign stop for politicians. Now, it's become a site for protest.

A group of former workers claims they are owed about $70,000 in unpaid wages from a satellite location that closed in July.

Carlos Perez was among the protestors outside the main restaurant on Collins Avenue in South Beach Tuesday. He claimed its owners offered to pay a fraction of his original wages.

Immigration and agriculture go hand in hand.

That's what community and business leaders in Tallahassee recently heard from Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam.

He said immigration reform is vital to the health of the state’s agriculture industry. 

Putnam told the Economic Club of Florida he is concerned the U.S. is losing business to developing countries that have different standards for hiring farm workers.

Flagler County, where Palm Coast is located, has the highest unemployment rate in Florida. 1 in 8 workers there is without a job.

Our Dispatches from the Swing State project passed through Palm Coast yesterday and stopped at a hotdog stand where they met John Sabia.

Sabia works only for tips at Hot Diggity Dog. He’s helping out the owner who happens to be his son.

Sabia says when Palm Coast was booming, the hotdog stand had a line for hours and US1 was backed up with traffic.

But then, the collapse.

Florida is number one when it comes to foreclosures. This is the first time since 2005 that Florida has held the top spot.

The rankings for September are based on figures released Thursday by RealtyTrac.

Within the state, Broward County has the highest percentage of homes going through the foreclosure process.

The effort to shrink the number of homes insured by the state-backed Citizens Property Insurance is accelerating into high gear.

The Office of Insurance Regulation approved the company’s rate hike request this week.

At the same time, more than 200,000 Citizens customers are being contacted by private insurance companies that want their business.

A controversial agreement between Palm Beach County and developers is finally producing reduced-price homes for low- to middle-income families.

It’s just not happening fast enough.

In 2006, at the height of South Florida’s building boom, the county decided to set aside affordable housing for its workforce.  So it struck what sounded like a sweet deal for developers: they could build more houses than usual within certain areas, provided they knock down some prices. 

09/18/12 - Tuesday's Topical Currents discusses the future of 21st Century democracy and capitalism, with University of Massachusetts professor emeritus and author Richard Woolf. For more than 25 years, he’s developed a new approach for an economy aimed at promoting “workers’ self-directed enterprises.” There have been success stories for these small capitalist endeavors worldwide and in progressive US companies.  His book is Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism.  

09/11/12 - Tuesday's Topical Currents is with journalist Hanna Rosin, and her book, The End Of Men: And The Rise Of Women. This year, women became a majority of the American workforce for the first time in history. Most managers are now women, and of today’s college graduates women outnumber men. Rosin suggests that modern post-industrial society is more congenial for the success of women.