Latest news with #JonathanMartin
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Florida bill would shift responsibility when a tree falls on a neighbor's home
Florida has a lot of hurricanes and even more trees. But if your neighbor's tree falls on your house, you could be responsible for the damage. It's called the Massachusetts rule, and State Senator Jonathan Martin (R-Fort Myers) believes it's outlived its usefulness. 'This Massachusetts Rule is hundreds of years old, and it was put in place back when everyone lived on farms. Nobody had houses on their property lines and if a tree fell on your property, that was free wood,' said Martin during a committee hearing in early April. Martin is sponsoring legislation that would make homeowners responsible for damage caused by trees on their property. Mark Friedlander with the Insurance Information Institute argues the 'Fallen Tree Act' would more or less codify what courts have already held in litigation involving trees falling on neighbors' homes. 'Courts in Florida have typically ruled in favor of the impacted homeowner. Meaning, they have ruled that the party responsible for the tree must pay the damages,' said Friedlander. But the idea got some pushback in its first committee stop. Read: Florida democrats fear new legislation would set the stage for 'fetal personhood' ruling George Feijoo with the Florida Insurance Council expressed concern over the lack of distinction between healthy and unhealthy trees. 'We're particularly concerned that the bill will lead to increased litigation specifically between neighbors, which is not sound public policy to incentivize, in our opinion,' said Feijoo. But Martin argued neighbors are already suing each other, and clarifying who is liable would only stand to reduce litigation. 'This is a solution to a problem that will bring down insurance costs and it'll keep our communities safer during hurricanes and shortly after hurricanes,' said Martin. The bill still has two more committee stops in both chambers. With only three weeks left in session, it seems the Fallen Tree Act may be falling on deaf ears. [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks] [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter] Click here to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Action News Jax live.
USA Today
30-03-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Want to make less money? Florida GOP undermines voters with minimum wage scheme.
The minimum wage in Florida is under attack – and this time in a very dishonest way. After years of purposeful inaction by state lawmakers, Florida voters took matters into their own hands five years ago by passing a constitutional amendment that raised the minimum wage in the state. The voter initiative increased the then-paltry minimum wage of $8.65 per hour for nontipped workers, by putting it on a schedule of yearly increases that tops out at $15 an hour by Sept. 30, 2026. This year, the graduated minimum wage is $13 an hour in Florida. The constitutional amendment passed despite a well-funded opposition led by several business groups, including the Associated Builders and Contractors of Florida, the Associated Industries of Florida, the Florida Farm Bureau, the Florida Home Builders Association and the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association. And it didn't sit well with the Republican-led state legislature, either. GOP lawmakers apparently have decided to disregard the state's constitution and the will of the voters expressed through that referendum. It took them five years to find a new way to circumvent the voters' wishes. What they've come up with is a real doozy. Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle. A new Florida bill would let employers pay below minimum wage A bill (SB 676) working through the Florida Legislature this session rewrites labor laws in the state to allow workers to voluntarily request to get paid less than the minimum wage. Yes, I know. It sounds crazy. Who goes into a job asking to be underpaid? Or hopes to get a job that makes an instant pay cut sound like an exciting new opportunity? I guess the conversation will go something like this: 'Good news! You're hired. Now, just sign here on the line that says you have agreed to participate in our floor-sweeping apprenticeship opportunity at $7.25 an hour. 'If you do well there, you'll be eligible for a french fries work-based learning opportunity as soon as you complete your restroom internship.' Under this bill, reclassifying low-wage jobs as internships, apprenticeships or work-based learning opportunities would allow employers to sidestep the state's minimum wage law by hiring workers willing to sign away their absolute right to a minimum salary. The bill's sponsor in the Senate, Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, tried to make this Dickensian dystopia sound like a noble gesture by calling it 'trading pay for a marketable skill.' By Martin's reckoning, Florida is full of people who don't deserve to be paid a day's pay for a day's work. The bill doesn't define what a 'skill' is. There's also no definition in state law that defines an 'internship.' Tellingly, the bill purposefully allows the subminimum pay to apply to workers of all ages – not just teenagers. And it is being forwarded despite clear language in the Fair Labor Standards Act and Florida case law that employees can't waive their rights to minimum pay. We need fair wages. This is the opposite. In the end, this bill is just a legally flawed gift to businesses looking to cut labor costs at the expense of their poorest, unskilled workers. 'If we think that $13 an hour is what a bag boy at a grocery store should be making in rural Florida, then I think we have a misconception of either what's reasonable or we're not relating that to the cost of goods and services anymore,' Martin said. Reality check: A living wage in Florida for an adult with no children is $23.41 an hour, according to MIT's Living Wage Calculator. And there are about 1.5 million Floridians working in jobs that pay less than $15 per hour, according to data compiled by the Florida Policy Institute. The problem in Florida isn't that wages are too high and corporate profits are too low. This bill is a monumental step in the wrong direction. It lends a hand to those who need it least at the expense of those who are most in need. Here's how Jackson Oberlink, the legislative director for the social justice group Florida For All, put it. 'Let's be honest, no worker truly opts out of fair wages. There is zero protections in this bill against coercion, fraud, or employer intimidation, meaning bad actors can and will exploit it,' Oberlink told lawmakers at a committee meeting earlier this month. 'Under this bill," he added, "a fast-food worker, a grocery store cashier or a construction apprentice could suddenly find themselves reclassified as an intern and making far less than the legal minimum wage.' 'If this bill becomes law, it won't just hurt individual workers. It will drive down wages across entire industries as more and more businesses push workers into these bogus exemptions to cut costs,' Oberlink said. 'All we're asking for is fair pay for a hard day's work without loopholes, without carve-outs and without games,' he said. Is that too much to ask? We'll soon find out. Frank Cerabino is a news columnist with The Palm Beach Post, where this column originally published. He can be reached at fcerabino@
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tupelo Community Theatre wins at Southeastern Theatre Conference, set to compete at national level
TUPELO — For only the second time, Tupelo Community Theatre will compete nationally at the American Association of Community Theatre Festival after winning Best Production at the 2025 Southeastern Theatre Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, last weekend. The play, "Tone Clusters," was written by Joyce Carol Oates, is directed by Jonathan Martin and features original music composed by Jason Bahr. The group sought out a performance piece that was relatively obscure, something the judges and audience wouldn't have seen a dozen times. "We wanted to find a piece that could be topical in its themes and was malleable in terms of the way that you could present it," Jonathan Martin said. "The story is about a married couple in their 50s who have an adult child accused of murdering a 14-year-old neighborhood girl. This is revealed through an interview taking place inside of what appears to be a TV studio." The show requires only three actors: Haley Johnson plays Emily Gulick, Jamie Fair plays Frank Gulick, and John Carroll plays "The Voice" and serves as a narrator. "Tone Clusters" incorporates multimedia elements, including two television monitors that are livestreaming via cameras onstage filming closeups of the two actors and a large movie theater-type screen that shows various images. The final production differs significantly from the script, Lisa Martin, TCT executive director and assistant director for "Tone Clusters," said. "That's unique to Jonathan as a director," she said. The cast and crew identified themes they wanted to explore and made creative decisions that supported those themes. For example, in emphasizing issues of truth versus non-truth and the testing of beliefs, they made the set decor and costumes black, white and gray in color until the last two minutes of the show. "Nothing has any color in it," Jonathan Martin said. "It's washed out. It also gives the play the tone of a 'Twilight Zone' episode." Scenes were divided into chapters with Quentin Tarantino-style chapter titles, Jonathan Martin said. Folded into the titles are questions that are fundamental to epistemology, the study of knowledge and why people believe what they believe, and all of those questions return at the end after the narrative has fully unfolded for the audience. "We want to entertain and provoke and encourage the audience to think a little longer about the show after it's over," he said. The parameters set for performances provide an additional challenge. The entire set must fit in a 10-by-10 box, and participants are given 10 minutes to set up, 60 minutes to perform and another 10 minutes to return their set to the box. "You have to think ahead of time about what kind of set you're going to use," Jonathan Martin said. "Because you could have a gorgeous set to perform here at the Lyric or at TCT Off Broadway, but if it's not mobile and if it can't bend and fit inside a 10-by-10 box, it's useless for competition." TCT participates each year in the Mississippi Theatre Association competition. Lisa Martin recalled entering a show at the MTA at 19 years old. "It was something that was very important to the theater itself, but also Tom Booth, who was very passionate about it," Lisa Martin said of TCT's late executive director. "He directed the majority of those shows that we took to MTA, and we had great success over the years." The Top 2 productions at the Mississippi Theatre Association move on to the Southeastern Theatre Conference each year, and the Top 2 productions regionally move on to the American Association of Community Theatre Festival, which is held bi-yearly on calendar years that end in odd numbers. After the Mississippi Theatre Association competition in January, TCT moved on to the Southeastern Theatre Conference this month and brought home the Best Production award at the Community Theatre Festival. All three performers — Johnson, Fair and Carroll — brought home Outstanding Performance honors, and the production was recognized for Outstanding Technical Design. The award-winning group will represent Tupelo, Mississippi and the South nationally this summer. The 2025 AACT Festival, set for June 25-28 in Des Moines, Iowa, is dubbed "America's National Community Theatre Festival," is affiliated with more than 7,000 community theaters across the United States. "We are now in the final 12 productions in the country," Jonathan Martin said. "If you're not a theater person, this is kind of like our Super Bowl," Johnson added. "This is a really big deal for us. It's a lot of pressure, but either way, whether we win or don't win it's still just amazing to be able to compete at that level." Lisa Martin said the opportunity to take a small, obscure show to compete nationally is a testament to local theater and speaks volumes to the passion and talent in Tupelo. Preview shows ahead of competition performances were hosted at TCT Off Broadway, and an additional show will be hosted in June ahead of the competition in Iowa. "There is good and meaningful artistic work generated by amateur artists in this area that I hope makes the community proud and also encourages the community to come out and see more of it when we present productions locally," Jonathan Martin said. "They can have confidence that some talented people are volunteering their time to present high quality productions right here at home."
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Scientists rank grocery items to help identify processed foods
(NewsNation) — U.S. grocery stores offer an array of options from cereals to baked foods in countless flavors. However, an inspection of the ingredient lists reveals that the variety may be more limited than it seems. A recent study revealed that a majority of products on grocery shelves are filled with artificial ingredients and are highly processed. Eliminating these ingredients from many everyday foods will be a challenge, but there's a new tool that can help consumers make healthier choices at the grocery store. What foods go away under West Virginia's ban certain food dye? A new ranking system from GroceryDB, a database containing information on more than 50,000 food items sold by major U.S., highlights how prevalent ultra-processed foods are in American diets. Many of these items are likely a part of consumers' weekly grocery lists. Some of the top culprits include: Energy drinks, which are high in sugar, artificial flavors and additives Mass-produced bread, often containing additives like emulsifiers and preservatives Breakfast cereals, with synthetic nutrients Hot dogs filled with nitrates, high salt, and saturated fats. Vegan 'meat' products with added flavor enhancers, stabilizers and fillers Other common processed foods near the top of the list include chicken nuggets, frozen pizza, sodas, chips, cookies and frozen meals. In response to rising concerns about health, some states are moving to remove highly processed foods from schools. Florida is propping legislation, following California, which has already passed similar laws. How are ultra-processed foods affecting your brain health? Florida Senator Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, has proposed a bill that would prevent public schools from purchasing foods containing 11 specific artificial ingredients, many of which are commonly found in sodas, candy and other processed snacks. Similar bills have faced resistance from the food industry, and this latest version is still in its early stages. However, it reflects the growing focus by both the public and lawmakers on the widespread consumption of mass-produced foods in the U.S. A government-funded study revealed that people who ate processed foods tended to consume more calories and gain weight, contributing to the growing obesity epidemic in the U.S. Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults are now overweight or obese, a figure that has more than doubled from 1990 to 2021. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Florida Republicans open door to firing squads, lethal gas as they push death penalty expansion
A bill filed in the Florida state Senate would expand the methods by which death row inmates could be executed. Senate Bill 1604, introduced by state Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, aims to protect Florida's status as a death penalty state if certain execution methods like electrocution or legal injection are made unconstitutional by the Supreme Court or the Florida Supreme Court, or if lethal injection drugs are unable to be obtained in the future. There is currently a shortage of pentobarbital, the drug used for lethal injections, which has several states scrambling to find alternative execution methods. Los Angeles District Attorney Wants To Bring Back Death Penalty If that happens in Florida, the bill mandates that "all persons sentenced to death for a capital crime shall be executed by a method not deemed unconstitutional." Martin told the Tampa Bay Times that his legislation will ensure that the state fulfills the law and follows through on executions. Read On The Fox News App Tuesday, the bill passed through the Florida Senate's Committee on Criminal Justice. Wednesday, state Rep. Berny Jacques, R-Largo, introduced a companion bill in the Florida House of Representatives. "I filed House Bill 903 because I believe government's primary role is to protect public safety, and the death penalty plays a vital part in that," Jacques told Fox News Digital. "This bill ensures Florida can uphold constitutional death sentences without delay by giving the Department of Corrections the flexibility to use any lawful method if current options become unavailable." Idaho Becomes First State To Prefer Death By Firing Squad For Executions The bill does not specify which alternative execution methods could be used, but eight states already authorize the use of some form of lethal gas as a backup to lethal injection, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In four of those states – Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma – nitrogen gas is specifically named as the deadly chemical agent used in such executions. Four other states allow death by firing squad as an alternative to lethal injection, and South Carolina allows it as an alternative to electrocution, its default method of execution. Idaho's Move To Resurrect Firing Squad 'Makes Sense' As 'Quickest, Surest' Death Penalty Option, Expert Says In March, death row inmate Brad Sigmon of South Carolina was executed by firing squad. He was the first person in the United States to be executed in that manner in more than 15 years. Lethal injection is by far the most popular execution method, accounting for 1,431 of all executions since 1976. Electrocution is second, accounting for article source: Florida Republicans open door to firing squads, lethal gas as they push death penalty expansion
