florida – Martin Simpson

A Salute to Federalism, from the Free State of Florida (posted 12/9/25)

Well, it’s Hump Day everybody, and you know what that means.

No, Bill Clinton, THAT’s not what it means! It’s just Wednesday.

But this Wednesday, I’ve got a transitional column for you. My last three columns were a departure from my usual juvenile humor and mockery of imbeciles in the news, as I discussed checks and balances in our government, almost like a reasonable adult would.

This Friday, I’ll be back within my wheelhouse, snarking away at some Dems who have really out-done themselves in dumb-assery lately.

But today I’m going to celebrate one aspect of checks and balances – federalism – based partly on my own experiences.

Regular readers may remember that I was born in Illinois in the 19^th century. (Small-town north-central Illinois in the 1970s was essentially the same as in the 1870s, but with cars instead of horses, and Cheap Trick on an 8-track in my ’72 Gran Torino.) I spent my first 24 years in Illinois, before I moved to Florida to get my PhD in English, and meet and close on my smokeshow wife. Since then, I’ve lived in the Free State of Florida.

So I can compare my beloved (but tragically blue) home state of Illinois to my adopted (red) home state of Florida. (I wasn’t born here, but I got here as fast as I could.) I will also include another blue state – New York – for a more apples-to-apples comparison to Florida. And I’ll consider these three states in two areas – taxation, and size and cost of state government – starting with the latter.

Size and Cost of State Government

One of the core tenets of conservatism is a preference for a smaller government. One famous saying that encapsulates the idea – variously attributed to Locke, Jefferson and Thoreau – is “that government is best which governs least.” Accordingly, red states tend to have smaller state governments, while blue states have much larger ones. That tendency certainly applies to Florida, Illinois and New York.

There are different ways to calculate state government employment, which can be affected by issues such as how full-time vs part-time workers are counted, how seasonal variations and seasonal workers are counted, etc. But for an apples-to-apples comparison, the following stats all come from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank:

Florida’s population is 23.4 million residents, and it employs 117,300 government workers.

New York state’s population is 19.9 million, and it employs 262,700 government workers.

Illinois’ population is 12.7 million, and it employs 143,000 government workers.

Those numbers work out to a stark difference in per capita government workers: Illinois has 89 workers per 1000 residents, New York state has 76, and Florida has only 20!

The three states’ respective budgets naturally reflect the size of their work force. This year, Illinois’ budget is $55.2 billion, New York’s is $245 billion, and Florida’s is $117 billion.

So Florida has only about a quarter of the per capita government employees that New York has, and only about a fifth of those that Illinois has, and thus needs to spend way less to maintain its government services.

It would be one thing if the citizens of Illinois and New York could point to a superior quality of life that they’re getting for all of the extra money they’re spending on their government. Are their streets safer, cleaner, and better maintained, and their kids better educated, and their public services more responsive and better-performing than those in Florida?

Nobody believes that.

Florida and New York are the third and fourth most populous states respectively, and thus provide the closest comparison. And New York, despite having 20% less population, has 44% more state employees, and a 48% higher budget than Florida!

Taxation

The leaner and more efficient state government in Florida makes itself felt in its much smaller tax burden. Florida has no state income tax. Illinois has a flat 4.95% income tax rate. New York’s income tax ranges between 4% and 10.9%; the level for middle income earners (between $89-215K per year) is 6%.

Those varying tax rates make a huge difference over an average working life! As an example, take someone who earns an average of $50K per year (inflation adjusted) for 40 years. In that time, she would have earned $2 million, and if she lived in Illinois (with a 5% state income tax rate), would have paid $100,000 in state income tax that a Floridian would have been able to keep and invest.

It’s hard to calculate the value of that extra $100K of earnings after those 40 years. At least it is for me, as an English major. (I’m sure it would be a snap for big brains in CO nation like CO, Chris Silber, and others.) But I do know that money invested pre-tax in an investment that makes around 10% — just a little over the average of the S&P these last 40 years – doubles every 7 years. Of course, that $100K wouldn’t have been received in a lump sum 40 years ago, but parceled out in yearly increments.

Like I said, I can’t figure it out exactly. But I think it’s a safe conservative guess that if that money had been mostly invested in a decent mutual fund over 40 years, it would at least amount to around $250,000 now, and probably a lot more. And that is just one economic consequence of living in a no-income tax red state vs. Illinois for an average working life: a quarter-million extra dollars of net worth!

Other economic disparities are just as consequential. Property taxes are usually higher in blue states, as well as the costs of starting a business, or building a home. I know that the amount of property taxes my relatives in Illinois pay – adjusted for the value of the house – are nearly 4 times what I pay in Florida. I was able to buy fixer-upper rental houses with less red tape and cost, and they’ve appreciated way more than the same places in Illinois would have. When it came to college for our kids, we’ve been able to pay less for a higher quality education than we would have in Illinois.

Of course, money isn’t everything. Crime rates, homelessness and illegal immigration also impact quality of life. And red states generally perform better in those areas, too. We support our police, and they tend to catch more criminals, who spend more time in prison for their crimes. Unexpectedly!

Results

Migration patterns demonstrate the utility of federalism, which allows Americans to “vote with their feet” by moving from states who have favored higher taxes, larger government, and consequence-free crime, and to states who have taken the opposite approach.

The experiments have been going on in the little laboratories of our states all over the country, and the results are in. And once again, New York and Florida provide instructive examples.

In the year 2000, Florida’s population was around 16 million. By 2015 it had grown to just over 20 million, and now it is around 24 million. By comparison, in that same quarter-century, New York state has grown by less than a million, and Florida overtook it as the third largest state. And the trends are diverging even more, with Florida gaining momentum, and New York actually losing 300,000 people over the last 5 years!

I’m not arguing that population growth is always and everywhere an unalloyed benefit. If you ask most long-term Florida residents, they would probably tell you that our quality of life wouldn’t suffer if we had a few million new residents, at least.

Especially when they bring with them the voting patterns that produced the results that made them flee New York, Illinois or California in the first place!

But voluntary, net population growth is by definition a metric of perceived success. People move to places they think are better than where they are moving from, and they flee places they think are worse.

That’s been going on for a very long time on the national level, with immigrants flooding into America from all over the world. And now it has been going on for a while within our country.

Am I saying that we should build a wall around our red states and start vetting refugees from blue states as thoroughly as we should have been vetting refugees from Somalia, Venezuela, and Jihadistan?

I’m saying we should have that conversation.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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More (Belated) Good News from Florida (posted 7/21/25)

I was so excited to hear on Friday that Trump was signing the GENIUS act into law, thinking that finally, at long last, my status as hilarious genius would be formally acknowledged by an act of state. I sat with my phone all day, waiting for a congratulatory call from the White House that sadly, never came.

Finally, around midnight, after my wife had gone to bed and Cassie the Wonder Dog had fallen asleep at my feet, I gave up and went online to read about that act.

Imagine my disappointment when I found out it was about crypto, which I can’t even pretend to understand. So maybe it’s possible that I’m not the genius I think I am…

In my column last week about how Florida is kicking arse and IL and CA Dems are making arses of themselves, I didn’t mention two of my favorite Florida stories from the last month, both of which demonstrate common sense in crime fighting.

The first is Alligator Alcatraz, which is an example of amazing branding attached to a great idea. The name has it all: pleasing alliteration, a reference to a famous prison that all Americans know, and the vivid, evocative mental image that it creates.

As in, “You thought the Rock was a tough place to escape from?” At least there, if you made it out and could survive the swim, you’d find yourself in San Francisco. Sure, that’s not the reward that it might have been, decades ago. But still, if you stepped carefully through the human feces and filthy syringes, and could avoid getting bitten by a shambling, zombi-fied, narcotics-addled, straight-ballot Democrat voter, you’d soon be free.

But Alligator Alcatraz? If you manage to make it out of there, you’d be facing miles of uncharted swamps, filled with animals whose bite is even more terrifying than that of a hepatitis-riddled leftist with meth mouth.

And no, I’m not talking about the Sexual Harassment Panda. (Sing it with me, people, “Don’t say that, don’t touch there. Don’t be nasty says the silly bear!”) I’m talking about an apex predator from the age of the dinosaurs, with a mouth as big as Maxine Waters’ and skin as tough and scaly as… Maxine Waters’.

Many soft-hearted lefties have pronounced themselves appalled and offended by the cruelty of conservatives who would subject the “undocumented” to such a place, and would even give it a hilarious name like “Alligator Alcatraz.” (I would have also accepted “Sing-Sing in the Swamp,” but that is wordier, and many youngsters might not have heard of that northern prison.)

But since very few of them have expressed any regret or shame over Biden’s-open-border-enabled rape and murder of Jocelyn Nungaray, Laken Riley, or the myriad victims of illegals’ violence, we are not going to lose any sleep over their bruised feelings.

In fact, DeSantis has released a useful list of some of the delightful illegals whom Biden and the Dems invited into our country, and who are now at Alligator Alcatraz. These Citizen-of-the-Year candidates include a Cuban convicted of sexual assault in Texas; a Honduran convicted of murder in Florida; a Guatemalan convicted of burglary, forced entry and voyeurism in Miami. Another Cuban slit the throat of an old woman and then tried to burn her house down to destroy the evidence.

Yep, this group is like a United Nations gathering of terrible human beings. (Coincidentally, many UN committees are actually a United Nations gathering of terrible human beings. I hope Trump has got a team looking at the process for pulling out of the UN ASAP.)

My favorite scumbag on the first list of detainees at AA – and one I hope will soon prove his machismo by trying his luck in the swamp – is a Honduran MS-13 member with a string of charges including assault, resisting arrest, RICO offenses and conspiracy to commit murder, called – and I swear I am not making this up – Oscar “Satan” Sanchez.

That’s who the Democrats are fighting for. Drug traffickers, sex traffickers, human traffickers, gang bangers, wife-beaters like Cuddly Kilmar, and Satan! (I couldn’t help by hearing Dana Carvey’s Church Lady voice just then.)

I’m trying to get a suggestion to Ron DeSantis. (Maybe CO can reach out to him when he and the COW get back from Alaska, because I’ve heard that they have friends in high places.) And that is: pay-per-view gladiator-style cage matches featuring the worst-of-the-worst in Alligator Alcatraz who are willing to get into the octagon with a gator, with a guarantee of freedom if they win.

Trump is already friends with the MMA’s Dana White and Joe Rogan. White can set up the matches, and Rogan can call them. We can put the proceeds from the pay-per-view – which should bring in as much as the tariffs – toward hiring more ICE and border patrol bad-asses.

I can see it now. A huge gator wriggles into the cage, while a graphics package lists his stats: Length, 13 feet.

Weight, 1000 pounds.

Number of teeth: 80.

Bite strength: 2,125 PSI.

Record: 37-0 – 33-0 vs foreign criminals, 2-0 vs. dull-witted tourists taking selfies, 2-0 vs oblivious poodles.

Then Satan Sanchez struts in, and his stats are listed:

Height: 5’ 9”

Weight: 185

Record: 9-1 – 3-0 vs children, 4-0 vs women, 2-0 vs senior citizens. One loss to an ICE agent using the Simpson Gender Confirmation Protocol (groin kick) followed by pepper spray.

Life Expectancy: 2 more minutes.

Then they throw to Joe Rogan with the call: “Our first bout tonight features The Gator vs. Satan. In this corner, a slimy, dead-eyed, reptilian killer.

In the other corner, an Alligator. Let’s get ready to rummmmbllll—

Yow! Ouch. The gator just took off Satan’s right arm. That’s going to be a problem for him, since he’s a rightie, and his right cross is his best mov—

Gah! There goes the left arm. And…down goes Satan! Down goes Satan!!”

And, scene.

The second great Florida crime-fighting story is from a DeSantis interview with Dave Rubin on June 13. (Before you can ask, I know: this story is over a month old. And no, I’m not tired of winning. But I am getting a little tired trying to keep up with writing about all of the winning!)

Rubin asked DeSantis about several recent stories from blue states wherein people whose cars were surrounded by violent protestors hit a few protestors in an effort to get away, and were subsequently charged with a crime.

DeSantis said that Florida drivers “have a right to defend themselves” if they feel threatened. “If you are driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety, and so if you drive off and you hit one of these people, that’s their fault for impinging on you.”

He further explained that, “You don’t have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the streets. You have a right to defend yourself in Florida.”

A minute after I heard that on Rubin’s show, my wife walked through our dining room and stopped in her tracks, saying, “Are you re-enacting that Meg Ryan scene in the diner in When Harry Met Sally?”

And I said, “Maybe.” And ran a hand through my hair, while I tried to get my breathing back under control.

In a recent email exchange with a lefty buddy, he said that he thinks conservatives don’t have as much empathy as leftists do. I countered that both sides of the political divide have empathy; the difference is in who we empathize with.

Many lefties seem to feel a lot more empathy for criminals than for cops, and “trans women” athletes than for their actual women competitors, and for illegals than citizens.

Meanwhile, we righties feel empathy for ICE agents being attacked by rioters, and people victimized by criminals. And yes, alligators.

Because some day soon, God willing, some poor gator is going to have to pass chunks of Satan Sanchez in his stool. And that seems like it would have to be uncomfortable.

In the meantime…

“Satan” Sanchez/Gavin “Satan’s Helper” Newsom, 2028!

Hamas delenda est!

Two Local Stories: How to Handle Protestors, & Foolish Criminals (posted 5/1/24)

Today I’ve got two quick stories for you, both from my hometown. The first offers a case study in how to respond to law-breaking campus protestors, and the second one fits in two of my regular column categories: “Stupid Criminals” stories, and “You Don’t Hate the Media Enough” stories.

One of the many reasons that it’s great to be a Florida Gator is that our governing officials don’t suffer from CCRIS (Congenital Cranial-Rectal Inversion Syndrome), a condition tragically affecting many university administrations across the country.

(For your generous gift of only $10 per month, our team of dedicated, caring surgeons can give Claudine Gay and other Ivy League college administrators the desperately needed operations to remove their heads from their arses, before it’s too late. Won’t you please think of the children? The gullible, low-IQ, Jew-hating children? Our operators are standing by.)

In recent weeks, as many universities spiraled into paroxysms of pro-Hamas idiocy, UF issued clear guidelines delineating free speech on the one hand, and various forms of unacceptable and illegal a-holery on the other.

Among the latter, they identified “protests inside buildings… blocking egress, camping, building structures,” and they warned that student violators would face “a 3-year trespass and suspension,” and that non-compliant employees “will be trespassed and separated from employment.”

When 9 knuckleheads tested those rules a few days ago, they were all quickly arrested. You can see pictures of them online, and they are exactly what you’d expect. The breakdown: 3 males and 6 females; 5 are UF students; 2 have multiple hair colors not found in nature, and all 9 are absolutely un-“friend”-able, if you get my meaning.

All are charged with multiple misdemeanors, and one – Allen Frasheri – got an additional battery-on-an-officer charge for spitting on a cop. (Rumors that he has been tested for rabies so that the officer doesn’t have to go through a preventative series of painful shots have not been confirmed.) And surprise! He was the president of a student chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America in 2022.

So I’d advise that officer to take the shots, just to be on the safe side.

My favorite part of the info about the protestors is that the UF students are listed as “expecting to graduate” in 2025 or 2026. But given the three-year suspension mentioned above, I wouldn’t count on that now, kiddos!

After the arrests, UF spokesman Steve Orlando put out a statement that should be carved into a stone tablet and placed in front of the statues of the three UF Heisman trophy winners (Spurrier, Wuerffel and Tebow), so that parents who care about the important things in life can bring their children there, and train them well.

The statement began, “This is not complicated: The University of Florida is not a daycare, and we do not treat protesters like children — they knew the rules, they broke the rules, and they’ll face the consequences.”

Sweetness and light!

Unlike at USC and many other schools, UF’s graduation is going to go on this Saturday, as scheduled. NOT unexpectedly!

My second local story is very different. It involves the death of four black males between the ages of 14 and 16 in a terrible car crash two days ago.

Most media reports had headlines that varied only slightly from this one: “Four Teenage Boys Dead after High-Speed Chase with Florida Highway Patrol, Who Performed Pit Maneuver to Stop Them.”

Most of the stories concentrated on how young the boys were, and the fact that one was a football star at a local high school, before providing a few details. A cop had initially pulled them over, but then they sped away, reaching speeds of over 100 mph, before a trooper intervened. It’s not clear how fast they were going when he pitted them (i.e. bumped the rear of their car to one side, in order to make it spin out). But the car ran into a cement pole, killing everyone inside.

If I were one to trust MSM crime stories, I would have been intrigued. At first I might think that maybe they were speeding because they were late for Bible Study. (I hate it when you get in there late, and you missed the first prayer and the reading of the Gospel text!) But a few paragraphs in, the story mentioned that the SUV they were in had been reported stolen.

So okay, they weren’t making great choices. But still, I’m sure that at the tender age of 16, these were just dumb kids, out for a harmless joyride.

Because who amongst us hasn’t driven a little too fast, and possibly slid our dad’s 1972 Gran Torino (white with a blue stripe, and that super-cool hood scoop on it) into a ditch off of a gravel road about half a mile north of El Paso, Illinois?

I mean, just speaking hypothetically, and not at all from personal experience.

Anyway, I’m sure these high-spirited rascals were just—

What’s that? Two of the four of them were wearing ankle monitors? And at least some of them were wearing ski masks? In Florida, on a 72-degree night, as one does?

Well, maybe they’ve got one of those really strict youth pastors, who makes you wear an ankle monitor if you’ve showed up late to at least two Bible Study sessions in the past. Those guys can get pretty Old Testament with—

What? Three of the four of them had active warrants? C’mon, man!

What do you have to do to have active warrants and an ankle monitor when you’re 14 or 16 years old?! And if someone in law enforcement is actually monitoring the ankle monitors, did they not find it strange that two of their ankle monitors were flying through east Gainesville at 110 miles per hour?

It’s obviously a tragic story, if only because the kids were so young, and may have had the chance to overcome their CCRIS if they’d survived their stupidity for a little longer.

And even though I’ve never had a warrant – active or otherwise – and never needed an ankle monitor, I do know that a 1972 Torino’s speedometer goes up to 120 mph, and what it feels like to bury the needle on a two-lane Illinois country road.

Nothing but the grace of God can explain why most of us males are still here at all.

And I wish those boys would have had fathers who put the fear of God in them before they ever got to the ankle-monitor and fleeing-in-a-stolen-car stage.

Hamas delenda est!