One of the best pieces explaining Florida, especially its boom past and bust present, was on APM's Marketplace show tonight, tied to both the show's election coverage and an ongoing series about the U.S. economy's challenges.
Reporter David Gura is doing a two-part series on the I-4 corridor and found the little-known Polk County town of Dundee, where the development boom of the '90s and early 2000s saw active orange groves sold for development that, for the most part, never was built after the housing market tanked in 2007-08.
As someone who has groused (yes, groused) for years about Florida's addiction to the cheap thrills of boom-and-bust homebuilding, I was especially bemused to hear the developer in the piece argue that he is upset that government didn't do more to help out the land speculators.
Take a listen. These are the kinds of issues that Florida Republicans should be talking about instead of chanting for a repeal of Obamacare.
