FLEXIT! Free Florida Now

There is a lot of talk about “TEXIT” these days – the movement for Texas to secede from the United States.  In fact, TEXIT has been around for generations.  Texans will point to the fact that their state was admitted to the United States with an exit clause in the Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States approved on March 1, 1845.  Specifically, Texas can form five independent states within Texas and dissolve its relationship with the United States, becoming an independent country called “Texas.”  In the 1920s, Texas Congressman and future Vice President, John Nance Garner, spoke of TEXIT.  

Leftists and Yankee apologists like to point to the 1870 Supreme Court Case, “Texas v White,” as the reason Texas cannot secede.  They argue that the Supreme Court weighed in on secession and rendered it unconstitutional.  They are wrong.  The Supreme Court made no such judgment.  Rather, the Supreme Court demurred on the issue, and took the nuanced position that the matter of secession was decided on the battlefield, and therefore an irrelevant topic of judicial debate.  During pretrial, procedural motions, Chief Justice Salmon Chase largely argued that the Constitution was intended to bond a state to a perpetual union because the preceding Articles of Confederation used the language “perpetual” – but the matter of secession was never addressed in the actual decision of the court itself.  

Texas has several legal grounds upon which it can pursue independence and should.  But what of another Southern state – Florida?  Enter the argument for FLEXIT – the secession of another state admitted into the Union in 1845.

Unlike many states in the South that are growing increasingly leftist, such as Georgia and North Carolina, Florida is growing more conservative.  Recent fights between the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, and newly elected President, Joe Biden, bear this out.  If rumors prove to be true, DeSantis apparently had some pretty harsh things to say toward Mr. Biden on a recent call, in which Biden demanded DeSantis reclose the businesses in the booming Sunshine State.  DeSantis not only emphatically said, “No,” he held a press conference, reinforcing Florida’s position that small businesses are to be protected from federal encroachment. But he further expressed a desire to begin penalizing social media companies for leftist bias.  It appears that Florida is taking a more aggressive anti-federal policy posture than every other country in these United States.  Good!

Now it is time for Florida to secede!  FLEXIT could not happen at a better time.  While the United States is falling apart, let’s build a big, beautiful wall, just North of I-10.  

Of course, naysayers claim that Florida could not succeed if it secedes.  “It will fall apart economically!” they will howl.  They will claim that federal retiree entitlements will go away… tourism will disappear… businesses will leave the state… Florida will collapse on its own.  None of that is true.  In fact, the opposite is true.

First, as it pertains to retirees, there is no reason to expect that former American citizens – American expats living in the newly formed Republic of Florida – would lose the retirement benefits into which they paid.  Expatriate American retirees in exotic places such as Belize and Mexico, or even my mother’s less exotic homeland, Ireland, still receive their social security checks from the U.S. Government – on time, every month.  They paid into the system, there is no reason why they should not continue to receive their benefits.  Over time, Florida employees could pay into a far more sustainable Florida Social Security type system that keeps its future retirement benefits in their home country versus sending it up to a federal behemoth to squander.  

Why am I so confident that Tallahassee will be a better arbiter of future retirement remittances than Washington, DC?  Because there is proof in our respective budgets and credit ratings.  Our government governs better.  

Florida is a net tax “payor” state – meaning that we, Floridians, pay more to the federal government than we get back.  In other words, keeping our tax money in Florida versus sending it to the federal government would benefit Florida more (i.e., we would keep more of our own money).  Additionally, Florida has neither a state income tax nor does it tax intangible assets, such as earnings from stocks and bonds.  We rely on a combination of corporate taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and other fees to manage the state.  In so doing, unlike the spendthrift United States, Florida has learned to live with a balanced budget and does so through inflation adjusted incomes.  As the Florida economy and tax receipts grow, so does its ability to spend.  As the Florida economy shrinks, so does its ability to spend.  This has created a scenario in which Florida carries very little proportional debt (second lowest in the country, mostly in the form of bonds) and no year-over-year budget deficit.  

Florida is the ONLY state in the United States that has a triple A credit rating and neither a state income tax nor an annual budget deficit.  We have better credit than the United States.  We are healthier financially than nearly every single country on the planet.  

But if we left the United States, where would we stand?

Florida’s GDP is $1.1 Trillion, behind only California, Texas, and New York respectively (and we are about to overtake New York).  In terms of global positioning, Florida would rank 16^th globally, tied with Indonesia.  Of course, our per capita GDP would be higher than the next eight countries.  Indonesia has 270 million people; Florida has 22 million people.  What makes Florida so economically powerful and more importantly, self-sustaining?  Let’s dig into the numbers of my beautiful country.  

A key argument against Florida secession is the potential loss of tourism.  Let me be clear:  Florida will not lose its tourists by becoming an independent country.  If anything, we would likely gain tourists, as we would be able to set conditions for visitation to the state with countries such as England and Norway that would be less stringent for tourism than those imposed by the United States now.  Currently, Florida receives 126.1 million tourists annually, employing 1.3 million people, and contributing $85.9 million in revenue.  If Florida were to (A) charge its own tourist visa fees (currently, the federal government pockets $160 per foreign tourist that travels to Florida) and (B) use its own currency to make tourism less expensive relative to other areas of the country, Florida would likely increase visitors to Florida.  But tourism is not even the most important sector of the Florida economy.

Florida is an agricultural powerhouse.  It ranks second in the production of fruits and vegetables in the United States and would rank 8^th globally as its own country.  Florida contributes to nearly 90% of the American fruit juice supply.  As for beef, Florida ranks 13^th in overall beef cattle, but it is second in cow-calf production (i.e., the raising of beef cattle that are exported to other states upon maturity to be further groomed for beef or dairy production).  As for seafood production, Florida ranks 11^th, and yet, it also yields “84 percent of the nation’s supply of grouper, pompano, mullet, stone crab, pink shrimp, spiny lobsters and Spanish mackerel.”  Not only is Florida capable of feeding its own people, the global economy’s dependence on Florida’s agricultural production, especially that of the United States and Canada, indicate that it is unlikely independence would harm this $131 billion annual industry – more than tourism contributes to the state.  

But it gets better for an independent Republic of Florida…

Florida is currently the 8^th largest exporter in the United States, but its primary export market, Latin America, is growing relative to other global markets, especially Brazil.  Florida is not only exporting its agricultural output, it is also exporting its aerospace and aviation manufactured goods, which account for $175 billion in economic activity alone.  In part, this is due to the fact that Florida has fantastic year-round weather within which to produce and test equipment.  However, there is more to the story.

USA Today ranked Florida’s infrastructure number one in the country, while CNBC ranked it tied for 8^th.  With sixteen international airports and twenty-one major seaports, Florida is structurally designed to endure and thrive economically.  Driving in Florida versus driving in New York is a world apart – and before anyone points to snow and population influxes, consider this: yes, they have snow, but we have yearlong torrential downpours – including hurricanes and tornadoes – and a road system that handles an influx of tourists that quintuple the state’s population on an annual basis (not including semi-permanent residents, e.g., snowbirds).  It is not the weather and the climate of New York that yields a dilapidated infrastructure, it is the people and their policies.

Speaking of people, there is an even more important argument for FLEXIT that goes beyond the economic reasons for state secession: the preservation of Florida culture.

Every day, according to various news sources, more than one-thousand people move to Florida.  Worse, “Florida attracts more Northerners.”  This is an invasion by a foreign group of locusts who, after destroying their own countries up North, come to Florida and vote for the same stupid political policies that destroyed their home states.  They must be stopped in order for Florida to continue to thrive!

An independent Florida would be able to have control over who it decides to let into its own country.  At present, the best we can do is run “yellow plates” (i.e., New Yorkers) off the road while they drive forty miles per hour in their Volvos in the fast lane.  These people come down to Florida, with their nasally accents and effeminate ways, complaining about the heat, humidity, gators and mosquitos.  They also complain about native Florida Crackas.  They hate our food, our guns, our churches, and our politics.  Even the Cubans in South Miami have greater respect for Florida’s unique tri-sectional cultural segments than these fiends who come to Florida for warmth and tax benefits – only to ruin it with their imported politicians.  

We would not have a problem with monuments to our honorable legacies in the centers of St. Augustine, Tampa, Gainesville, or Jacksonville, if it were not for these sycophants pouring across the border like the termites they are.

I am not a Cracka.  That is a revered term for Floridians dating back to her founding in the mid-19^th Century.  My grandparents were Irish immigrants, married in Tallahassee in 1940 – well before the Yankee snowbirds and Walt Disney discovered Florida.  They bought land in Ocala shortly thereafter – horse country.  Economics took them back to Ireland and then to New York, but they returned to Florida because they loved her so very much.  She is a beautiful country.  I was raised to love Florida.  My grandmother’s little home still stands off Maricamp road.  She is long passed, but that home still has a Florida flag, not an American rag.  

When I cross into Alabama or Georgia to see my in-laws and return, I get excited to see the beautiful arches reminding me I am in my home country.  I literally clap for joy.  My heart leaps.  Thus, seeing these detestable creatures try to change Florida not only breaks my heart – it makes me angry!

As I watch the beautiful South overrun by Yankee invaders, I am sad for all of Florida’s kindred sister states.  I went to college in Virginia.  My girls were born in Virginia.  I respected Virginia and Virginians for who they were and who they are.  But I was never a Virginian.  I would never try to change Virginia.  Yet, there that beautiful country lies to our north, invaded and transformed by aggressors who never loved Virginia as much as her native population loved her.  Those locusts are now tearing down monuments to Virginians who lived, fought, and died as Virginians – some of whom died in Virginian uniforms.  HOW DARE THEY?!

Before that vile trash gets down here, let Florida protect herself with FLEXIT.  Let us leave the detestable Yankee union before they do to Florida that which they have done to Virginia or our sister state, Georgia.  If we wish to enter a Gulf State Confederation with our friends and colleagues, Texas, we should do so on our own terms – a union of true amity, military and economic cooperation.  I pray for TEXIT and I pray for FLEXIT.  I would cheer the rest of the former “Republic of West Florida” – Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana – to leave the crumbling American Empire while they can.

FLEXIT can and should happen.  It would be better for Florida and Floridians.  What are we waiting for?

Free Florida Now!