Word: homesteader
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...warm Friday afternoon in June, about 50,000 boxes of toothpaste got their last squeeze inside an industrial trash compactor in Homestead, Fla. They were yanked from the shelves of discount stores and bathroom cabinets after a nationwide recall warned that the toothpaste contained a chemical, diethylene glycol, that could lead to kidney failure. Francisco Botta, who distributed the toothpaste for his family's wholesale business in Miami, stocked his warehouse bathroom with the stuff. "I used it every day," he says. "I told everybody to stop...
Would a nontoxic dentifrice be asking too much? On the 8,000-mile journey between Wuxi and Homestead, Goldcredit's products move, in effect, through time. When a product made in China enters the U.S., it arrives with a kind of unfettered capitalism that hasn't existed in America for a century--uninhibited by regulation, lawsuits or, until recently, public outrage. It's difficult even for a businessman who tries to follow the rules. "You go to China, you check the place out, check the quality of the products," Botta says. But after the recall--of a product labeled safe...
Some of Florida's recent fixes have only exacerbated the frustration. In the 1990s the state adopted a "homestead" provision that eventually caps a homeowner's property tax increases at 3% a year. But when the house is sold, the cap no longer applies - creating absurd situations in which neighbors with similar homes pay wildly disparate property taxes. As a result, "there is now absolute consensus that local property taxes are out of control," says Republican state Senator Mike Haridopolos, co-chairman of the Joint Select Committee on Property Tax Reform and Relief...
When Sergio Martinez, 41, bought his 5-bedroom Miami house three years ago for $405,000, the taxes were only $2,800. But before he became eligible for the homestead cap last year, they'd jumped to $7,400. His house is now valued at more than $900,00 - and if he were to sell it, the new owner would be staring at an annual tax bill of almost $20,000. "That's a big reason I'd have trouble finding a buyer for this house, and why I'd have trouble buying a new one here myself," says Martinez...
...life, Hoberman said. The Hollywood producers during the Cold War were growing aware that their movies provided a social function, Hoberman said. Action and war films during the early 1940s had catered to an excited, militant public. In the 1950s, that action was replaced by the tranquility of the homestead amid fears of nuclear war. Only a miracle, such as the voice of God in “The Next Voice You Hear,” could quell those fears, Hoberman said. Hollywood also found itself on the defensive from a religious revival that was fueled by those same fears...