About Seeking Rents

Rent-seeking (noun):

  • the act or process of using one’s assets and resources to increase one’s share of existing wealth without creating new wealth.

  • The act or process of exploiting the political process or manipulating the economic environment to increase one’s revenue or profits. (Source: Dictionary.com)

This is Seeking Rents, a newsletter devoted to producing original journalism — and lifting up the journalism of others — that examines the many ways that businesses influence public policy across Florida, from city halls to the state Capitol.

Seeking Rents is produced by Jason Garcia, Florida’s leading corporate-accountability reporter. The winner of multiple state and national awards, Garcia is the author of “Big Profits, Tiny Taxes,” which explored how corporations dodge Florida taxes and how policymakers could stop it, and a series of stories in 2021 tracing the dark-money used in a statewide scheme to sway key Senate elections through the use of “ghost candidates.”

Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website. We hope you find our work illuminating — and maybe occasionally enraging.

And we hope it inspires you to take action.

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Corporate influence in the Sunshine State.

People

Jason Garcia is Florida's leading corporate-accountability reporter. He is the author of “Big Profits, Tiny Taxes,” which exposed how corporations dodge taxes, and a 2021 series tracing dark-money used in a “ghost candidate" election scheme.