History
In 1997, Choose Life, Inc. collected the 10,000 signatures and US$30,000 required under Florida law at the time to submit an application for a new specialty plate, and State Senator Tom Lee sponsored a bill in support of the tag's creation. The bill passed both houses of the Florida Legislature in early 1998, but was vetoed by then-Governor Lawton Chiles, who stated that license plates are not the "proper forum for debate" on political issues. While campaigning for the governorship later in 1998, Jeb Bush stated that, if elected, he would sign a Choose Life bill if approved by the legislature. Choose Life, Inc. went forward with the plate application again, and, after passing both houses, Governor Bush signed it into law on June 8, 1999. Since then, Choose Life, Inc. has been active in helping groups in other states pursue "Choose Life" license plates. As of April 30, 2010, Choose Life, Inc. reported that Choose Life license plates had raised over $12 million. On June 21, 2011, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed House Bill 501, which directs the funds from the plates directly to Choose Life, Inc.
Choose Life, Inc. is a non-profit organization, funded by donations and the sale of promotional items, such as t-shirts and neckties. In Florida, a specialty license plate costs an additional $25USD per year, with $20 being distributed to crisis pregnancy centers, maternity homes, and non-profit adoption agencies.
Read more about this topic: Choose Life License Plates
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Systematic philosophical and practical anti-intellectualism such as we are witnessing appears to be something truly novel in the history of human culture.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)