DeSantis and Florida

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

New Florida Bill Proposes Bloggers Who Cover Government Register With State

Free Speech, Ron DeSantis, Freedom Of The Press, Journalism

AllSides Summary​

A Florida state senator has proposed a bill that would require bloggers to register with the state if they cover Floridian elected officials.
The Details: Jason Brodeur (R-Lake Mary) introduced Senate Bill 1316, titled “Information Dissemination”, that would require bloggers who receive compensation to write about government officials in Florida to register with the state. Government officials covered under the bill include “the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, a Cabinet officer, or any member of the Legislature.”
For Context: The bill defines a blog as “a website or webpage that hosts any blogger and is frequently updated with opinion, commentary, or business content,” but says the “term does not include the website of a newspaper or other similar publication.”
Key Quotes: Brodeur told Florida Politics (Center bias), “Paid bloggers are lobbyists who write instead of talk. They both are professional electioneers. If lobbyists have to register and report, why shouldn’t paid bloggers?” Journalist Charles C.W. Crooke said, in a National Review (Right bias) op-ed, “Brodeur wrote the bill. Brodeur sponsored the bill. And that’s as far as it’s got. It’s not going to pass.”
How The Media Covered It: Sources across the spectrum covered the events similarly, yet used deceptive headlines to frame Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the focal point of the bill. The Daily Beast (Left bias) faulted DeSantis for the bill’s proposal, comparing him to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The Rachel Maddow Show (Left bias) compared the bill to legislation signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Featured Coverage of this Story​

 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

DeSantis brings more receipts




Exhibit #1 has been the Left’s claim that the governor is engaged in the censorship of history and suppression of all discussions about sexual matters in the schools. Both of these claims are ridiculous, and as I argued in my earlier column, Ron DeSantis is smart enough to fight back by providing the receipts DeSantis is more than capable of fighting back.

This time DeSantis drops a truth bomb on the media and his critics (but I repeat myself) by providing a video that shows a tiny part of the content in the books that are being pulled from the public schools–that were being provided to kids not even in High School. The images are very disturbing.

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So disturbing, in fact, that Twitter has been labeling them “sensitive content” and the news channels chose to break away from the video rather than show them.

Which, you know, makes the governor’s point.





 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

DeSantis strikes again: Don't say healthcare "equity"



I am starting to believe chasing Ron DeSantis the Nazi Bogeyman is the only thing keeping the Miami Herald alive right now.

Do they even write about anything else? Woof – you’d be hard-pressed to find something.

The Herald DeSantis outrage du jour on the blackboard is:

He vaporized healthcare equity

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Maybe, just maybe, they’re more interested in health outcome than woke jargon.

…In an interview, Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said the term “health equity” has taken on a political meaning that is unhelpful in addressing important health issues related to race or ethnicity.
“It’s an imprecise term,” said Ladapo, who leads the Department of Health. “It’s a term that really has grown to have more of a political meaning than a meaning related to health. But it’s the State Health Improvement Plan. So we will focus on health.”

And the Herald sure takes its time getting to the meat of this de-equitized plan. Which, once you read more about it, sure looks like well-thought-out health goals for the entire state. Meaning “everybody.”

Now, this really wasn’t very sporting of them. Odd how they saved these two paragraphs for the 3d and 2d to last of the entire piece – literally buried at the bottom.

…The DeSantis administration’s State Health Improvement Plan includes objectives to correct a few specific disparities. By 2026, the state aims to “reduce the percentage of late-stage breast cancer diagnoses among Black women from 43% (2018) to 30%.” There’s a similar goal for reducing prostate cancer diagnoses among Black men, and for cutting the Black pregnancy and infant mortality rates.
In 2021, lawmakers unanimously passed — and DeSantis signed — a bill creating the Office of Minority Health. That bill mandated that each Florida county have a minority health liaison. Each Florida county department of health also has a Health Equity Plan.





 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
🔥 In good news, Florida’s Voice News ran a story late last week headlined, “Senate Passes Bill Ending Automatic Teachers Union Deductions.”

Under the bill, which narrowly passed the Senate 23-17, requires unions to:

  • have annual audits
  • stop automatically deducting union dues
  • disclose to members the top-five highest-paid union employees and salaries
  • revoke membership immediately upon request
  • respect “right to work”, making it illegal to require union membership for employment
  • be re-certified anytime membership drops below 60% of eligible employees
In 2021, I circulated a proposed bill that would have done many of these same things plus allowed for competing teachers’ unions to be formed in each district. This bill is almost as good, better in some ways, and both my earlier bill as well as this one directly respond to the havoc and destruction wreaked by teachers’ unions during the pandemic.

Some pro-union Republicans who opposed the bill say it is ‘really’ intended to bust up the unions altogether. Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota (a CPA), said annual audits would be unaffordable for smaller unions and “tells me that the only intent of the bill is to kill off the unions here in Florida, and I cannot vote yes.”

That sounds like a reason to vote FOR the bill, not against it. Two years ago I told everyone who’d listen that, sooner or later, the day would come when the bill for covid overreach would come due. Time to pay up.

A companion bill in the House has passed one committee and is working its way through the system. I’ll keep you posted.



 

herb749

Well-Known Member
🔥 In good news, Florida’s Voice News ran a story late last week headlined, “Senate Passes Bill Ending Automatic Teachers Union Deductions.”

Under the bill, which narrowly passed the Senate 23-17, requires unions to:

  • have annual audits
  • stop automatically deducting union dues
  • disclose to members the top-five highest-paid union employees and salaries
  • revoke membership immediately upon request
  • respect “right to work”, making it illegal to require union membership for employment
  • be re-certified anytime membership drops below 60% of eligible employees
In 2021, I circulated a proposed bill that would have done many of these same things plus allowed for competing teachers’ unions to be formed in each district. This bill is almost as good, better in some ways, and both my earlier bill as well as this one directly respond to the havoc and destruction wreaked by teachers’ unions during the pandemic.

Some pro-union Republicans who opposed the bill say it is ‘really’ intended to bust up the unions altogether. Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota (a CPA), said annual audits would be unaffordable for smaller unions and “tells me that the only intent of the bill is to kill off the unions here in Florida, and I cannot vote yes.”

That sounds like a reason to vote FOR the bill, not against it. Two years ago I told everyone who’d listen that, sooner or later, the day would come when the bill for covid overreach would come due. Time to pay up.

A companion bill in the House has passed one committee and is working its way through the system. I’ll keep you posted.




I like that Musk is making these media outlets pay to use Twitter like everyone else. They still think they are special.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
🔥 In great Sunshine State news, Florida’s Voice ran a story yesterday headlined, “State Board Of Education Bans Gender Teachings Through 12th Grade With Exceptions.”

Florida’s Board of Eduction, which is thankfully back under the control of mentally-sound grown-ups, issued several new rules about sex ed yesterday, with strict enforcement mechanisms — a teacher could lose their license if they break the rules.

Under the new rules, teachers may no longer instruct students in pre-K through 3rd grade about “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.” In grades 4 — 12, teachers may not teach those topics unless specifically required by state law, or as part of a health-related lesson providing for parental opt-out.

Furious grooming advocates complained that the new rules will hogtie teachers or something. After all, they already can’t say “gay” anymore. Now THIS. Starting next month, teachers will no longer be allowed to describe their eccentric, atypical sexual interests to the young children in their classes.

It’s so unfair! Plus it genocides trans people. Supposedly.



 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

We Can’t Have Clean Elections Because That Would Be Racist



By “preclearance requirement,” Judge Walker required, in the absence of any authority to do so, that if the Florida legislature changed any part of the election law in the next ten years, they had to go and request Walker’s permission in advance. As the Washington Post noted at the time, Walker used the SB90 case to attack the Supreme Court for sh**canning the “preclearance” requirements imposed on Florida and some other jurisdictions by Section 4 of the Civil Rights Act.

What Walker did was use the Florida law as a vehicle for attacking the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence. He makes it clear that he thinks the Supreme Court has betrayed the Constitution by giving legislatures the right to make laws.

Even if fleeting, Judge Walker’s decision represents one of the most aggressive legal broadsides against Republicans in the heated voting rights battles that have followed President Donald J. Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. The ruling also comes as Democrats and their allies pursue an uphill legal strategy, relying on federal voting protections diminished by the Supreme Court.
In his decision, Judge Walker castigated previous Supreme Court rulings on voting issues and essentially dared the justices to overturn his decision.
“Without explaining itself, the court has allowed its wholly judge-made prudential rule to trump some of our most precious constitutional rights,” the judge wrote.

Today, that court delivered a death blow to Walker’s delusions of grandeur.

Eleventh Circuit Decision​

The only thing the Eleventh Circuit didn’t do with Walker’s ruling was roll it up and stick it in his eye.

US District Judge Mark Walker’s ruling, the appeals court said Thursday, was legally and factually flawed. The 11th Circuit also reversed a holding by Walker that would have required Florida to seek federal approval for any future election rule changes that are similar to the provisions he had struck down.
The 11th Circuit, however, did agree with the lower court that one of the challenged provisions of the 2021 law – which banned the “solicitation” of voters within 150 feet of a polling place – was unconstitutionally vague.

Writing for the 11th Circuit panel majority, Circuit Judge William Pryor took issue with the trial judge’s conclusions that, by passing new election rules that targeted voters who tend to vote Democratic, the Florida Legislature was also targeting voters – and specifically voters of color – by race.
“To be sure, as the organizations point out, ‘[intentionally] targeting a particular race’s access to the franchise because its members vote for a particular party’ is impermissible,” Pryor wrote, referring to the voting rights groups that had challenged the provisions in court. “But we must be careful not to infer that racial targeting is, in fact, occurring based solely on evidence of partisanship. Evidence of race-based discrimination is necessary to establish a constitutional violation.”
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
🔥 Another bill passed by Florida Republicans, HB 1259, will “destroy the public school system,” or something:



The bill sensibly requires traditional public schools to share some of their local sales tax income to help build charter schools. “I believe the money should follow the student,” Florida Senator Travis Hutson advised as he closed on the bill. Democrats argued that it’s horrible, the worst idea ever, to distribute funding on a per-pupil basis. They demanded to know, how does funding attached to the student make any sense?

Democrats argued, and I am not making this up, per-pupil financing isn’t “fair” to taxpayer-owned schools because they are sometimes used as hurricane shelters.

Um. Hint: Charter schools can also be used as hurricane shelters.

Could it be the democrats in Florida are more having a QUALITY issue with their lawmakers, and maybe the quality problem is contributing to their quantity problem? Just asking.



 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
🔥 There is a new corporate media narrative featuring new attacks on Governor DeSantis. Democrats are trying to paint DeSantis as obsessed with gay people, bordering on some kind of homophobic mania. Here are a few recent selections to give you the idea:


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And my personal favorite:



The narrative-makers seem to think that the transformer hill is the hill they want to die on. Before dismissing that out of hand, recall how effective they were with the 2022 midterm campaign’s focus on the abortion issue. I’m not sure, because I’m biased towards the culture wars, but it feels to me like they’re making a huge mistake.




 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

Hamburger Mary’s sues DeSantis to stop drag show law



Hamburger Mary’s in Orlando is suing Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state of Florida in federal court, claiming the restaurant has been deprived of its First Amendment rights and is already losing customers under a new law affecting drag shows.

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Equality Florida, an advocacy group for the gay community, issued a travel advisory on Wednesday, warning visitors to Florida that those laws and others make the state a hostile place to visit.

In a statement, the group said the warning was prompted by “the passage of laws that are hostile to the LGBTQ community, restrict access to reproductive health care, repeal gun safety laws, foment racial prejudice and attack public education by banning books and censoring curriculum.”





We have seen the videos, read the stories, Why do half naked men want to dicks around in front of CHILDREN
 
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