Carl Hiaasen was Right, Florida is a Corrupt Cesspit

Here's a barely-disguised bribe to the state AG:

$100G/yr for teaching two hours a week. That's pretty fucking rich.

And that's the corruption of the DeSantis regime.

DeSantis’s Dachau is All About Good Old Florida Corruption

A major DeSantis donor is profiting bigly off of building and running his new concentration camp.

DeSantis used "emergency suthority" to bypass state provurement laws and oversight, such as it is, in order to use a shovel to ladle out state money to a clown that "donated" large amounts to his campaign.

It's good old Florida corruption.

What's a Little Price-Fixing Between Friends?

In Florida, gas stations are charging a buck a gallon more for using credit cards.

Shit like that is usually unsustainable without some collusion between the gas station owners, who all know each other. But nobody in the DoJ is going to be looking, because Bribe-Baby Bondi has everyone chasing maids and groundskeepers who are not legal residents.

Speaking of that, has anyone seen the ICEstapo raiding the meatpacking plants? i'm guessing that's a pretty solid "no".

Bootsie Didn't Like It When His Plans to Rape Florida's Parks Got Leaked

And so he had the whistleblower fired.

Remember, they were trying to rush through their developmental plans before anybody found out about it. Because it's Florida and if anything is sacred in Florida, it is paving over natural spaces so some skeevy developer who makes oddles of bribes campaign contributions to Florida politicans can make a quick buck throwing up some cheap-ass project before the next Cat-4 hurricane blows through.

One Trigger-Happy Sheriff's Department in Florida Needs to be Retrained or Disbanded

The department that murdered an Air Force Airman was the same one that had another deputy shoot up a patrol car with a suspect inside because an achorn hit the roof.

It would appear that they have a problem with being spring-loaded to shoot people. Especially Black people.

It might be advisable to stay the fuck away from Okaloosa County, Fla, which includes Ft. Walton Beach. There are plenty of other places in Florida where you can lie on the beach and drink yourself into a coma.

Meanwhile, in the Hellscape Known as Florida

With a brief memo, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has subverted a public health standard that's long kept measles outbreaks under control.

On Feb. 20, as measles spread through Manatee Bay Elementary in South Florida, Ladapo sent parents a letter granting them permission to send unvaccinated children to school amid the outbreak.

The Department of Health "is deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance," wrote Ladapo, who was appointed to head the agency by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose name is listed above Ladapo's in the letterhead.

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases around, yet the medieval-grade witch-doctor who Meatball Ron appointed as surgeon general thinks it's just peachy to send unvaccinated kids into a school where there is a measels outbreak. Because, after all, only a tenth of those who contract measels will lose some or all of their hearing (0.1% will die) and that's an acceptable risk to a political douchebag who prizes ideology over science.

Elect a clown and you get a circus.

Florida Seeks to Become a Safe State for Racists and Other Bigots

The batshit crazies who infest the Florida legislature want to make it defamatory to accuse of being homophobic, sexist, racist and bigoted, even if true, would be punishable by a fine of up to $35,000.

So even if your crazed Trumpist neighbor flies a Confederate flag and shouts antisemitic slogans and you counter by calling him out for being a racist fuck, you can be sued.

There is no longer any good reason to live in Florida, visit there, or do any business with an entity there. Leave the state to the mosquitoes and the MAGA racists.

Oh, and fuck Utah, too.

When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro

And they enter The Florida Man Games. Which is a real thing, apparently.

Meatball Ron Continues Destroying Florida

He pushed through a law to strip local governments' power to protect historic buildings and, sure as shit, greedhead developers are demolishingiconic buildings.

Florida's teachers are leaving, OB/GYNs are leaving, a degree from a Florida state school will soon be about as valuable as one from ITT Tech or Trump U.

It's also become apparent, in recent years, that any lobbying group that has the words "freedom" or "liberty" in their name is focused on restricting people's liberties and freedoms to learn things other than that which is approved by the neo-Nazi wing of the GOP.

One final thought about Meatball Ron: I don't know whether or not, in his heart, he is a racist and a homophobic bigot. But he seems to have grasped that playing one on the political stage is his route to power. It's the same calculation that was made by George Wallace sixty-five years ago.

Why is Wrong DeSantis Standing Up His Own Militia

There is something seriously wrong about his organizing his own private armed goon squad.

More and more, Florida is becoming a state that is attractive for unhinged fascist lunatics.

H/T

DeSantis Hired Criminals to be Cops

Former cops accused of murder, kidnapping, sexual assault and extortion, all hired by Florida under SeSantis's "Hire the Goons" program.

DeSantis is turning Florida into a Christian fascist hellhole.

If You Are an Employee of the State of Florida, DeSantis Has Been Raiding Your Pension Fund to Benefit His Donors

Despite a federal anti-corruption rule designed to prevent donors from receiving pension investments, private equity executives have donated millions to political groups supporting DeSantis, all while the governor oversaw the transfer of more than $1 billion of Florida public employees’ retirement dollars into these donors’ high-fee, high-risk “alternative investments.”

A Lever review found that had the state pension fund instead been invested in a simple, low-cost index fund, compared to its present mix of holdings, teachers, police officers, and other state employees would have about $10 billion more in their retirement funds.

It's a cute little scheme. DeSantis steered pension funds to Wall Street fund managers who run high-fee investments. Those fund managers then made donations to the Republican Governors' Association which, in turn, donates to Desantis's campaign fund.

DeSantis gets his campaign money, his donors make a shitload of money and the only people who get screwed are the state employees.

In Florida, Racism is Official Policy

At least in some counties, where if you're Hispanic, you get hammered harder. And yes, it's official policy:

MM = misdemeanor

Yes, it's genuine. It was posted policy.

I suppose it's a sign of progress that they're not openly encouraging lynching.

That Checks Out

"Every scheming shitwad in America sooner or later turns up in Florida." -- Carl Hiaasen

Yep, that checks out.

Lesson Learned: The College Board Can be Bullied by Politicians Pushing a White Nationalist Agenda

The official curriculum for a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies downplays some components that drew criticism from conservatives including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had threatened to ban the class in his state.

In the framework released on Wednesday, topics including Black Lives Matter, slavery reparations and queer life are not part of the exam. They are included only on a sample list states and school systems can choose from for student projects.

Republicans love closing their eyes to reality. They love pretending that the best time in this country was the 1950s, when, to their recollection, women were in the kitchen, minorities knew their place (and didn't vote), gays were in the closet and nobody ever heard of a trans person. They like pretending that slaves were "immigrant workers".

Of course, the one thing they don't like about the 1950s that such things as interstate highways and strong defense were paid for, in part, by high taxes on rich people and that there were heavy taxes on generational wealth. Nope, they didn't like that at all.

The takeaway here is that the College Board has the spine of overcooked linguini and will cave to even a smallish pressure campaign.

In other news, as DeSantis purges the state universities in Florida, look for "Jewish science" to be banned. Which is essentially science that is not in accordance with the Bible. for any professor, tenured or not, who dares to each anything not approved by the Christian Taliban will be fired.

Florida has long had a reputation for shitty-ass public schools. Now their public universities will be equally shitty.

Florida Can Go Fuck Itself

Here is the dirty little secret about electoral politics: If your state reliably votes for one party or the other, then nobody gives a fuck about it. Democrats don't give a shit about Wyoming and Republicans don't give a fuck about Connecticut.

Florida has shifted from a swing state to a red state. As such, expect that when it comes to issues that voting blocs in Florida care about (Cuban policy being one), less and less attention will be paid to what those blocs want.

That is just the way it goes.

Beyond that, Florida is a place where the state government believes that "freedom" means "the freedom to agree with us". In that regard, DeSantis and his regime is no different that that of Castro's or Hugo Chavez's or the USSR.

Burn, Baby, Burn; EV Ed.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, first responders in Southwest Florida are concerned about a new threat: electric vehicles catching on fire caused by saltwater.

Not only did the massive storm cause destruction of buildings, schools, and homes on the coast; it also resulted in major saltwater flooding.

Damaged EVs that have been submerged in saltwater “could result in potential fire once no longer submerged,” according to an alert posted on Facebook this week by the North Collier Fire Control and Rescue District.

Firefighters in Naples have responded to at least six electric vehicles that caught fire and are asking EV owners in the area “to please get it towed away from your home BUT you must make sure the towing operator knows how to safely and properly tow EV vehicles,” according to the Facebook post.

Maybe take those EVs to a freshwater lake, push them in for awhile to dilute the salt, pull the doors, hood and trunk covers off, then drop them into open-top shipping containers full of rice for a week or so?

Apparently, even if one catches on fire and the firefighters put it out, it can reignite days later.

We in the Northeast Will Never Forget This

As a newly elected congress member in 2013, now-governor of Florida Ron DeSantis was one of the 67 House Republicans who voted against a $9.7 billion federal flood insurance assistance package for the victims of Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey. Now, with Florida on the ropes, DeSantis asked President Joe Biden for an emergency declaration to free up federal money and federal help even before the storm hit, and said Tuesday, “We all need to work together, regardless of party lines.”

No, we aren't going to forget. We won't oppose helping Floridians, but we will remeber those Florida Republicans who were agianst helping us. Just like we remember Ted Cruz and others, who voted for aid to help their state after Hurricane Harvey, but voted not to help people after Hurricane Sandy.

Winning the Battle, Losing the War

A decade or so ago, I observed that if you had a carry permit, some of the Northeastern states, including New York, were pretty liberal as to where you could carry a gun.

Then came NYSRPA v. Bruen.

In response to that decision, the State of New York revised their concealed carry laws. The effective result of that, in practice, will be to make it illegal to carry a concealed firearm in the state.

This should be no surprise to anyone who has an understanding of what happens when the Supremes make a ruling that is very unpopular with the locals. When the Court ruled that public accommodations had to be desegregated, as Badtux noted, towns across the South reacted by closing those accommodations, including schools. More subtlety, towns and cities slashed school property taxes, impoverishing the public schools, with the usually unspoken justification that whites could take the money they saved on taxes and send their schools to racist academies.

That still goes on, to some degree. I once knew a guy who moved his family from the Miami area to one of the NY counties close to the city. He said that his property takes went up over $20K/yr, but that more than offset by the savings of not having to send his kids to private schools. (It's probably worse, now that DuhSantis is trying to turn the public schools into Trumpist indoctrination centers.)

Remember, Boys and Girls, These Idiots Can Vote

If we are going to keep our country from devolving into a theocratic autocracy where ignoance of facts and science is state policy, then, at a bare minimum, vote.

Florida, for example, is blatantly rewriting history. DeSlantis's regieme is pushing propaganda to teachers that Thomas Jefferson was antislavery. He mist assuredly was not.

Jefferson did say that slavery was abhorrent, but he ran his slaves like they were livestock, except when he wanted to have sex with them. Jefferson figured out that merely having slaves and selling their children was profitable.

But this is what DeSantis and evil trolls like Charles Koch are trying to do: Rewrite our history to turn us into a nation of serfs.