Year: 2024
Ron Versus Debby
Today Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued Executive Order 24-176, placing 54 Florida counties under a state of emergency, including Hillsborough County, where I live. A tropical wave, named Invest 97L, could become Tropical Storm Debby over the next 36 to 48 hours and veer up Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Gov. Ron is grandstanding (again). He’s trying to deflect attention away from his latest embarrassing “Stop Woke” loss in federal court and the growing media focus on his cruel and cynical mini-Project 2025 experiments on the Free State of Florida.
As a native Floridian and veteran of numerous storms, it seems to me to be a bit premature to start pulling on the white high-heeled shrimp boots, but I think Ron’s afraid of getting caught unprepared for what looks to be a rather large, wet, but (hopefully) not awful storm.
And it’s easier to declare a nearly statewide state of emergency than it is to head off a double-digit rate hike by Citizens Property Insurance, the state’s insurer of last resort for over 1.2 million policies.
Thanks, Ron. I almost forgot about all the book banning and climate change–denying you are doing for five seconds.
Off to the liquor store for hurricane supplies …
‘Repulsive’ Racist Rhetoric
It’s not just the usual Trumpian racist attack,
Or the “birther” soundbites from that tired old soundtrack.
On stage at the NABJ,
Trump came up with something creative to say:
Kamala Harris isn’t Black, she “turned Black.”
Anti-Psychopath PAC has a Great New Ad Based on Trump’s NABJ Performance
https://twitter.com/PsychoPAC24/status/1819060485578223851?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1819060485578223851%7Ctwgr%5Eec9e831459a5734a54339c08e9dcb7447abdff63%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fboingboing.net%2F2024%2F08%2F01%2Fhilarious-new-ad-mocks-donald-trumps-buffoonery-and-its-impossible-not-to-laugh-along-video.html
Undocumented Immigrants Paid Nearly $100 Billion in Taxes
$100 billion
A new study shows that undocumented immigrants paid nearly $100 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue in 2022 while many are shut out of the programs their taxes fund. The findings run counter to anti-immigrant rhetoric that undocumented immigrants are “destroying” social programs, reported the Florida Phoenix. In 40 states, undocumented immigrants paid higher tax rates than the top 1% of the income scale in those states, according to a study released Tuesday from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning, nonprofit think tank.
Florida Is Mad Scientist DeSantis’ Project 2025 Laboratory
Over the past several years, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the stacked GOP Florida Legislature have been conducting an experiment with Floridians as their lab rats. The hypotheses and methodologies are straight out of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook.
The Tallahassee Democrat (an ironic name for a newspaper in the capital of a rapidly reddening state) has a pretty good explanation on the topic here:
Project 2025 proposes a dramatic overhaul of the federal government, replacing thousands of civil employees with political hires, expanding the power of the president, abolishing the Department of Education, enacting a flurry of tax cuts, banning pornography and halting sales of the abortion pill.
For Floridians, the document’s themes and policies may sound familiar. After all, Gov. Ron DeSantis advanced many of the same ideas, pushed along by hard-right think tanks in his first six years as governor.
“You guys in Florida are living in the future,” said Nick Beauchamp, a political scientist at Northeastern University. He has written on Project 2025 and its proposals, powered by Heritage and a host of other conservative, billionaire-funded think tanks.
See also WNMF’s piece, “Florida Is the Laboratory for Project 2025.”
Harris’ Measured Response to Trump’s Manic Racism
“The American people deserve better. The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us — they are an essential source of our strength.”
— Vice President Kamal Harris speaking at a convention of Sigma Gamma Rho, one of the nation’s most prominent Black sororities, in response to Donald Trump’s Antagonistic, unrepentant display of racism at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention.
Trumpers Deny, Defer, Depart
For Republicans, it’s become something of an art —
Dealing with media over Trump’s latest brain fart.
In a return to 2016,
He resurrected his anti-Black theme,
Leaving GOPers no alternatives but “deny, defer and depart.”
