Fogbow

Slim Cognito wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2023 5:36 pm I figure,now that Roe v Wade has been struck down, they need a new boogie man and LGBTQ+ is it.

Slim Cognito wrote: ↑Wed May 31, 2023 8:37 pm About $100 an hour.

As president, I recognize ...

Florida taxpayers pick up bill for Ron DeSantis’s culture war lawsuits
Governor’s Disney battle and extremist policies are met with costly lawsuits covered by ‘blank check’ from Republican legislature

Maya Yang
Sun 4 Jun 2023 11.00 BST

Since Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis took office in 2019 and embarked on his culture wars, lawsuits from various communities whose rights have been violated have been stacking up against the far-right Republican.

As DeSantis fights the lawsuits with what critics have described as a blank check from the state’s supermajority Republican legislature, the mounting legal costs have come heavily at the expense of Florida’s taxpayers.

In recent years, DeSantis’s ultra-conservative legislative agenda has drawn ire from a slew of marginalized communities as well as major corporations including Disney. The so-called “don’t say gay” bill, abortion bans and prohibition of African American studies are just a few of many DeSantis’s extremist policies that have been met with costly lawsuits in a state where residents are already struggling with costs of living.

“The list of legal challenges precipitating from DeSantis’s unconstitutional laws is endless,” the Democratic state senator Lori Berman said.

“We’ve seen Floridians rightly sue many if not all of the governor’s legislative priorities, including laws that restrict drag shows for kids, prohibit Chinese citizens from owning homes and land in Florida, suppress young and Black and brown voters, ban gender-affirming care and threaten supportive parents with state custody of their children, and of course, all the retaliatory legislation waged against Disney for coming out in support of the LGBTQ+ community,” she said.

As a result of the mounting lawsuits against DeSantis, the governor’s legal costs, which the Miami Herald reported last December to cost at least $16.7m, have been soaring.

In DeSantis’s legal fight against Disney following the corporation’s condemnation of his anti-LGBTQ+ laws, it is going to cost the governor and his handpicked board nearly $1,300 per hour in legal fees as they look into how the corporation discovered a loophole in DeSantis’s plan to acquire governing rights over Disney World, Insider reports.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -taxpayers

Clumps of 5,000-mile seaweed blob bring flesh-eating bacteria to Florida
Decomposing pieces of Great Atlantic sargassum belt carry Vibrio bacteria on state’s shoreline

Richard Luscombe in Miami
Sat 3 Jun 2023 13.00 BST

It might have been one of Alfred Hitchcock’s fanciful tales of the supernatural: a 5,000-mile wide blob of murky seaweed creeping menacingly across the Atlantic before dumping itself along the US shoreline.

But now giant clumps of the 13m-ton morass labeled the Great Atlantic sargassum belt are washing up on Florida’s beaches, scientists are warning of a real-life threat from the piles of decomposing algae, namely high levels of the flesh-eating Vibrio bacteria lurking in the vegetation.

The alarming discovery by marine biologists at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) lends a dangerous new aspect to the brown seaweed onslaught, which is already threatening to spoil the state’s busy summer tourism season as coatings of decaying goop exude a pungent aroma akin to that of rotting eggs.

Even more worrying, the researchers say, is the role of ocean pollution in the proliferation of the bacteria, which can cause disease and death if a person gets infected. Samples tested from the Caribbean and Sargasso Sea within the Atlantic were abundant with plastic debris, which interacted with the algae and bacteria to create a “perfect pathogen storm [with] implications for both marine life and public health”.

“Our lab work showed that these Vibrio are extremely aggressive and can seek out and stick to plastic within minutes,” said Tracy Mincer, assistant professor of biology at FAU’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and Harriet L Wilkes Honors College.

He said the seaweed belt stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the African coast provided the perfect breeding ground for “omnivorous” strains of the bacteria that target both plant and animal life, and associated “microbial flora” potentially harboring potent levels of pathogens.

“We really want to make the public aware of these associated risks. In particular, caution should be exercised regarding the harvest and processing of sargassum biomass until the risks are explored more thoroughly,” he said.




https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ria-vibrio

The Bexar County, TX Sheriff’s Office has completed their criminal investigation of migrants flights to Martha’s Vineyard and has recommended criminal charges to the DA against senior Desantis Admin officials.

How generous of Desantis to deploy our state resources to the state he has been campaigning in for president. Our law enforcement is in TX, and we are flying people to CA.

Slim Cognito wrote: ↑Mon Jun 05, 2023 8:45 pm Our beaches are covered with flesh eating bacteria-infused seaweed, insurance premiums are out of control, people making less than 90K a year experience rent burden and every damn business I walk past has Help Wanted ads out because we have a horrendous labor shortage, but DuhSantis is spending our tax money in other states because...a fascist dictator gets to do pretty much anything he wants.

Make America Florida? Yeah, that's the ticket.

Slim Cognito wrote: ↑Mon Jun 05, 2023 8:45 pm Our beaches are covered with flesh eating bacteria-infused seaweed, insurance premiums are out of control, people making less than 90K a year experience rent burden and every damn business I walk past has Help Wanted ads out because we have a horrendous labor shortage, but DuhSantis is spending our tax money in other states because...a fascist dictator gets to do pretty much anything he wants.

Make America Florida? Yeah, that's the ticket.

The premium cable network Showtime halted the planned airing of a Vice investigation into Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his service as an attorney for the US military, just as the Republican candidate faces questions about the issue on the campaign trail.

The move was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, explaining that the episode had originally been set to air on 28 May. The reason for the episode’s change was not given, and a rerun was played in place of a new episode during Vice’s 28 May timeslot on Showtime.

A spokesperson for Vice told The Independent on Monday that the investigation itself may still make it to air.

“As with all current affairs programming there can be scheduling changes, and we are very much still in discussion about the scheduling of this episode. We are proud of our reporting and of our continuing partnership with Showtime,” said the network’s representative.

Showtime, meanwhile, said only that it would not “comment on scheduling decisions”.

A Florida GOP lawmaker said the anti-immigration law he backed was supposed to tell new immigrants to "stay out."

But now migrant families are fleeing the state, and it's a "big problem" for farmers and tourism, Rep. Rick Roth said.

Videos shared on Twitter showed Roth and other GOP lawmakers urging people to convince migrants to stay.

During the meeting, Roth told constituents that migrants have started moving to Georgia and other states.

"The negatives is there are families leaving Florida right now where some of them work, some of the family members are legal, and some of them are not," he added to Insider. "But they're all deciding that they're not going to split up and live in two different states. So it's going to be a major problem for the agriculture, construction, and tourism, which just about happens to be most jobs in Florida."

Some farm workers are too scared to go to work because they're worried about the crackdown on illegal immigration, WPTV reported. CBS News reported that undocumented immigrants, including construction workers, are leaving Florida for other states."

Rose Bud

5 minutes ago

My friend lives in a complex that is under construction. One day they were busily making new apartments, pools, landscaping, building. Next day, nothing. The construction site is a ghost town.

So her, truly awesome I’m sure and is the best DeSantis Supporter ever, says “well, now it will be safe around here with all ‘those’ people gone.”

Except, it’s not. See, the night crew watching the place is also gone. So, the neighbors car was stolen. Along with the tools from the construction site. Plus! All the amenities they were promised buying the place is now on permanent pause. No pool, no maintenance workers, no construction, no nothing.

While it stinks for my friend who is renting the place out for a bit, she will move back to NY when her job is done. The neighbor is stuck with her 400K condo. Enjoy!

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 06, 2023 6:31 pm Seems the FLexit supporters did not study the effect of Brexit