And Galveston Texas, Charleston South Carolina, and Bayonne New Jersey. All of these ports will have cruises going out of them — but not Florida. Great job, DeSantis. In other news, Norwegian today appears to be backing away from having their ship sail from Port Canaveral in November. Carnival is also likely retracting their Florida sailings for late 2021. Great job, DeSantis. Every single cruise from Florida being cancelling in 2021.
DeSantis' Florida Department of Health must stop hiding their COVID data or lose their accreditation. The Florida residents who filed the complaint are furious immediate stronger action was not taken -- and they had to wait for 6 months for action in middle of a pandemic. ‘A slap on the wrist.’ FL Health Department required to improve public COVID information https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article251648583.html When John Silver’s 14-year-old wanted to return to school last October, the registered nurse from Broward County made a flurry of phone calls in search of an answer to a simple question: How many COVID-19 cases had the school recorded? The question would lead to a six-month investigation that concluded the Florida Department of Health should improve how it communicates COVID-19 data and analysis to the public — transparency experts say is crucial for making personal health decisions like whether to send a child back to school. Silver, who also holds a PhD in comparative studies, first went looking for data about cases at the University School in Davie, where his son attended, just as the virus was kicking off its fall resurgence in South Florida. He never found what he was looking for. School administrators said they couldn’t tell him how many cases they had. Staff at the county health department said they simply passed the data onto the state. And officials at the Florida Department of Health pointed him to a website containing limited data. Some schools, including his son’s, weren’t even listed. Even the health department’s inspector general had no answer for him. As a last resort, he filed a complaint with the Public Health Accreditation Board, a national accreditation program for state and local public health departments. “This has impaired parents’ abilities to make informed decisions on sending their children back to school,” Silver wrote in an Oct. 26 complaint. Silver alleged that the Florida Department of Health violated its accreditation standards when it “failed to maintain accurate records regarding COVID-19 infection rates in schools,” issued incomplete data, and “neglected large segments of the schools in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties.” On May 17, the accreditation board issued its gentlest reprimand, saying that while the health department was generally in line with accreditation standards, it should have done a better job sharing the data it had with the public. “This complaint has highlighted the importance of the health department having strong relationships with key partners — in this case, school districts — to facilitate timely collection and dissemination of data during an emergency,” wrote Wilma Wooten, chairwoman of the accreditation committee, in a memo dated March 22. The report did note an improvement in the public reporting of school-related case data over the course of the investigation. The Florida Department of Health did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said the action from the board amounted to what is essentially a slap on the wrist, “but it’s not necessarily an inconsequential slap on the wrist.” “If an accredited health department is told by an accreditation board that they need to do something better, then they’re going to do that, they’re going to pay attention to that, because the next step would be probation or losing accreditation, and that doesn’t look good,” Toner said. Many health departments have chosen not to publish data on COVID-19 in schools, Toner said. But in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis left it up to parents to make their own decisions about in-school or virtual learning, he said the information Silver sought was vital. “I think if the governor is saying people should make their own informed decisions, you can only do that if you have the information needed,” Toner said. The light reprimand comes at a time when health departments across the country are facing a credibility crisis, spurred by both a distrust of science among some as well as allegations of political interference. Florida’s COVID data has been the subject of national scrutiny since Rebekah Jones, who built the DOH dashboard and maps on COVID-19 cases, claimed she was asked to “manipulate data” in order to justify lifting emergency orders and restrictions on businesses. Jones was fired last May for “insubordination” after publicly challenging the department’s transparency. The health department’s office of the inspector general has contacted Jones about her allegations. But the scope of the OIG investigation is unclear, and the agency denied the Herald’s request for more information, citing an active investigation. In his complaint, Silver alleged that he was delayed in getting data about his son’s school because of “potential interference,” but the accreditation board deemed that allegation outside its authority and did not investigate. The president of the accreditation board, Paul Kuehnert, who oversaw the investigation, said the board took the complaint “very seriously” and emphasized that whilethere was nothing concerning about the department’s data collection or analysis there was room for improvement in public communications. “Based on what we have seen with Florida, the professionals at the Department of Health are doing a really excellent job,” Kuehnert said. While he agrees the data improved, Silver told the Herald he was still unsatisfied with the resolution. “I think probation [would have been] appropriate,” Silver said. “The FDOH was supposed to have an independent obligation to communicate accurately with citizens. It sets a dangerous precedent, makes FDOH data unreliable for researchers, and puts the public at risk.”
Let's see what America's leading technology magazine has to say... Florida’s New Social Media Law Will Be Laughed Out of Court The Stop Social Media Censorship Act almost certainly violates both the US Constitution and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act https://www.wired.com/story/florida-new-social-media-law-laughed-out-of-court/ Florida’s new social media legislation is a double landmark: It’s the first state law regulating online content moderation, and it will almost certainly become the first such law to be struck down in court. On Monday, Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the Stop Social Media Censorship Act, which greatly limits large social media platforms’ ability to moderate or restrict user content. The bill is a legislative distillation of Republican anger over recent episodes of supposed anti-conservative bias, like Twitter and Facebook shutting down Donald Trump’s account and suppressing the spread of the infamous New York Post Hunter Biden story. Most notably, it imposes heavy fines—up to $250,000 per day—on any platform that deactivates the account of a candidate for political office, and it prohibits platforms from taking action against “journalistic enterprises.” It is very hard to imagine any of these provisions ever being enforced, however. “This is so obviously unconstitutional, you wouldn’t even put it on an exam,” said A. Michael Froomkin, a law professor at the University of Miami. Under well established Supreme Court precedent, the First Amendment prohibits private entities from being forced to publish or broadcast someone else’s speech. Prohibiting “deplatforming” of political candidates would likely be construed as an unconstitutional must-carry provision. “This law looks like a political freebie,” Froomkin said. “You get to pander, and nothing bad happens, because there’s no chance this will survive in court.” (The governor’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.) The Constitution isn’t the only problem for the new law. It also conflicts with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a federal law that generally holds online platforms immune from liability over their content moderation decisions. Section 230 has become an object of resentment on both sides of the political aisle, but for different reasons. Liberals tend to think the law lets online platforms get away with leaving too much harmful material up. Conservative critics, on the other hand, argue that it lets them get away with taking too much stuff down—and, worse, that it allows them to censor conservatives under the guise of content moderation. Regardless of the merits of these critiques, the fact is that Section 230 remains in effect, and, like many federal statutes, it explicitly preempts any state law that conflicts with it. That is likely to make any attempt to enforce the Stop Social Media Censorship Act an expensive waste of time. Suppose a candidate for office in Florida repeatedly posts statements that violate Facebook’s policies against vaccine misinformation, or racism, and Facebook bans their account. (Like, say, Laura Loomer, a self-described “proud Islamophobe” who ran for Congress last year in Florida after being banned from Facebook and many other platforms.) If she sues under the new law, she will be seeking to hold Facebook liable for a decision to remove user content. But Section 230 says that platforms are free “to restrict access to or availability of material” as long as they do so in good faith. (Facebook and Twitter declined to comment on whether they plan to comply with the Florida law or fight it in court. YouTube didn’t respond to a request for comment.) Section 230 will probably preempt other aspects of the Florida law that are less politically controversial than the prohibition on deplatforming politicians. For example, the Florida statute requires platforms to set up elaborate due process rights for users, including giving them detailed information about why a certain piece of content was taken down, and to let users opt into a strictly chronological newsfeed with no algorithmic curation. Both of these ideas have common-sense appeal among tech reformers across the political spectrum, and versions of them are included in proposed federal legislation. But enforcing those provisions as part of a state law in court would most likely run afoul of Section 230, because it would boil down to holding a platform liable for hosting, or not hosting, a piece of user-generated content. Florida’s legislature has no power to change that. “Let’s say someone thinks Section 230 is a terrible law and allows all these companies to do terrible things—then the avenue is to change federal law,” said John Bergmayer, the legal director at Public Knowledge, a DC tech policy think tank. “I’m sorry, but this is just a messaging bill.” Inveighing against censorship and the alleged anti-conservative bias of Big Tech has become a reliable talking point for ambitious Republican politicians. DeSantis is widely seen as a rising star in the Trump-era GOP and a contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination should Trump not run. Florida’s new social media law could be a nice little bullet point on his résumé. Ultimately, though, it’s just another piece of content.
So, you were incapable of making an argument and you needed to wait for something to be published to regurgitate...errr....copy and paste. At the end of the day the legal fights will be over 230 protections. This law enables that legal argument to be made and there seems to be a good chance that it ends up in front of SCOTUS. Again, my argument is that social media is the dominate media in the world. The numbers validate that. If TV is regulated WRT politics, I don't see how social media isn't regulated. Otherwise, it would be like someone making the argument that Wall Street and money center banks should have zero regulations as well as 100% protected from all lawsuits. The only financial institutions that should be regulated are credit unions.
If they are going to protected as viewpoint they should be viewpoint neutral. However, I am not sure this is the right case for that argument. But, I hope you are correct.
DeSantis is dumb, but clearly not dumb enough to think this will survive a court battle. So he gets his "culture war" campaign for his base on the FL tax payer's dime, so it's not like "nothing bad happens"
You said "DeSantis is dumb"... I checked on that argument about 2 weeks ago...as that is what the democrats almost always wish to say about Republican Presidents and future presidents....That is not going to fly... He was Magna cum laude in history at Yale. Cum laude at Harvard law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_DeSantis After graduating from Dunedin High School in 1997, DeSantis attended Yale University. He was captain of Yale's varsity baseball team and joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.[5][6] On the Yale baseball team, DeSantis was an outfielder; as a senior in 2001, he had the team's best batting average at .336.[7][8][9][10] He graduated from Yale in 2001 with a B.A. magna cum laude in history.[11] He then spent a year as a history teacher at the Darlington School.[12] DeSantis then attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 2005 with a Juris Doctor cum laude.[13][14]
Oh yeah, scenic Bayonne. But your article talked about Alaska. I guess we'll see if you are correct (spoiler alert - unlikely).
Paying under-aged women for sex may be only the second worst thing Matt Gaetz has ever done. How Matt Gaetz helped make Ron DeSantis https://www.politico.com/states/flo...w-matt-gaetz-helped-make-ron-desantis-1383823