DeSantis using taxpayer money to drive his political ambitions again. Flushing taxpayer money down the toilet. DeSantis spends millions on legal bills at $725-an-hour. And he just lost again https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opi...0220621-cy2n6jjiyjaazaglgpbzh2ohv4-story.html Last week, the Orlando Sentinel reported that Gov. Ron DeSantis has racked up more than $5 million in legal bills, paying lawyers as much as $725 an hour — often to lose cases that everyone knew he was going to lose in the first place. It took the Sentinel weeks to get copies of all the legal bills. Yet before we could even publish that story, a federal judge handed DeSantis yet another big legal loss — this time telling the governor he wasn’t allowed to selectively outlaw political donations. (More on the specifics of that case in a moment.) DeSantis’ P.R. team likes to claim he’s having all these legal problems because socialist lefties are raising bogus objections. Yet the judge who handed DeSantis his latest loss was appointed to his position by Donald Trump. Before that, the judge was an appointee of Rick Scott. Before that, he worked for Pam Bondi. Basically, federal judge Allen Winsor — a member of the Federalist Society — couldn’t be more conservative if he was the test-tube baby of Ronald Reagan and Phyllis Schlafly. DeSantis and GOP legislators aren’t losing in court because of whiny liberals. They’re losing because they keep trying to run roughshod over the United States and Florida constitutions. [ DeSantis taps D.C. law firm billing $725 an hour to defend culture war laws ] And because they have a gullible base that doesn’t seem to mind politicians trampling their rights and wasting their tax dollars as long as these politicians also scream about “woke” corporations and transgender teens. This latest legal loss was actually a sequel to an earlier loss. In 2021, DeSantis and GOP legislators tried to make it illegal to donate more than $3,000 to any citizen-led effort to get a new amendment on the ballot. You know, for things like smaller class sizes and medical marijuana. Now, these same politicians wanted to continue collecting massive checks for their own political committees — at up to $5 million a pop. But they wanted the right to arrest and jail you for donating $3,001 to an amendment drive for something like open primaries or a new tax break for seniors. Their bill was obviously hypocritical. But it was also unconstitutional. Judge Winsor called it “wholly foreign to the First Amendment.” But DeSantis and GOP legislators didn’t care. After Winsor rejected their 2021 attack on citizen amendments, they passed another attack this year — this time with a tweak that targeted donations from out-of-state residents. Again, DeSantis and his legislative buddies wanted to keep cashing their own out-of-state checks. DeSantis’ single biggest donor is a hedge fund billionaire from Chicago. They just wanted to prevent citizen-led amendment drives from doing the same. So last week, Winsor again blocked the law from taking effect. All told, Florida spent $108,776 paying outside lawyers as much as $425 an hour just to defend these two garbage laws, according to numbers revealed Tuesday by state elections officials. The local sponsor of this year’s unconstitutional bill was Sen. Jason Brodeur. Local Republicans who voted for Brodeur’s bill included Thad Altman, Dennis Baxley, Scott Plakon, Rene Plasencia, Anthony Sabatini, David Smith, Kelli Stargel, Josie Tomkow and Keith Truenow. All these guys had already been told by a conservative judge that their scheme was unconstitutional. But they voted for it anyway, knowing taxpayers would pick up the tab. These people aren’t fiscal conservatives any more than Jabba the Hutt is a WeightWatchers model. One brave Senate Republican, Jeff Brandes, tried last year to stop his peers from threatening to imprison citizens who donate to amendment drives. But Brandes was vastly outnumbered. And that was just the latest legal loss. DeSantis and Republican legislators also watched the courts overturn their unconstitutional attempt to grant the Seminole tribe a statewide monopoly on sports betting. And their attempt to stop Twitter and Facebook from controlling their own privately funded platforms. And in one of DeSantis’ earliest and most humiliating court losses, his own appointees to the Supreme Court told him he couldn’t appoint a justice who lacked the 10 years’ legal experience required by the state constitution. DeSantis forced his own conservative-stocked court to basically say: Dude, we’re obviously on your team. But you’re so clearly wrong on this, we can’t help you out. We can’t just act like 9 is equal to 10. Yet DeSantis staffers claim all their problems are because of liberal activists. And that he’s simply trying to protect everyone’s “freedom.” To be fair, DeSantis hasn’t lost all his court battles. He has notched high-profile victories on issues like mask mandates, election laws and cruise-ship regulations. I’ll even go a step further and say he has fended off some frivolous legal challenges. Every governor faces legal challenges and eventually has to head to court. The difference between most governors and DeSantis is that this Harvard law school grad keeps signing laws he knows are unconstitutional. Up next will probably be the part of his so-called “Stop Woke” act that attempts to tell businesses what kind of diversity training they can hold. DeSantis wants to ban discussions that make his supporters uncomfortable. Honest conservatives know this snowflake-protection act — government trying to regulate speech at private companies in an attempt to prevent hurt feelings — is neither conservative nor constitutional. The problem is that there seems to be a shortage of honest conservatives left in Tallahassee. Or at the voting booth holding them accountable.
Is DeSantis going to start endorsing people for dogcatcher in local races next? In ‘unprecedented’ move, Gov. DeSantis gets involved in school board races, backs 3 local candidates https://www.news4jax.com/news/local...-school-board-races-backs-3-local-candidates/
Ron DeSantis is following a trail blazed by a Hungarian authoritarian The Florida governor isn’t doing “competent Trumpism.” He’s inventing American Orbánism. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-poli...rida-viktor-orban-hungary-right-authoritarian
DeSantis’s Threats to Disney Is What Post-Trump Authoritarianism Looks Like “Special treatment” as long as you support the government. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/202...to-disney-is-post-trump-authoritarianism.html Florida governor Ron DeSantis has pitched himself to the Republican elite as the candidate of “competent Trumpism” — a form of authoritarian populism for conservatives who worried that Donald Trump was squandering his power, not abusing it. A picture of what that would look like in operation can be seen in DeSantis’s thuggish effort to bully Disney into supporting, or at least refraining from opposing, his “Don’t Say Gay” law. Last week, DeSantis declared at a press conference that Disney “crossed the line” by saying it would support the repeal of DeSantis’s cherished anti-gay legislation. “We’re going to make sure we’re fighting back when people are threatening our parents and threatening our kids,” he warned. “Fighting back” turns out not to mean refuting or organizing against Disney’s opposition to the law. It means DeSantis using his legislative majority to punish Disney on unrelated legal issues. On Friday, he claimed he was “shocked” to discover Disney has been granted sweeping autonomy to operate in his state: “I was shocked to see some of the stuff that’s in there. They can do their own nuclear power plant. Is there any other private company in the state that can just build a nuclear power plant on their own? They’re able to do certain things that nobody else is able to do. So I think they’re right to be looking at this and reevaluating and having an even playing field for everybody, I think is much better than basically to allow one company to be a law onto itself.” Given that this legal status has been widely known for many decades in the state where DeSantis grew up and now serves as chief executive, the governor was no doubt shocked — the same way Captain Louis Renault was shocked to discover gambling in Casablanca. One obvious tell that DeSantis doesn’t actually care about Disney’s legal status is that his pretext for punishing the firm has changed. On Friday, he cited Disney’s special legal autonomy. The day before, the “special treatment” was a bill regulating social media that exempted theme-park operators. Another tell is that the latter bill was signed into law by DeSantis with specific input from his staff, as the Tampa Bay Times reports. If Disney’s legislative clout is leading to outrageous favoritism, voters should be furious with DeSantis. DeSantis is barely making any effort to hide his intentions. As he tells Fox News, “Six months ago, it would have been unthinkable” that Florida Republican legislators “would be willing to reevaluate those special privileges.” It’s almost as if the special privileges have nothing to do with the reason Republicans are looking to punish Disney! Perhaps there is something Disney can put in DeSantis’s hand that would make the thing in his other hand go away. What’s relevant to this threat is neither the merits of DeSantis’s school regulations nor of Disney’s status in Florida. Even if you think DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill is wonderful and Disney’s legal status is awful, the governor’s thuggish linkage of the two ought to terrify you. DeSantis is trying to establish an understanding that major corporations can expect favorable treatment from the government as long as they play along with the ruling party’s political agenda. They are allowed — nay, encouraged — to get involved in politics on the condition that they take the correct position. But should they take the wrong position, they will find themselves under legal scrutiny. Suddenly, the regulatory noose will tighten. This is the method Donald Trump used to intimidate firms with employees who gave him a hard time. Amazon lost a lucrative Pentagon contract in retribution for Jeff Bezos’s ownership of the Washington Post, and Trump attempted to block a merger by CNN’s parent company to finish the network. This is also a method that Trump’s favorite dictators — like Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin — use to control the political debate in their countries. DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw has fired off more than a dozen tweets celebrating Orbán’s victory in Hungary and ridiculing the idea that his regime is repressive or dangerous in any way. When American conservatives tell us Orbán’s version of competitive authoritarianism is the form of government they aspire to, then show us what it would look like in practice, we’d best believe them.
DeSantis’ slide to authoritarianism betrays the Floridians who escaped it https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinio...0200924-yptzc3hbsvfjzghnoxyw5qjk5u-story.html On the campaign trail in 2018, I listened to countless stories from Floridians who had come to the United States to escape authoritarianism around the globe. Across generations and geography, the stories often surrounded a single common theme. From Venezuela and Cuba to China and Iran, thousands of American immigrants fled oppressive regimes to pursue freedom in the United States, and much to our benefit, became part of the vibrant multicultural community of Florida. These proud Americans know authoritarianism when they see it, and this week, they saw it loud and clear in the new anti-protest legislation proposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The right to protest is one of America’s foundational principles. It is what sets us apart from those regimes so many of our brethren fled. The right to demand better from our elected officials; to speak out against injustice; to ensure that our government truly is, as President Lincoln said, “of the people, by the people, for the people.” But in a move ripped from the dictator’s playbook, DeSantis proposed sweeping crackdowns on the right to protest, promising harsh penalties for nonviolent offenses like blocking traffic and threatening mass arrests of all protesters for the actions of a few individuals. DeSantis even went as far as suggesting that it should be legal to kill protesters by running them over with cars. Many rightly point out that this announcement by the governor is an election year stunt; a distraction from his mismanagement of the state’s unemployment system and 13,000+ deaths as a result of his disastrous COVID-19 response. Unfortunately, even stunts have dangerous consequences when left unchecked, and Ron DeSantis has already demonstrated his disdain for the rule of law too often to ignore, so we can’t afford to simply write this off as just the latest distraction from his failed leadership. Let’s be clear about what this proposal really is: an unconstitutional power grab by a failed and flailing governor. DeSantis has attacked the right to vote and deliberately undermined the will of Florida voters and the independence of our structures of government. He has infected our state agencies with partisanship, silencing health officials during the height of a deadly pandemic, refusing to release critical information, and firing those who dared speak out in an attempt to save lives. Just this month, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously ruled his attempt to appoint an unqualified justice was unconstitutional. He has attacked journalists and teachers, scientists and social workers alike, all in the name of political expedience and consolidation of power. We have become accustomed to this governor’s arrogance and attacks on our legal institutions, but his latest incursion into our most basic freedoms exposes his true intention: criminalizing dissent. Under these new laws proposed by DeSantis, some of the most famous and consequential moments in American history would be criminalized. From the Boston Tea Party to the Stonewall Inn uprising, history calls heroes those whom Ron DeSantis would label criminals. In the 1960s, Congressman John Lewis nearly died (and many lost their lives) protesting for the right to vote. Sixty years later, Ron DeSantis wants to strip the right to vote away from those who protest the very same injustices. If you want to know what the next iteration of Jim Crow looks like, look no further. DeSantis wants you to think this is about safety, but it is not. Nobody is advocating for violence, and the few individuals who cause damage are already held accountable for their actions. Recent reports and studies have shown that well over 90% of protests are peaceful, but DeSantis would have you think we should do away with our freedom to protest altogether, all in the name of law and order. DeSantis wants you to think we face a choice between our rights and our security, but as so many Americans know firsthand, that is a false choice. Gov. Ron DeSantis doesn’t just want to silence his critics; he wants to jail political dissidents and use the powers of the state to strip away the freedom of those who dare oppose him. We must not let him succeed.
He's obsessed. Spamming three separate DeSantis threads now. When DeSantis wins in November, I'm concerned he might hurt himself.
I mentioned multiple times that I expect DeSantis to win the gubernatorial race in November. This will hardly be a surprise based on the current polling. Florida -- a state that ranks near last in patriotism according to FOX News loves an authoritarian. Spamming threads you say? I am merely keeping the content aligned with the topic of the thread. Something you should learn to do. Information about DeSantis being an authoritarian and threat to democracy goes here, posts about DeSantis' in 2024 goes on the "2024" thread, and information about DeSantis' many losses including over 73,000 lives to Covid go as responses on the "winner" thread.
Let's see what DeSantis' teammates had to say about him... "Ron is the most selfish person I have ever interacted with," a teammate said. "He has always loved embarrassing and humiliating people. I’m speaking for others—he was the biggest di** we knew." https://www.audacy.com/wwjnewsradio...-desantis-college-teammate-biggest-di-we-knew
There are three DeSantis threads, GWB. Three. You're spamming and no one is reading your crap (as usual). You could - in theory - make "sub topics" on every aspect of DeSantis' life if you wanted (and you just might). But the overarching topic is DeSantis. Get a clue on reality. You're well into your later years in life. Try spending some time with the family, and don't let a governor that has nothing to do with your state ruin your life and consume you so. Really. A "teammate" of DeSantis says bad things? What a joke. I'm sure I could find dozens of people who knew you in school who thought you were a twit. I'll bow out of this spam thread and let you shout at the rain. If you post in the one we've been dealing with for years now, I'll engage. Otherwise I'll leave you to your ranting and descent into madness.