This is how authoritarians operate... Florida’s century-old Sunshine Laws under duress as DeSantis tries to redefine them https://news.yahoo.com/florida-century-old-sunshine-laws-093000170.html
Ron DeSantis has no social skills or couth. Ron DeSantis Ate Chocolate Pudding … With Three Fingers? https://slate.com/news-and-politics...dly-chocolate-pudding-with-three-fingers.html
Authoritarians generally don't like Constitutions and always attempt to re-write history. Florida Man Trashes the Constitution and History in Pursuit of the White House Thanks to an anemic opposition, Ron DeSantis won reelection by a landslide. But if national Democrats don’t learn from the Florida party’s mistakes, the governor could take his crackpot crusade even further. https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/desantis-florida-presidential-campaign/
Governor Puddin' Fingers' own undercover cops couldn't find anything wrong with drag show they infiltrated back in December in effort to yank venue's liquor license. DeSantis’ Own Undercover Cops Find No Wrongdoing at Orlando Drag Show https://www.thedailybeast.com/desantis-own-undercover-cops-find-no-wrongdoing-at-orlando-drag-show Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is willing to disregard his own undercover agents in his crusade against drag shows, according to the Miami Herald. In a very efficient use of state resources, a group of undercover cops from Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation sat in on “A Very Drag Queen Christmas” at Orlando’s Plaza Live Theater in December, eyes peeled for “lewd or lascivious” acts that cannot be performed in front of minors, according to Florida’s state decency law. What was their verdict? “Besides some of the outfits being provocative [bikinis and short shorts], agents did not witness any lewd acts such as exposure of genital organs,” the officers said in a report. Yet the state of Florida is still going after the historic venue, seeking to repeal its liquor license in a move that would likely force it out of business. DeSantis, who is expected to seek the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election, has made his war on drag a centerpiece of his policy agenda, courting the anti-LGBT vote by openly seeking to financially hurt venues that allow children to see drag performances.
Mouse Flips DeSantis The Bird After DeSantis tussle, Disney World will host a major summit on gay rights https://www.aol.com/news/desantis-tussle-disney-world-host-093000134.html The Walt Disney Company will host a major conference promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in the workplace in Central Florida this September, gathering executives and professionals from the world’s largest companies in a defiant display of the limits of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign against diversity training. Disney’s decision to host the conference this fall comes amid a yearlong dispute between the company and the Republican governor, who signed a law that ended decades of autonomy at the Disney resort. It was seen as punishment over the company’s opposition to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education legislation, known widely as the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which prohibits any discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in classrooms before fourth grade. Disney has had a longstanding relationship with Out & Equal, the organization behind the event, and is listed on its website as one of its most generous sponsors. The Florida resort has committed to hosting the conference this year and next, which will coincide with the presidential election campaign in 2024. DeSantis is widely expected to challenge former President Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. Michael Chamberlain, chief marketing officer for Out & Equal, confirmed the conference would be held at The Walt Disney World Resort, Sept. 11-14. Last year’s summit was held in Las Vegas. Dozens of iconic American companies — including Apple, McDonald’s, Uber, Walmart, Hilton, Amazon, Boeing, Cracker Barrel and John Deere — are sponsoring the Out & Equal Workplace summit, which over 5,000 people are expected to attend. Several agencies, including the State Department and the CIA, are listed as government partners and will have booths at the conference. The conference comes after DeSantis declared victory over Disney in February when he signed a law that gave him the power to appoint a five-member board overseeing government services at the Disney district near Orlando. “Today, the corporate kingdom finally comes to an end,” DeSantis said when he signed the bill. “This is what accountability looks like.” In his recently released book, DeSantis describes how, after “Disney declared war on Florida families” by opposing the Parental Rights in Education bill and “indulged in woke activism,’’ he asked the Legislature “to reevaluate — and even eliminate — Disney’s special deal.” DeSantis married his wife, Casey, at the Disney World resort in 2009. Squaring off against Disney was “a political battle that would reverberate across the nation,’’ he wrote. The subsequent legislation left most of Disney’s special powers in place despite the governor’s attempt to dissolve the district. The conservative members the governor appointed to the board hinted at the first meeting of the new board that they would exercise leverage over Disney, such as prohibiting COVID-19 restrictions at Disney World. But legal experts have said that the new board’s authority has no control over Disney content. Hosting the conference is another demonstration of the limits on the Republican governor’s ability to influence the content and scope of events at Disney. ‘Largest LGBTQ+ conference’ Out & Equal says its summit “is the largest LGBTQ+ conference in the world,” bringing executives, employee resource group leaders, human resource professionals and experts in diversity, equity and inclusion together to promote equality. “Over more than 20 years, Summit has grown to become the preferred place to network and share strategies that create inclusive workplaces, where everyone belongs and where LGBTQ+ employees can be out and thrive,” the website states. DeSantis has campaigned against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, pushing for them to be eliminated at state colleges and universities in Florida and asserting that the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank was caused by its focus on DEI programs. He has accused large corporations that engage in DEI training of attempting to “advance woke ideology through its employee ranks — and virtue signal in the process.” Rep. Randy Fine, a Palm Bay Republican who last year sponsored the bill to dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which governed land use, fire protection, and sewer services on the Disney resort, said he had never heard of the summit and was not troubled by it. “I’m not willing to interpret it as some grand conspiracy to stick it in the eye of the state of Florida,” Fine said Monday. “Disney is part of the fabric of the Florida economy. ... If they weren’t holding any conferences at Disney World, that would be news because that would be a big problem.” He said that even the Legislature used to hold annual events at the resort “before all this woke stuff took over” and that, as a former gambling industry executive, he knows that in organizing a large conference, “there are only two places where you can have a conference and increase your attendance — Las Vegas and Orlando.” Last year’s Out & Equal conference in Las Vegas included multiple speakers who advocated for the rights of transgender youth, and provided attendees with guidance on how to navigate anti-LGBTQ bills at the state level. Year of tension Tension between DeSantis and Disney arose last spring, when Disney publicly opposed Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The measure prohibits discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, and in older grades when deemed “not age-appropriate.” When Disney officials did not publicly lobby against the measure, some employees marched out of the company’s California headquarters in protest. Others urged executives to join corporations that were condemning DeSantis, who signed the bill into law. After Disney published a statement demanding that the law be repealed, DeSantis retaliated by expanding the agenda of a special session on redistricting to include dissolving Disney’s special taxing district. An obscure provision in state law prohibits the state from dissolving the district until its bond debt — which amounted to more than $1 billion — was paid off. In April, Disney quietly sent a note to its investors to show that it was confident the Legislature’s attempt to dissolve the special taxing district violated the “pledge” the state made when it enacted the district in 1967, and therefore was not legal. Disney’s decision to host this year’s Out & Equal summit was announced several months later, to participants of the 2022 conference held in October. After more than nine months of stalemate, legislators approved a measure in February that renames Reedy Creek as the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, and the Disney-appointed board was replaced by conservatives named by DeSantis. But the measure also leaves most of the district’s special powers intact, including the company’s ability to tax itself to pay off its $1 billion in debt. DeSantis’ office did not respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople for Disney declined to comment.
yeah but the cons believe Ronnie won some major victory to control disney..... all they control are the public services offered to the counties where disney operates, nothing to do with the private entity disney... But ronnie has a book to sell....and it worked great for his book sales popping to #1
The Greater Florida Reichstag classifies HerrSantis Itinerary as a state secret. Where is DeSantis traveling on state business? Legislature wants to make it a secret https://www.aol.com/news/where-desantis-traveling-state-business-231210763.html Citing an increase in public records requests for the governor’s travel schedule, Florida legislators are advancing a bill that would shield from the public any information about how and where Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials go. The bill would impose the first-ever public records exemption for the transportation records held by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the agency that handles the governor’s security. The exemption would take effect retroactively, prohibiting anyone from scrutinizing how DeSantis has used his state travel in the past and as he prepares for a likely campaign for the Republican nomination for president. “There has been an increase in public records requests regarding our governor and his travel simply because of his notoriety and his position for the past few years,’’ said Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, the Senate sponsor of the bill. State law allows governors to use state planes for political and personal travel for security reasons but, as DeSantis conducts a national book tour in anticipation of a likely presidential campaign, questions are mounting about whether taxpayer funds have been used to finance his travel and other political operations. In the past, when state officials have used state assets for political purposes, they have been expected to reimburse taxpayers for those efforts. During DeSantis’ term, the governor’s staff has refused to disclose many of the details of his political schedule. Media requests to FDLE for information about the schedule, as well as information about whether taxpayers have been reimbursed, have been met with either no answer or months of delay. The Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times, for example, last year asked for several weeks of the governor’s schedule kept by FDLE. That so-called “line-by-line” schedule provides more detail than the often incomplete schedule released by his communications staff at the end of each day. But, aside from providing a handful of heavily redacted schedules from the month of June and one week in August, FDLE withheld the remaining requests from disclosure, citing a backlog in records requests. Some governors and lawmakers have misused state travel Florida has a history of scrutinizing its elected officials for using state planes for political and personal purposes. In 1996, former Gov. Lawton Chiles was caught using Florida’s state planes to attend Bill Clinton-Al Gore fundraisers. In 2003, Florida Senate President Jim King, R-Jacksonville, admitted to using state planes for weekend trips home, despite a state law that prohibited the use of state planes for commuting. In 2010, former Gov. Charlie Crist, then a Republican, admitted to using a state plane to promote a pro-business initiative and then attended a Miami campaign fundraiser. The public learned about those and other politicians who used taxpayer funds for private and political business because reporters obtained the records. The Senate Governmental Oversight and Accountability Committee voted 8-0 on Wednesday for SB 1616, which would make exempt travel information for “the governor, the governor’s immediate family, visiting governors and their families, the lieutenant governor, a member of the Cabinet, the speaker of the House of Representatives, the president of the Senate, or the chief justice of the Supreme Court” and people who travel with them. Martin said he sponsored the bill at the request of FDLE, which told him that the volume of public records requests for the information was concerning. “They were like, wait a second, if all of this gets out, people can put together things that we’re doing to protect the governor and figure out who the people we have, and which hotels we stay at, and things like that,’’ Martin said after the vote. “I don’t think we’re trying to hide what the governor is doing or who he’s meeting with. I think what we’re trying to do is protect the people that are protecting him.” The House Criminal Justice Subcommittee voted 17-0 on Tuesday for a companion bill, HB 1495. Unanimous committee vote but there are opponents Although the bills received bipartisan support, not everyone said the exemptions are a good idea. “Exemptions are supposed to be drawn as narrowly as possible. Was this narrowly drawn and was there an overriding public reason for this?” asked Sen. Lori Berman, D-West Palm Beach. “I don’t think so. I will be voting against this. But I may be in the extreme minority.” Barbara Petersen, director of the Florida Center for Government Accountability, a nonprofit public records watchdog, and Bobby Block, director of the First Amendment Foundation, both said the bill as written was unnecessarily broad. “While there could be some security concerns regarding the governor’s current or future travel, I see no justification for protecting past travel,’’ Petersen said. “Who the governor is meeting with, who is traveling with him, who’s paying for the travel, are all questions critical to the public’s ability to hold the governor accountable.” “Are the purposes of the trips in the interests of the citizens of the state or could it be the governor is spending money on his political agenda or career that isn’t in Florida?” Block asked. “By exempting this information — that many times would have nothing to do with his physical safety — it excludes the public from ever knowing what it is costing us and what benefits they are getting from these travels.” Michael Barfield, director of public access for FLCGA, said the legislation “is inconsistent with the governor’s claim that Florida is a state that protects freedoms.” “Where the governor is traveling and who he is meeting with has been a fundamental right for decades under Florida’s right-to-know laws,’’ Barfield said. “This is another example of the lack of accountability for taxpayer money under the DeSantis administration.” Block noted that former Gov. Jeb Bush had a brother “who was in the White House and whose friends were running the Department of Homeland Security and he didn’t feel the need for this. Are we being told the truth about the reason for the need for this?” FDLE: Threat levels have changed FDLE spokesperson Gretl Plessinger said the agency supports the legislation and that security threats have changed since Bush was governor. “The threat picture has changed significantly over the last decade with violence and attempted violence against elected and appointed officials nationally,’’ she said in an email. “Releasing Protective Operations details represents a risk not only to those we protect, but also FDLE agents and citizens attending events.” Sen. Tracie Davis, D-Jacksonville, said she supported the amendment because she agrees that the security risks for elected officials have increased. “Despite my disdain for this governor, I think there should be protection for a future governor,’’ she said. “But I do think we need to have more accountability and transparency.”
Translation: "please don't expose who i'm corruptly begging for PAC donations on the state tax payers' dime"