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Whereas Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is desperately flailing round on the presidential marketing campaign path, let’s not overlook his way more profitable efforts to run Florida’s financial system straight right into a ditch. In preparation for a run that appears to have been mortally wounded by Iowa voters getting a great have a look at him, DeSantis spent years grooming himself right into a Donald Trump Mini-Me, trying to enchantment to Trump’s base of far-right deplorables by promising even farther-right acts than Trump himself may accomplish.
That is put DeSantis within the place of being anti-vaxx, anti-mask, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-anti-racism, anti-CRT, anti-DEI, anti-schoolteacher, anti-university, and particularly anti-woke, the place “woke” is outlined as something and every little thing that probably the most hateful individual you understand would possibly get into their heads to object to. And that, in flip, has been constructing into an outright catastrophe as People who aren’t fascist hatepuddles begin steering away from the Sunshine State.
We’re now seeing the following little bit of fallout from DeSantis’ pro-hatepuddle agenda, and this one might be a doozy: CNN is reporting that organizations at the moment are starting to cancel already-booked conventions within the state in direct response to new anti-LGBTQ+ and seemingly pro-racist legal guidelines promoted by DeSantis and handed by the Republican-controlled Legislature. These legal guidelines led to new journey alerts from Black, immigrant, and LGBTQ+ teams warning their members that Florida was a distinctly unsafe place to be, what with pro-DeSantis neo-Nazis rallying outdoors of the Walt Disney World gates.
With this primary spherical of occasion cancellations, Florida is now out no less than $20 million—a drop within the bucket. The larger downside for Florida’s conference facilities is that giant occasions like these are booked a few years upfront. It’s arduous to maneuver already-decided on conventions. It’s simple, nevertheless, to take away Florida from the listing of contenders when planning new conventions a few years out.
And that is the lengthy tail that may and has price states billions. The CNN story notes that North Carolina’s “rest room invoice” fiasco is estimated to have price the state $3.7 billion. Florida hosts a few of the nation’s largest tourism attracts, and has much more to lose.
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Once more, it is actually arduous to overstate how a lot DeSantis has sucked in relation to his ostensible day job of governing the state. His hate-based and conspiracy-minded insurance policies have contributed to a state trainer scarcity, a state physician scarcity, a scarcity of farm employees, and a right-wing marketing campaign towards the New Faculty of Florida that has left the establishment with out sufficient instructors to show even required programs.
His battle towards the Walt Disney Firm—a significant state employer that earned DeSantis’ ire for probably the most milquetoast of company objections to Florida’s new anti-LGBTQ+ legal guidelines—has already resulted in Disney canceling a significant growth within the state and wariness from different nationwide and worldwide corporations that do not need to face related government-backed retaliation if and when DeSantis turns towards them.
DeSantis even pulled the plug on $377 million in federal vitality grants to the state, a lot of which might have gone towards shopper rebates to advertise purchases of newer, extra energy-efficient home equipment, solely in order that DeSantis may use the rejection as marketing campaign fodder.
The state’s inflation fee is greater than double the nationwide common, there’s an ongoing sewage disaster, and the state is even going through new spikes of community-spread malaria and leprosy. And that is the man who’s utilizing Nazi symbols to advertise his plan to “Make America Florida”?
No! No, thanks! No leprosy for me, thanks. You retain that crap in Mar-a-Lago the place it belongs.
Evidently states by no means study this lesson, however electing a Republican governor with apparent presidential ambitions is a foul, dangerous transfer if you want your state to have an honest financial system, respectable colleges, and a notable absence of leprosy. DeSantis remains to be on the marketing campaign path regardless of his cash woes, holding out hope that Donald Trump will fall down a manhole and die sooner or later earlier than the Republican conference rolls round, however God is aware of what grievances he’ll have upon returning to his Florida day job. I am unable to think about there’s an organization or convention-having group wherever within the nation that wishes to nab themselves a brand new piece of that.
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It’s a joyous week in Wisconsin, the place Janet Protasiewicz’s swearing-in implies that the state Supreme Courtroom now has its first liberal majority in 15 years. We’re speaking about that monumental transition on this week’s episode of “The Downballot,” together with a brand-new swimsuit that voting rights advocates filed on Protasiewicz’s first full day on the job that asks the courtroom to strike down the GOP’s legislative maps as unlawful partisan gerrymanders.
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