It's Bootsie DeSantis' Amateur Hour, Exodus Edition (UPDATED)

 

We've noted multiple ways Florida Republican/ Christofascist Gov. Ron "Bootsie" DeSantis is ruining his state through largely performative measures to fight "woke," LGBTQ+, immigrants, etc.  One of the measures we noted, the new anti- immigrant law, is getting some serious blowback from those who should be natural Bootsie supporters -- the business community:

Business owners in Florida are worried after Governor Ron DeSantis‘ new anti-immigrant law took effect on Saturday, forcing many migrant workers to flee the state and head north, to states like North Carolina and Georgia.

“It was a very difficult decision, but we didn’t want to live in fear, so we moved up north,” Romeo Lucas told The Wall Street Journal ($$), which reports he “would be directly affected by the new law.”

Lucas “worked at a plant nursery in Miami’s agricultural district for a decade, but recently moved to North Carolina. He said he was worried that he could become separated from his children.” His wife has diabetes, and he was concerned for his family’s ability to access health care in Florida as well.

DeSantis’ “new law requires hospitals that accept Medicaid to question a patient’s immigration status, and invalidates out-of-state driver’s licenses issued to people unauthorized to be in the U.S. It makes it a third-degree felony to knowingly transport into Florida a person who is undocumented and illegally entered the U.S. The law also adds $12 million to the amount of money the state has earmarked for its migrant-relocation program, bringing the total to $22 million this year.”

It also, the Journal adds, “makes it a third-degree felony for unauthorized people to knowingly use a false identification to obtain employment. Businesses that knowingly employ unauthorized workers could have their licenses suspended, and those with 25 or more employees that repeatedly fail to use the E-Verify system to check their immigration status can face daily fines.”

Mahendra Raolji, who runs a large farming and packaging facility, Jalaram Produce, with his wife and business partner, Prafula Raolji, “said more than half his workers have gone.”

Prafula Raolji is “worried about enforcement of the law,” The Journal reports. “I pray it won’t happen. Because then who is going to work?” she said.

It’s not just farming. Construction is also being hit hard.

“At site after site,” in downtown Miami, “the story was the same. Workers have fled.”

One “worker said that he had lost about half his crew. They went to Indiana, he said, where jobs are paying $38 an hour instead of $25, and where they won’t have to look over their shoulders.”

The farm and construction labor shortage was a huge challenge to businesses even before DeSantis’ law went into effect July 1, as DeSantis’ administration cracked down on migrants.

An opinion piece in the South Florida Sun Sentinel in early June noted third generation Palm Beach County sugarcane farmer and GOP state lawmaker Rick Roth “was mad as hell about Florida’s draconian new immigration law that’s scaring away workers and exacerbating the state’s labor shortage, particularly in the agriculture sector.”

“I’m a farmer and the farmers are mad as hell,” Roth told a meeting of the Hispanic Ministers Association. The piece notes DeSantis “thinks immigrant-stomping will get him to the White House.”

It sounds more and more like Bootsie's catering exclusively to the white nationalist MAGAt crowd is creating problems in his state that were totally foreseeable to anyone with a bit of political savvy and a touch of humanity, both of which Bootsie lacks (along with a personality).  It apparently hasn't dawned on him that the more he caters, the more repulsive and self- defeating his actions, the more unpopular he gets.  You can't out- MAGA the Malignant Loser, but you can ruin your state trying.  

UPDATE: Bootsie's amateur hour continues -- Federal judge Mark Walker just put a crimp in Bootsie's voter suppression law. The judge's scathing summary:

“Florida may, of course, regulate elections, including the voter registration process,” Walker wrote. “Here, however, the challenged provisions exemplify something Florida has struggled with in recent years; namely, governing within the bounds set by the United States Constitution. When state government power threatens to spread beyond constitutional bounds and reduce individual rights to ashes, the federal judiciary stands as a firewall. The Free State of Florida is simply not free to exceed the bounds of the United States Constitution.”

(Photo:  Unhinging his jaw to swallow his career /@McCormickJohn/Twitter)

 

It's Bootsie DeSantis' Amateur Hour!

 

Bootsie  DeSantis has been busily flailing away at every Christofascist strawman he can build lately.  In the process, the unfortunately arranged collection of molecules is making enemies faster than you can say Meatball, and causing observers to wonder how such an unlikable blob ever got into contention in the first place.   

First, teh gayz:

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Sunday commented on the “strangeness” of a recent ad by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign targeting 2024 rival candidate Donald Trump, claiming the former president “did more than any other Republican to celebrate” pride month.

The ad, which begins by citing Trump’s 2016 Republican National Convention pledge to “protect our LGBTQ citizens” before showing past interview responses from the former president on the subject, abruptly transitions to clips of commentators criticizing DeSantis’ policies for targeting those same citizens. The meme-heavy video depicts in a positive light the fictional serial killer Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, while also showing a bodybuilder posing on stage.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Buttigieg was asked about the ad, which drew condemnation from the Log Cabin Republicans for “ventur[ing] into homophobic territory.”

“I’m going to choose my words carefully — partly because I’m appearing as secretary — so I can’t talk about campaigns,” began Buttigieg, the first openly gay Cabinet member. He then expressed skepticism that the ad had any real value.

“I’m going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up, shirtless bodybuilders, and just get to the bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space, which is, again, who are you trying to help?” he said...

Next boogeyman:  Messican immigrants (when he's not performing for Christofascists by sending immigrants off to Martha' Vineyard and California)!

The Mexican Foreign Ministry harshly criticized a new Florida immigration law that will require more frequent mandatory ID checks at places like hospitals and by employers, as well as increase criminal penalties to being undocumented.

“SB1718 will affect the human rights of thousands of Mexicans, including children, and will exacerbate hostile environments, which may lead to hate crimes and acts against the migrant community,” the ministry said in a statement Saturday.

“Criminalization is not the way to solve the issue of undocumented immigration.”

The sweeping law went into effect on Saturday...

Maybe unconstitutional?  We're sure they ran it by the scrupulously honest Republican Supreme Court!

But, more might be required to curb the browning of Florida and America:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, bless his heart, was off in Texas this past week (his new hangout), promising to rid America of people like him.

That wasn’t exactly how he put it. But that’s the gist of his declaration to end the constitutionally enshrined right of American citizenship to anybody born in the United States. It’s known as “birthright citizenship.”

"This idea that you can come across the border, two days later have a child, and somehow that's an American citizen — that was not the original understanding of the 14th Amendment. And so we'll take action to force a clarification of that," DeSantis said in Eagle Pass, Texas, which is 1,044 miles from Tallahassee, the alleged place of his employment.

The contention that presidents can issue executive orders to prompt the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution sounds nutty. 

That’s because it is. DeSantis is just glomming onto the untethered musings of his proudly uninformed political mentor in Mar-a-Lago again. But DeSantis, a Harvard Law School graduate, ought to know better.

The idea that any child born in the United States, even one of undocumented non-citizens, is granted citizenship has been a constitutional right since 1868...

But, it's all a performance for the knuckle- dragging MAGAts he hopes (in vain) to lure away from the Malignant Loser. 

Next up: people who need medical marijuana.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, has signed a bill that expressly prohibits sober living facilities from allowing residents to possess or use medical marijuana, even if the patient is certified by a doctor to legally use cannabis therapeutically in accordance with state law. All other doctor-prescribed pharmaceutical medications may be permitted, however.

The governor signed the legislation, SB 210, on Tuesday—and he separately gave final approval to a hemp regulations measure that bans the sale of legal smokeless hemp products to people under 21.

Under the newly enacted SB 210, applicants who are seeking licensing to operate recovery residences under the state Department of Children and Families will need to affirm that they do not permit the use of cannabis, which “includes marijuana that has been certified by a qualified physician for medical use.”

But residents may continue to use other pharmaceutical drugs prescribed by doctors, so the law explicitly singles out medical marijuana...

After all, "afflicting the afflicted" is part of the Christofascist Republican creed, along with "comforting the comfortable."

Bootsie's final gift to the enlightened people of Florida, who've favored him with two terms in office, is to make sure that the roads they're driving on are safe. Wait what:

Florida governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis signed a bill Thursday that would allow for roads across Florida to be made with "radioactive" mining waste that has been linked to cancer. 

The measure, brought forward by the state House, adds phosphogypsum to a list of "recyclable materials" that state officials say can be used in road construction. 

The list already included ground rubber from car tires, ash residue from coal combustion byproducts, recycled mixed-plastic, glass and construction steel, which officials had previously determined are "part of the solid waste stream and that contribute to problems of declining space in landfills." [snip]

Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director and attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement that the bill is a "reckless handout to the fertilizer industry." 

"Gov. DeSantis is paving the way to a toxic legacy generations of Floridians will have to grapple with," Bennett said. "This opens the door for dangerous radioactive waste to be dumped in roadways across the state, under the guise of a so-called feasibility study that won't address serious health and safety concerns." ...

That's "Florida Freedom," Bootsie style! 

How's this all working out for Bootsie?  (Spoiler alert:  Sad!)