DeSantis for the win

[Tsing Tao]

Let's see how the Covid resurgence -- which DeSantis is ignoring -- is going in Florida.

Half of Florida at ‘high’ risk of COVID; infections keep climbing
The COVID-19 pandemic by the numbers in Florida covering the period of May 21-27:
https://www.tampabay.com/news/healt...-high-risk-of-covid-infections-keep-climbing/

• Florida’s average daily COVID-19 cases climbed another 11% in the past week — the 10th consecutive week that infections have gone up. Hospitalizations jumped another 21% over the same seven-day period of May 21-27. That means 10 counties, containing nearly half of the state’s 22 million residents, have “high” community levels of COVID-19, according to federal guidelines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that residents wear masks in public indoor settings in Alachua, Broward, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade, Monroe, Palm Beach, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk and Sarasota counties.
• The CDC classified Tampa Bay and South Florida as “high” areas risk on Thursday — a week after the data shows those counties already had reached that level.Due to a data error, eight Florida counties that should have been declared at “high” risk of COVID-19 under CDC guidelines insteadappeared as “medium” risk on the agency’s website since May 19. The CDC first acknowledged that four South Florida counties had been mislabeled in a footnote at the bottom of the website, the Miami Herald reported. The Tampa Bay Times reported May 23 that Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties also had been misreported.
• The White House announced Thursday that the antiviral treatment Paxlovid may soon be available at COVID-19 testing sites across the U.S. However, there may be a larger problem: The federal government can’t keep track of how many doses have been shipped and how many people have been treated with the drug, according to Kaiser Health News. Paxlovid isn’t the only drug facing supply-chain woes. The preventative antiviral Evusheld has been so poorly rationed that it is nearly impossible to get in some states, while doses languish on pharmacy shelves in others, Marketplace reported.

(More at above url)

Infections "keep climbing". LOL.

Just like every state. And lets not forget, Florida is about to go through its high season in the summer (for reasons explained exhaustively in this thread).

 

[ipatent]

Florida IG releases bombshell findings of probe into claims of COVID data manipulation

 

[gwb-trading]

Florida IG releases bombshell findings of probe into claims of COVID data manipulation

This has all been discussed in recent posts on this thread. This is an IG appointed by DeSantis delivering the expected results in a unscrupulous political exercise. As outlined by the press in Florida all the IG report did is confirm that Rebekah Jones has a strong case for unjust termination.

Feel free to read a summary and read the IG report at the provided link.
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/desantis-for-the-win.345108/page-674#post-5605929

 

[gwb-trading]

DeSantis' "social media law": So unconstitutional, even a Trump-appointed Judge voted to strike it down.

This is how DeSantis' Florida spends your tax dollars -- on lawyers for his endless string of court case losses to push his narrative in positioning his 2024 Presidential run. Never on anything practical like actually addressing the home insurance industry issues in Florida.

Appeals court: Florida law on social media unconstitutional
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a...w-on-social-media-unconstitutional/ar-AAXCXxT

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — A Florida law intended to punish social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, dealing a major victory to companies who had been accused by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis of discriminating against conservative thought.

A three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously concluded that it was overreach for DeSantis and the Republican-led Florida Legislature to tell the social media companies how to conduct their work under the Constitution's free speech guarantee.

“Put simply, with minor exceptions, the government can't tell a private person or entity what to say or how to say it,” said Circuit Judge Kevin Newsom, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, in the opinion. “We hold that it is substantially likely that social media companies — even the biggest ones — are private actors whose rights the First Amendment protects.”

The ruling upholds a similar decision by a Florida federal district judge on the law, which was signed by DeSantis in 2021. It was part of an overall conservative effort to portray social media companies as generally liberal in outlook and hostile to ideas outside of that viewpoint, especially from the political right.

“Some of these massive, massive companies in Silicon Valley are exerting a power over our population that really has no precedent in American history," DeSantis said during a May 2021 bill-signing ceremony. "One of their major missions seems to be suppressing ideas.”

However, the appeals panel ruled that the tech companies’ actions were protected, with Judge Newsom writing that Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and others are “engaged in constitutionally protected expressive activity when they moderate and curate the content that they disseminate on their platforms.”

There was no immediate response to emails Monday afternoon from DeSantis' press secretary or communications director on the ruling. DeSantis is running for reelection this year and eyeing a potential run for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. He was the first governor to sign a bill like this into law, although similar ones have been proposed in other states.

One of those, in Texas, was allowed to go into effect by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the tech companies involved there are asking for emergency U.S. Supreme Court review on whether to block it. No decision on that was immediately released.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association, a nonprofit group representing tech and communications companies, said the ruling represents victory for Internet users and free speech in general — especially as it relates to potentially offensive content.

“When a digital service takes action against problematic content on its own site — whether extremism, Russian propaganda, or racism and abuse — it is exercising its own right to free expression,” said CCIA President Matt Schruers in a statement.

As enacted, the law would give Florida’s attorney general authority to sue companies under the state’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. It would also allow individual Floridians to sue social media companies for up to $100,000 if they feel they’ve been treated unfairly.

The bill targeted social media platforms that have more than 100 million monthly users, which include online giants as Twitter and Facebook. But lawmakers carved out an exception for the Walt Disney Co. and their apps by including that theme park owners wouldn’t be subject to the law.

The law would require large social media companies to publish standards on how it decides to “censor, deplatform, and shadow ban.”

But the appeals court rejected nearly all of the law's mandates, save for a few lesser provisions in the law.

“Social media platforms exercise editorial judgment that is inherently expressive. When platforms choose to remove users or posts, deprioritize content in viewers’ feeds or search results, or sanction breaches of their community standards, they engage in First-Amendment-protected activity,” Newsom wrote for the court.

After the federal appeals court knocked down DeSantis's social media law -- all the MAGA supporters whined that the Supreme Court will over turn the decision with their ruling on the similar Texas social media law. Let's see how that turned out...

Supreme Court blocks Texas law on social media ‘censorship’

The ruling is a major victory for tech companies.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/31/texas-social-media-censorship-scotus-00036146

The Supreme Court has suspended a Texas law banning online platforms from restricting user posts based on their political views, representing a major win for social media companies.

In a 5-4 ruling, the court granted an emergency stay request on Tuesday to a petition from tech industry groups that petitioned to block a law they said would violate companies’ First Amendment rights to control what content they disseminate on their websites and platforms.

While the Texas law (HB 20) had gone into effect on May 11 following an appeals court decision, no one has filed lawsuits under the law yet. The Supreme Court block on the law will remain in effect as the case moves through the 5th U.S. Circuit of Court of Appeals.

Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent said: “Social media platforms have transformed the way people communicate with each other and obtain news. At issue is a ground-breaking Texas law that addresses the power of dominant social media corporations to shape public discussion of the important issues of the day.”

Victory for tech: The tech industry and its supporters, including the NAACP and groups representing LGBTQ people, had warned that the law could unleash a tide of hate speech, violent rhetoric and other extremist content on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

“We are encouraged that this attack on First Amendment rights has been halted until a court can fully evaluate the repercussions of Texas’s ill-conceived statute,” said Matthew Schruers, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which filed the petition.

Loss for Paxton: The stay is a blow for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has vocally argued that companies like Twitter and Facebook censor conservatives online. Texas governor Greg Abbott signed the law in September.

The Texas law is one of several Republican attempts at the state level to enjoin social media platforms from allegedly censoring conservative viewpoints. Florida also has a similar social media law (SB 7072) that has been blocked, and is under review by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the GOP-controlled legislatures of Michigan and Georgia have also advanced similar bills.

Colliding with anti-hate efforts: The Texas law could drastically change the way social media companies operate, forcing them to keep up certain racist, antisemitic and white supremacist speech that could be construed as “viewpoints” under the Texas law.

NetChoice and CCIA — the tech trade groups that filed the petition — say the Texas law violates their constitutionally protected right to decide what content they put on their platforms. The groups’ members include Facebook, Twitter and Google.

The content moderation debate: While far-right politicians — including former President Donald Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — claim their viewpoints are being unfairly repressed online, many liberals say the companies are not doing enough to remove hate speech and other extremist content. Social media companies argue that they don’t make content moderation decisions based on politics, and POLITICO’s analysis has found that some of the posts with the most engagement come from conservatives

Private lawsuits: Under the law, both the state of Texas and individual Texans are able sue companies if they “censor” an individual based on their viewpoints, geographic location by blocking, banning, removing, deplatforming, demonetizing or otherwise discriminating against expression.

Making its way through the courts: The ruling overturned the 5th Circuit’s decision to lift a previous injunction on the law from a lower district court. The Texas district court — which initially set the injunction — has not yet ruled on the underlying merits and constitutionality of the case. Once the district court rules, either side can again file appeals based on the merits of the case. The ruling was split, with Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett granting the stay. Justices Elena Kagan, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Alito dissented.

 

[Tsing Tao]

This has all been discussed in recent posts on this thread. This is an IG appointed by DeSantis delivering the expected results in a unscrupulous political exercise. As outlined by the press in Florida all the IG report did is confirm that Rebekah Jones has a strong case for unjust termination.

Feel free to read a summary and read the IG report at the provided link.
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/desantis-for-the-win.345108/page-674#post-5605929

Double down, keep digging. Lost cause. All these phrases come to mind whenever I read you drivel.

 

[gwb-trading]

Double down, keep digging. Lost cause. All these phrases come to mind whenever I read you drivel.

Tell us when DeSantis actually wins a legal case involving the "social policy issues" he pushes-- as he uses taxpayer money in a campaign to position himself for a 2024 Presidential run. This is not about what is best for Florida -- it is DeSantis pushing an agenda for his personal political gain.

 

[Tsing Tao]

Tell us when DeSantis actually wins a legal case involving the "social policy issues" he pushes-- as he uses taxpayer money in a campaign to position himself for a 2024 Presidential run. This is not about what is best for Florida -- it is DeSantis pushing an agenda for his personal political gain.

Ah, so now we narrow the playing field to "social policy issues".

LOL, you're so bad at this.

As for what's best for Florida, why don't you let people who live here decide? After all, we couldn't give a shit over what happens in North Carolina.

 

[gwb-trading]

Ah, so now we narrow the playing field to "social policy issues".

LOL, you're so bad at this.

As for what's best for Florida, why don't you let people who live here decide? After all, we couldn't give a shit over what happens in North Carolina.

Maybe DeSantis should focus on properly governing Florida instead of wasting taxpayer money to position himself for a 2024 Presidential run.

 

[Tsing Tao]

Maybe DeSantis should focus on properly governing Florida instead of wasting taxpayer money to position himself for a 2024 Presidential run.

Poll data shows that he's doing just fine, despite your shrieking. All your impotent rage and you don't even get a vote

 

[Tsing Tao]

An NPC's dream. Read the replies, talk about opening yourself up to abuse!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1531964980106493960