Fascist State of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis talks boldly as if he is the second coming of the “Great White Hope,” white supremacist Gov. George Wallace: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
Only now such white supremacy is couched in MAGA Fascist code language of “anti-woke” and “anti-critical race theory.” More than half of his MAGA audience has no idea what these terms actually mean, they instinctively know that Ron DeSantis means “white supremacy – hell yeah!”
George Wallace was a mean, nasty, cruel sonuvabitch. Yes, he backed down to President Kennedy’s Department of Justice in the desegregation of Alabama schools, but even an assassin’s bullet couldn’t kill this devil when he ran for president in 1972.
Ron DeSantis is not the equal of George Wallace. He is a sniveling coward snowflake, whose sensitive fee-fees get hurt whenever people say mean things about him. (Just wait until his mentor, Donald Trump, starts tearing him a new one in the 2024 campaign).
Now some yahoo MAGA Fascist state senator in the Fascist State of Florida wants to protect Gov. Ron DeSantis from getting his sensitive fee-fees hurt from those mean, nasty bloggers who say mean nasty things about him. No, seriously.
WFLA in Tampa reports, Florida bill would require bloggers who write about governor to register with the state:
Florida Sen. Jason Brodeur (R-Lake Mary) wants bloggers who write about Gov. Ron DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody, and other members of the Florida executive cabinet or legislature to register with the state, or face fines.
Brodeur’s proposal, Senate Bill 1316: Information Dissemination, would require any blogger writing about government officials to register with the Florida Office of Legislative Services or the Commission on Ethics.
Hmmm, would this also include Twitter and other social media postings?
In the bill, Brodeur wrote that those who write “an article, a story, or a series of stories,” about “the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, a Cabinet officer, or any member of the Legislature,” and receives or will receive payment for doing so, must register with state offices within five days after the publication of an article that mentions an elected state official.
If another blog post is added to a blog, the blogger would then be required to submit monthly reports on the 10th of each month with the appropriate state office. They would not have to submit a report on months when no content is published.
For blog posts that “concern an elected member of the legislature” or “an officer of the executive branch,” monthly reports must disclose the amount of compensation received for the coverage, rounded to the nearest $10 value.
If compensation is paid for a series of posts or for a specific amount of time, the blogger would be required to disclose the total amount to be received, upon publication of the first post in said series or timeframe.
Additional compensation must be disclosed later on.
Failure to file these disclosures or register with state officials, if the bill passes, would lead to daily fines for the bloggers, with a maximum amount per report, not per writer, of $2,500. The per-day fine is $25 per report for each day it’s late.
The bill also requires that bloggers file notices of failure to file a timely report the same way that lobbyists file their disclosures and reports on assessed fines. Fines must be paid within 30 days of payment notice, unless an appeal is filed with the appropriate office. Fine payments must be deposited into the Legislative Lobbyist Registration Trust Fund if it concerns an elected member of the legislature.
For writing about members of the executive branch, fines would be made payable to the Executive Branch Lobby Registration Trust Fund or, if it concerns both groups, the fine may be paid to both related trust funds in equal amounts.
Explicitly, the blogger rule would not apply to newspapers or similar publications, under Brodeur’s proposed legislation.
In addition to the blogger regulations, the bill also removes provisions of state statutes to require judicial notices of sales to be published on publicly accessible websites, and specifies that a government agency can publish legally required advertisements and public notices on county sites if the cost is not paid by or recovered from an individual.
Should the bill pass, it would take effect immediately upon approval.
Republicans spend all of their free time whining that social media silences conservative MAGA Fascist voices, and is “canceling” their white supremacy culture. As if.
Here is government action designed to intimidate and to suppress Florida bloggers from being critical or saying mean, nasty things, i.e., telling the truth, about the extremist MAGA Fascist leaders of the Fascist State of Florida. You know, exercising their First Amendment protected rights of free speech and of the press under the U.S. Constitution. Who knew that MAGA Fascists were such sensitive snowflakes?
This may be the biggest fascist overreach in the Fascist State of Florida yet.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just cut the Fascist State of Florida loose from the states of Georgia and Alabama and tow that hot mess of fascism out to sea to be rid of it?
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Update: Crooks and Liars reports, “DeSantis Runs Away From Radioactive ‘Blogger Bill'”, https://crooksandliars.com/2023/03/desantis-runs-away-radioactive-blogger
Ron DeSantis says the proposed law that requires bloggers writing about him to register with the state isn’t something that he’s “ever supported.” Sure, Ron!
“That’s not anything that I’ve ever supported. I don’t support it, I’ve been very clear about what we are doing,” DeSantis said of the bill during a press conference on Tuesday.
The governor added that “every person in the legislature can file bills.”
“The Florida legislation, 120 of them in House and however many, the 40 in the Senate, they have independent agency to be able to do things,” DeSantis said. “Like, I don’t control every single bill that has been filed or amendment, so just as we go through this session, please understand that.”
Hmm. Where on earth would we get the idea that DeSantis is against free speech? (coughDisneycough) We already know the Florida state legislature is packed with DeSantis ass-kissers and suckups, and we also know that Blinky is a micromanager. No way this bill went through without his approval.
I can only conclude that he’s lying because the backlash was so bad, he thought even the Republican primary voters might find his move unacceptable.
I grew up in Florida, spent my first 22 years there, and it’s painful to watch what is happening there.
But remember this. In 2018, De Santis won by only 32k votes (with over 8 million voting.) And his opponent was Andrew Gillum who is black. What was interesting about this election is that all the urban areas turned blue, even Duval County (Jacksonville) in northeastern Florida.
https://www.politico.com/election-results/2018/florida/governor/
In 2022, De Santis wins against Charlie Crist by 1.5 million votes with about 7.8 million voters. It was a landslide. Florida is just about solid red. De Santis flipped Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Osceola, and Duval counties, all urban areas.
Whatever is going on in FL is anyone’s guess but the data would suggest that De Santis is well liked. And that’s worrisome.
The New York Times editorializes, “Florida Is Trying to Take Away the American Right to Speak Freely”, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/04/opinion/desantis-florida-free-speech-bill.html
A homeowner gets angry at a county commission over a zoning dispute and writes a Facebook post accusing a local buildings official of being in the pocket of developers.
A right-wing broadcaster criticizing border policies accuses the secretary of homeland security of being a traitor.
A parent upset about the removal of a gay-themed book from library shelves goes to a school board meeting and calls the board chair a bigot and a homophobe.
All three are examples of Americans engaging in clamorous but perfectly legal speech about public figures that is broadly protected by the Constitution. The Supreme Court, in a case that dates back nearly 60 years, ruled that even if that speech might be damaging or include errors, it should generally be protected against claims of libel and slander. All three would lose that protection — and be subject to ruinous defamation lawsuits — under a bill that is moving through the Florida House and is based on longstanding goals of Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The bill represents a dangerous threat to free expression in the United States, not only for the news media, but for all Americans, whatever their political beliefs. There’s still time for Florida lawmakers to reject this crude pandering and ensure that their constituents retain the right to free speech.
“This isn’t just a press issue,” said Bobby Block, executive director of Florida’s First Amendment Foundation. “This is a death-to-public-discourse bill. Everyone, even conservatives, would have to second-guess themselves whenever they open their mouths to speak or sit in front of a keyboard.”
The bill is an explicit effort to eviscerate a 1964 Supreme Court decision, The New York Times Company v. Sullivan. This bulwark of First Amendment law requires public figures to prove a news organization engaged in what the court called “actual malice” to win a defamation case. By preventing lawsuits based on unintentional mistakes, the decision freed news organizations to pursue vigorous reporting about public officials without fear of paying damages. The decision has even been applied by lower courts to bloggers and other speakers who make allegations about public figures.
Many conservatives, including Mr. DeSantis, have long chafed at the freedom that this decision gives to a news industry they consider to be too liberal. The new bill embodies that antagonism. It would sharply limit the definition of public figures, eliminating public employees like police officers from the category, even if they become public figures because of their actions.
It would change the definition of actual malice to include any allegation that is “inherently improbable” — an impossibly vague standard — or that is based on what it calls an “unverified” statement by an anonymous source. In fact, it says that all anonymous statements, a crucial tool for investigative reporting, are “presumptively false” for the purposes of a defamation case. Anonymous sources were the basis for much of The Washington Post’s coverage of Watergate and The Times’s exposure of the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping program in 2005, among many other examples of journalism with significant impact.
Under the bill, a public figure would no longer need to show actual malice to win a defamation case if the allegation against the figure wasn’t related to the reason for the person’s public status. So if a person is publicly known for being elected president or governor, and a news organization publishes an investigation about that person’s private or business life unrelated to elected office, that report would not get the special liability protection provided by the Sullivan decision.
The bill goes much further than this attempt to hobble the press. It makes it clear that the new defamation rules would also apply to any single “utterance on the internet,” which could mean a tweet or a Facebook post written by anyone, or “any one presentation to an audience,” which could include statements made at school board hearings and other public meetings.
In a direct attack on a key aspect of free expression, it says that whenever someone is accused of discriminating against others on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation, that accusation is automatically considered enough to sue for defamation. Any person accused of bigotry based on sexual orientation or gender identity could file a defamation lawsuit and be virtually guaranteed of winning by saying the discrimination was based on personal religious or scientific beliefs. The penalty for calling someone a bigot would be a minimum of $35,000.
Mr. DeSantis, who appears to be preparing for a 2024 presidential campaign, has been railing against press freedoms for several years in a clear appeal to likely Republican primary voters. The bill was recently introduced in the Florida House by one of his allies and has a strong chance of passage; a similar if slightly milder version was filed in the State Senate.
If enacted, the House bill would almost instantly be challenged in court, but its backers are counting on that. In public statements, they have said they want the bill to be used as a vehicle to get the Supreme Court to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan and have noted that two justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have called on the court to reconsider that decision. The current court has repeatedly demonstrated that it can’t be counted on to respect long-term precedents that are widely supported by the public.
There may be room for discussion on the precise definition of “public figure,” which has been interpreted in various ways by the Supreme Court and lower courts over the past six decades. Even Justice Elena Kagan, in a 1993 journal article long before she joined the court, expressed interest in determining whether the term had been too broadly defined in the years after Sullivan, though she applauded the overall decision.
A sledgehammer bill like the one in Florida, however, wielded for transparent political reasons, would create enormous damage on the way to the high court, particularly if other states decide to copy its language. In 1964, Justice William J. Brennan Jr., who wrote the court’s opinion, said it was based on “the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide open.” That may well include, he wrote, “vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” That principle has not changed through the decades, and citizens who treasure the right to speak freely should resist politicians like Mr. DeSantis who want to silence them.
Based upon what appears to be a sole Republican dropping a bill that is double assigned, you paint a picture of the whole Republican legislature backing the bill. How misleading and politically opportunistic. If it turns out that this bill goes nowhere and has no or few cosponsors, I hope you do the right thing and eat crow and apologize to Florida and this blogs readers.
It’s not just one bill and one Republican. Here is the larger picture of assaults on the First Amendment from MSNBC’s Joy Reid. “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is seen by many as apparently creating the right-wing “safe space” that Marjorie Taylor Greene seemed to ask for–a space where the children of certain white Christians will never have to learn anything that makes their right-wing parents uncomfortable. Joy Reid and her panel discuss the Florida bills and new laws passed by Republicans that experts say infringe on the First Amendment.”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=yFm2G_4ZA4o&feature=shares
John, it’s the 1A under attack by someone in your party, it’s the amendment the founders put first for a reason.
Did you mean to state your support for the 1A?
Because you didn’t do that here, you complain about the messenger and demand a apology, which is kind of the problem with Brodeur’s bill.
How is it you don’t see that?
You and your party straight up murder irony daily.
The 1A is the reason I can encourage people to donate in honor of Arizona’s Taxpayer Supported Senator John Government Checks Kavanagh to RaicesTexasDotOrg, and tell you to go pound sand when you demand to see my papers.
Maybe you could be less useless, Johnny Government Checks, and comment on this Trump/Giuliani video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spn0MJZr-QQ
Maybe you can ask ALEC if they have any boilerplate you can use to have YouTube shut down, because children can see that video, Johnny Government Checks, children!
Or are you going to acknowledge that it’s an over the top comedy bit meant for fun, like most drag shows.
JHFC you are useless.
So we are supposed to ignore attacks on Constitutional rights if they are ‘only’ coming from one Republican? Or ignore bills ‘unlikely’ to pass? Ignore anything that is meant to signal to the base? When has the GOP ever granted such grace to Democrats? We are ALL answerable for EVERYTHING our parties do, John. That’s how teams work.
Oh noes! Draft dodger and Key Party aficionado Newt Gingrich has gone Antifa!
The guy who started GOPAC and birthed this mess has gone woke!
Is this Newt’s Victor Frankenstein moment, dying in the Arctic cold while chasing his MAGA-monster?
Or more of an Ouroboros situation?
I’m pretty sure MAGAts don’t care what Newt thinks and that’s probably the only sane thing I can say about MAGAts.
File this under things I never imagined I would ever see. When you’ve lost Newt Gingrich, you know that you are extreme. “Newt Gingrich Calls On Florida Republican To Back Away From ‘Insane’ Bill”, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/newt-gingrich-florida-insane-bill_n_6405b26ee4b0e45e2f8f688f
“The idea that bloggers criticizing a politician should register with the government is insane,” Gingrich wrote in a tweet. “It is an embarrassment that it is a Republican state legislator in Florida who introduced a bill to that effect. He should withdraw it immediately.”
https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/1632371516410146818?cxt=HHwWhMC9kdvPrKctAAAA