For Frustrated G.O.P., Redistricting Fight Turns to Florida and the Courtroom

Frustrated Republicans looked Wednesday to rebound from another setback in a nationwide redistricting chess match, as the high-stakes contest turned to Florida and the courtroom.

A Democratic victory on Tuesday in Virginia, where voters approved a change to the state’s House map that could give the party up to four more seats in the midterms, left Republicans with little to show for a tit-for-tat they started last year in Texas at the urging of President Trump.

Republicans are holding out hope that Virginia’s top court might reverse Tuesday’s result. And they are eying a chance to gain ground by redrawing the House map in Florida, where they control the governor’s office and hold supermajorities in the Legislature. But there is growing doubt in the party about its broader strategy.

“The two sides spent hundreds of millions dollars to get back to where they started, and in general, it’s turned out to be a net loser for Republicans,” said C. Stewart Verdery Jr., a Republican consultant.

Read the rest here.

On a lighter note...

Folks are having a lot of fun at Florida's expense with the recent cold snap down there. 

Read the rest here.

Making Polio Great Again

Ok. It's time to call a shovel a shovel. Anti-Vax pseudo-scientific nuttery has now gone mainstream in the Republican Party. RFK Jr. is turning the Department of Health and Human Services into an agency dedicated to all out warfare on modern medicine. Florida's Surgeon General wants to end ALL vaccine mandates for kids. Yes, even Polio! If this quack had been in charge a couple of generations ago, we would still have Smallpox in the world. If you don't know what that is, firstly you are very fortunate, and secondly it's because we eradicated it by mass vaccinations. In the 19th century one in four children did not live to adulthood. Vaccines are one of the most important reasons we have reduced infant mortality rates in the developed world to less than 1%. The most dangerous people are always well meaning fools with power. And these kooks are going to get people killed. 

Sunday Various

In Rome the battle lines are forming for the upcoming conclave.

A list of potential papal successors from media reports

A look at some of the possible successors from Rorate with a traditionalist POV

In Canada's election, Trump is on the ballot.

Poll: Canadians despise Trump and distrust US

Shocked by US peace proposal, Ukrainians say they will not accept any formal surrender of territory

Trump's third-term talk freezes the potential 2028 Republican field

GOP Medicaid debate intensifies in search for cuts

Florida nears ban on fluoride

The NBC / MSNBC Divorce is Getting Messy

Coincidence?

Lara Trump is standing down as head of the political arm of the Trump Organization, commonly known as the Republican National Committee, amidst calls for her to be appointed to fill the US Senate seat being vacated by Marco Rubio. Simultaniously, team Trump is floating the name of the man responsible for filling that vacancy as the next Secretary of Defense (after Pete Hegseth either withdraws or is rejected by the Senate).

Florida (of course)

The decline of medical science and the rise of quackery in the sunshine state.

The Mouse that Roared

It looks like in the long running feud between Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Walt Disney, that the mouse may have just pulled a fast one right out of the GOP's playbook. For those unfamiliar with the whole thing, the unpleasantness began when Disney had the temerity to publicly criticize DeSantis for his legislation that restricts discussion of mature subjects, like sex and sexual orientation among very young children in schools. FTR I strongly support it. There is no justification for discussing that kind of stuff with third graders or younger, which is what was in the bill. Disney, long a close ally of the Alphabet People, publicly criticized the bill. And that was enough to put the mouse in the crosshairs of Florida's notoriously thin-skinned governor who has a reputation for holding grudges and wielding the power of the state against those who dare to cross him. Personally, I think Disney is dead wrong here. But I tend to take that view of most liberals on most political issues. 

What disturbs me, and quite a few others, was the absolutely naked use of state power to retaliate against a business for daring to publicly disagree with him on a matter of public policy. DeSantis and his allies in the GOP dominated state legislature quickly rammed through a bill that stripped Disney, Florida's by far largest private sector employer, of special considerations it had long enjoyed including relative autonomy over its land and parks for the purposes of municipal governance. A special board that handled those things was to be dissolved and replaced by a new one, that would be composed of appointees of the governor with his allies crowing that this was going to be the end of Disney's ability to promote left of center practices in its parks, employment practices and corporate culture. 

During all of this Disney remained relatively quiet. But behind the scenes, they were plotting. 

Shortly before the old board's official date of expiration arrived, they formally ceded most of their powers and authority to Disney. The new board, hand picked by DeSantis, effectively has been stripped of any actual power over Disney, its land and parks. And boy are people ticked. The governor's allies in Tallahassee are questioning the legality of the move and vowing to overturn it. But FWIW sources at Disney, both on and off the record, are sounding pretty confident that they dotted all the legal eyes and crossed the tees. They even put in a special clause to prevent a court challenge on the basis of "perpetuity" issues. Technically, the cession of governing authority is not perpetual. In order to avoid that trap, Disney inserted a clause frequently used in British contracts by setting the expiration at "21 years following the death of the last currently living descendent of King Charles III." If any of Charles' grandchildren live into their 80s this could be in force for at least the next 100 years. 

Where did Disney come up with this idea? Oddly, the GOP has been doing it for years. In a number of states, North Carolina being a prominent example, when the Republicans have lost an election for statewide office that they cared about, but they currently still controlled the legislature and the governor's mansion, they would rush through bills in the lame duck sessions vastly curtailing the powers of the office that the Democrats were about to gain. Predictably this has almost always ended up in court battles with mixed results. 

My guess is that this too will end up in court. It's possible the GOP may try to pass a special bill nullifying the transfer of powers. But I don't see anything definitive happening soon. Even if it gets overturned, and that's a big "if," this fight could easily drag on for years. At least for the moment, Disney has thwarted DeSantis in a state that he virtually owns. And that is no small accomplishment.

Florida in the Roaring Twenties

Home movies likely shot in 1926 right before the Great Hurricane devastated Miami and South Florida ending the land boom and plunging the state into depression three years before the rest of the country. Florida had a reputation in the roaring 20s as a playground and winter paradise for the well off. Some of the great landmarks shown in the film sadly do not survive. Happily however, the famed Venetian pool does.

Miami's hot condo market just got very complicated

MIAMI – The tragic collapse of a residential tower spooked South Florida homebuyers and real estate investors alike into reassessing the risk of buying in the Miami-area condo market.

The market had been booming before Covid. Then it soared even higher as the work-from-anywhere culture took hold. But then in late June, scores of people were crushed to death in the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside.

Now, the market is focused on engineering inspection reports from older towers, which are required by the state to get recertified every 40 years. Insurers are also under scrutiny, as they hold the keys to new purchases in the market.

“No one in their right mind is going to buy a condo built before 2000 unless they have a safety certificate for the structure of the building, and it doesn’t exist today,” said Peter Zalewski, a South Florida condominium expert, consultant and analyst.

The Miami area has long been a tale of two condominium markets: those built before and after the year 2000, when strict new building codes born of damage from Hurricane Andrew went into effect. Now, after the tower disaster, the divide is suddenly even wider.

“Zoning was upgraded to the point where Miami Dade County zoning is probably some of the toughest in the state or the country, and as a result of that we were able to build again,” said Zalewski. “The thing is people weren’t aware of it prior to Champlain. Now, everybody knows about it, so there’ll be a great divide.”

While condo boards are rushing to send letters of assurance to owners, Zalewski said potential buyers cannot see inspection reports.

“No condo I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been here since 1993, has ever openly shared that information. There is a lack of transparency in the condo market here, by design, it is a sell-side market,” he said. “The condo association might put out the information right now. How did they find these engineers and why haven’t they shared them previously?”

Read the rest here.

I don't think this should be looked at as a purely Florida situation. Anyone looking at buying a condo, anywhere, should exercise their due diligence. Three things to look at for older buildings are the most recent structural integrity survey and how old it is, the current level of cash reserves held by the HOA to cover not just routine but also major repair expenses, and the annual HOA fees. In particular if the seller is unable or unwilling to provide the actual structural inspection report, or if there has not been one within a reasonable period of time, then I'd walk away. In Florida condo associations are not typically required to provide that to prospective buyers and in the past have rarely done so. I don't think that is going to fly anymore. 

Miami and South Florida Are Starting to Face Some Tough Choices

MIAMI — Three years ago, not long after Hurricane Irma left parts of Miami underwater, the federal government embarked on a study to find a way to protect the vulnerable South Florida coast from deadly and destructive storm surge.

Already, no one likes the answer.

Build a wall, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed in its first draft of the study, now under review. Six miles of it, in fact, mostly inland, running parallel to the coast through neighborhoods — except for a one-mile stretch right on Biscayne Bay, past the gleaming sky-rises of Brickell, the city’s financial district.

The dramatic, $6 billion proposal remains tentative and at least five years off. But the startling suggestion of a massive sea wall up to 20 feet high cutting across beautiful Biscayne Bay was enough to jolt some Miamians to attention: The hard choices that will be necessary to deal with the city’s many environmental challenges are here, and few people want to face them.

“You need to have a conversation about, culturally, what are our priorities?” said Benjamin Kirtman, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Miami. “Where do we want to invest? Where does it make sense?”

“Those are what I refer to as generational questions,” he added. “And there is a tremendous amount of reluctance to enter into that discussion.”

In Miami, the U.S. metropolitan area that is perhaps most exposed to sea-level rise, the problem is not climate change denialism. Not when hurricane season, which begins this week, returns each year with more intense and frequent storms. Not when finding flood insurance has become increasingly difficult and unaffordable. Not when the nights stay so hot that leaving the house with a sweater to fend off the evening chill has become a thing of the past.

The trouble is that the magnitude of the interconnected obstacles the region faces can feel overwhelming, and none of the possible solutions is cheap, easy or pretty.

Read the rest here.

Miami's new plan for climate change and rising sea levels

It looks like a lot of crossed fingers and hoping for a best case scenario. I live in south Florida, on the other coast, about 20 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. Given my age, I doubt I will live long enough to see it. But I am more or less resigned that my home and a lot of this end of the state is going to be underwater by the 2050s. Most people are in serious denial about how much of the coastal US is in danger. 

Here's Miami's plan. 

When local governments are run by greedy *bleeps*

The city of Dunedin, Florida, wants to foreclose on a private home because the owner, Jim Ficken, owes the city over $29,000 in fines. The crime for which he is threatened with home loss? Having his lawn grass be too tall (over 10 inches) for a period of eight weeks last summer. The city fined him $500 per day of violation, with no warning.

Ficken was out of town at the time, settling his mother's estate. Ficken hired a handyman to deal with his lawn while he tended to his dying mother and then to her estate, but in a cruel twist, the handyman also died during the Fickens' ordeal, leaving the lawn uncut.

Ficken is 69 years old and lives on a fixed income. He was unaware that he was racking up the daily fines, but cut his grass within two days of finally being informed by a city code inspector that there was a problem. In a sane world, Ficken's explanation for neglecting his lawn and the fact that he remedied the problem as soon as he learned of it, would seemingly resolve the issue. No harm, no fine.

But the Dunedin government is apparently not sane. Because Ficken was also cited for overly tall grass in 2015, the city—unbeknownst to Ficken—classified him as a "repeat violator." This classification doubled his daily fine from $250 to $500 and relieved the Code Enforcement Board of providing him notice. Because Ficken cannot afford the fines he didn't know he was accumulating, the city of Dunedin insists that it can now take his home to pay off his debt.

Read the rest here.


All of which reminds me of a stretch of old US Rt 301 that was a short cut for people driving south on I 95 and who wanted to cut over to I 75 heading towards south Florida. There were no less than four small towns that were infamous for their old fashioned speed traps. By which I am not referring to the honest cop parked on the side of the road with a radar gun looking for people going more than ten over the posted speed limit or driving like they were drunk. I am talking about towns with a population of maybe a thousand and a ten man police force solely dedicated to zero tolerance traffic enforcement on a stretch of highway, perhaps a couple of hundred feet, that happen to fall within their jurisdiction. People, especially those with out of state plates, were routinely pulled over for going 1 mph over the speed limit, which changed suddenly and without much warning.  It got so bad that AAA used to post giant billboard signs warning motorists of the danger ahead.

Eventually there was a formal investigation by a committee of the Florida state legislature over whether or not to strip these towns of their municipal charters. All of them were sanctioned and three were forced to disband their police departments.

Dodging a Bullet

So I'm sitting here in the southwest corner of the Sunshine State under overcast skies with a stiff breeze pondering what might have been, and how very lucky we have been (so far). My part of the state was never in the projected danger zone so the worst I have had to deal with has been a sharp uptick in traffic and large crowds of temporary evacuees from the other side of the state. To whom I say welcome and enjoy your stay.

But all of this brings to mind those who proudly declared they would not evacuate despite being told they were potentially in the path of a category 4 hurricane. I'm going to hazard an educated guess that most of these morons have never been in anything close to a major hurricane in their lives. No rational person with a clue about the real danger of something as powerful as Matthew was when I went to bed last night (sustained winds of 140 mph) would deliberately put themselves in front of one. It's rather akin to being told there is a Great White Shark swimming just off the beach and going in for a dip anyways. Maybe the hurricane will miss you. And maybe the shark has moved on or isn't hungry.

Okay, I will concede an exception for those seeking a novel method for self murder. Suicide by hurricane would provide an interesting topic for gossip among neighbors and relatives.

But I doubt that was the intent here. In many cases this was just for bragging rights.  My guess is that a lot of these folks will be found in their favorite watering hole this weekend telling everyone within earshot about how they rode out Hurricane Matthew and that it was no big deal.

Except they didn't.

That's because Hurricane Matthew has thus far not hit land in the United States (Deo gratias). If it had hit land as a cat 4, anyone in it's immediate path along the coast would would have been fortunate to survive. And if they did, my guess is that whatever tales they told would have begun with something along the lines of "what a  bleeping idiot I was!" (I don't think they would use the word bleeping.)

The worst thing is that this dodged bullet is likely to reinforce the bone crushing stupidity exhibited by these people and encourage others to do the same the next time we have a dangerous storm rolling in our direction. And there will be a next time. Florida is geographically pretty much a natural bulls-eye for hurricanes. That we have not had a big hit in more than a decade is a small miracle that I fear has also given a false sense of security to many. More than two million have moved here since the last hurricane (including yours truly) and most probably lack an appreciation for just how devastating a bad one can be. Last night Matthew was more or less the same size and power as the Great Hurricane of 1900.

There are times I think everyone who wants to live within ten miles of the Atlantic coast south of Cape Hatteras, or anywhere at all along the Gulf of Mexico should be required to watch this or something similar.

Notorious speed trap in N. Florida may be shut down

Anyone who has traveled on US 301 in North Florida will know the route's dreadful reputation for its myriad speed traps. It's so bad that the last time I went down that road late last year, some people had actually put up giant billboard sized signs on their own lawns warning motorists of the speed traps ahead. But the story behind the tiny "city" of Hampton (pop. 477) and the more than ten thousand tickets it handed out each year, even managed to shock me. The corruption sounds breathtaking...

HAMPTON, Fla. — It’s easy for motorists driving down busy Route 301 to miss this speck of a city in rural north-central Florida: Fiddle with the car radio, unwrap a pack of gum, gaze out the window at the sunset and, whoosh, it’s gone.

And so it fell to the police to force hurried travelers to stop and savor the 1,260-foot ribbon of roadway belonging to this city. Hidden by trash bins or concealed in a stretch of woods, the officers — a word loosely applied here — pointed their radar devices. Between 2011 and 2012, Hampton’s officers issued 12,698 speeding tickets to motorists, many likely caught outside Hampton’s strip of county road.

But, as it turns out, surprised motorists are not the only ones getting burned. So many speeding tickets were churned out for so many years and with such brazenness that this city of 477 residents came under scrutiny — and not just for revenue raising with a radar gun. Now, Hampton, an 89-year-old city, is fighting legislative momentum to wipe it off the map, after a state audit last month uncovered reams of financial irregularities, shoddy record-keeping and missing funds.

Read the rest here.

In Reversal, Florida to Take Health Law’s Medicaid Expansion

Gov. Rick Scott of Florida reversed himself on Wednesday and announced that he would expand his state’s Medicaid program to cover the poor, becoming the latest — and, perhaps, most prominent — Republican critic of President Obama’s healthcare law to decide to put it into effect.

It was an about-face for Mr. Scott, a former businessman who entered politics as a critic of Mr. Obama’s health care proposals. Florida was one of the states that sued to try to block the law, and, after the Supreme Court ruled last year that though the law was constitutional, states could choose not to expand their Medicaid programs to cover the poor, Mr. Scott said that Florida would not expand its programs.

Read the rest here.

Florida bar: Illegal immigrant meets moral fitness test

An illegal immigrant seeking admission to the Florida bar has met its requirements to become a lawyer, the bar said in a filing this week to the Florida Supreme Court in a case being watched closely by both sides of the immigration debate.

Jose Godinez-Samperio is one of a few illegal immigrants in different states trying to get law licenses after passing the local bar’s two-pronged test: an exam and a moral character review.

Godinez-Samperio passed the exam portion of the test last year, and he was notified recently that nothing in his background would be considered “disqualifying” for the character portion. That notice was cited Monday in legal correspondence posted on the Florida court’s website.

Read the rest here.

Florida's Governor Vows Defiance of Health Care Law

Florida Gov. Rick Scott now says Florida will do nothing to comply with President Barack Obama's health care overhaul and will not expand its Medicaid program. The announcement is a marked changed after the governor recently said he would follow the law if it were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Florida is not going to implement Obamacare. We are not going to expand Medicaid and we're not going to implement exchanges,'' Scott's spokesman Lane Wright told The Associated Press on Saturday. Wright stressed that the governor would work to make sure the law is repealed.

Scott told Fox News the Medicaid expansion would cost Florida taxpayers $1.9 billion a year, but it's unclear how he arrived at that figure.

Read the rest here.

A Florida Law Gets Scrutiny After a Teenager’s Killing

MIAMI — Seven years after Florida adopted its sweeping self-defense law, the shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, has put that law at the center of an increasingly angry debate over how he was killed and whether law enforcement has the authority to charge the man who killed him.

The law, called Stand Your Ground, is one of 21 such laws around the country, many of them passed within the last few years. In Florida, it was pushed heavily by the National Rifle Association but opposed vigorously by law enforcement.

It gives the benefit of the doubt to a person who claims self-defense, regardless of whether the killing takes place on a street, in a car or in a bar — not just in one’s home, the standard cited in more restrictive laws. In Florida, if people feel they are in imminent danger from being killed or badly injured, they do not have to retreat, even if it would seem reasonable to do so. They have the right to “stand their ground” and protect themselves.

That is precisely the question in the case: Was the gunman, George Zimmerman, 28, a white Hispanic crime watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla., in imminent danger and acting in self-defense during his encounter with Trayvon Martin, as he asserts?...

...Investigating the cases, prosecutors say, is time-consuming. “You have to be very careful and very thorough,” Mr. Eddins said.

Unless there are good witnesses and clear-cut physical evidence, the self-defense murder cases are often murky and hard to sort out, prosecutors say. The gunman’s side of the story usually prevails because the victim is not alive to challenge the claim. So rather than let a jury decide a self-defense case, which is mostly what happened under the old law, prosecutors sometimes must drop the case.

“The person who is alive always says, ‘I was in fear that he was going to hurt me,’ ” Mr. Meggs said. “And the other person would say, ‘I wasn’t going to hurt anyone.’ But he is dead. That is the problem they are wrestling with in Sanford.”

Read the rest here.

This is a tragic situation.  While generally supportive of 2nd amendment rights, I am not supportive of the so called "make my day" laws.  The Florida state legislature (also known in some circles as the Florida State Chapter of the National Rifle Association) seems to have conflated the right to legitimate self defense with the right to gun down anyone who looks cross eyed at you.  In cases of self defense, at least in situations outside of one's home or business, the burden of proof should not be on the police.  If you shoot someone dead in a quasi public environment where you had the option of walking (or in this case driving) away, you should bear the burden of justifying your actions in court. 

I am having a very hard time believing that an unarmed 17 year old kid, alone, who has never been in trouble with the law, would pick a fight with a man armed with a pistol.  Everything I have read about it makes me strongly suspect that this is a case of cold blooded murder.

Unfortunately under Florida law all you have to do is utter two magic words, "self defense," and absent strong evidence to the contrary you have a get out of jail free card.  In this case you have the dubious statements of a man known for carrying a gun and an attitude, versus the silence of a kid who can't speak for himself because he is fertilizing dandelions and whom the law has largely deprived of any champions.

The lesson here... if you visit Florida and get into any kind of altercation shoot first and be damned sure that the other guy doesn't have a chance to offer his version of events in court.

Update: MSNBC has a story on the same lines here.

Romney wins Florida in a landslide

All major networks are reporting a lopsided victory for Mitt Romney in the Florida state primary election.  Gingrich is in a distant 2nd with Rick Santorum and Ron Paul running 3rd and 4th respectively.  Dr. Paul largely skipped Florida due to the high cost of the media market there.

Although this should be a big boost to Gov. Romney it is likely that a significant portion of Florida's delegation will not be seated at the GOP convention.  Florida broke two party rules when it unilaterally moved its primary date forward and also refused to adopt proportional representation which the GOP requires of all primaries held before April 1.

Romney appears poised for win in Florida

TAMPA —Florida, land of hanging chads and notoriously razor-thin election margins — appears likely to hand former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney a decisive victory in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination.

As voters across the vast and diverse state visited polls in schools, churches and community centers Tuesday, Romney expressed increasing confidence that he had halted an insurgency by former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who upended the Republican presidential race 10 days ago by trouncing Romney in the South Carolina primary by 12 points.

Read the rest here.