Tracking the chaos...
As the US lurches towards the midterms in November, the Republican governors of many states are outdoing themselves in extreme moves, trying to capture the nomination for President in 2024.
Currently leading the pack are Governor Greg Abbott of Texas and Governor Rick deSantis of Florida.
Some of the highlights in Texas include a very restrictive abortion law, which includes an incentive of a guaranteed payday of at least $10,000 to anyone who turns in someone else for 'aiding an abortion', such criminals to include taxi drivers. The accused party, according to the law, will still end up paying all legal fees, even if they are found not to be responsible.
In a similar vein, Abbott has declared that anyone who tries to help transsexual people is committing child abuse, and can also be turned in to the authorities for rewards.
To show his toughness on immigration, he assigned the Texas National Guard and the State police to patrol the border. To date, it has resulted in no major arrests, but has cost several billion dollars, five times the original budget. It has also resulted in many complaints from those on the border about the lack of actual support, and the suicide deaths of at least four guardsmen.
He has also required extra searches of the thousands of trucks coming from Mexico, resulting in backlogs on the order of weeks, meaning that the fresh produce in the vehicles is rotting and costing up to $8 million per day. The net gain has been a handful of trucks pulled over for safety violations, and no illegal immigrants intercepted.
Not to be outdone, deSantis started during the pandemic by firing a statistician who was releasing the actual figures on Covid deaths, rather than those which made the state look better. The suppression of data emanating from the University of Florida is still under investigation. He went on to hire an anti-vaccine doctor whose predictions and pronouncements on the pandemic have proven to be spectacularly wrong as state medical director. At the height of the resurgence, he threatened the cruise ship industry with sanctions if they insisted on Covid passports for passengers and crew. He backed off a little when the industry threatened to move its base of operations from Miami and other Florida ports to other states.
One of his next actions was to demand that the Florida legislature resurrect a WWII-era civilian guard of several thousand answerable only to him. That came on the heels of a new state law which allows people to use their vehicles run over people at protests without sanction.
His latest has been to sign education bills which opponents have dubbed “Don't say gay” and “Don't mention slavery”(including measures to fire teachers, of course). When the Disney corporation, Florida's largest employer, stated their support for gay rights, deSantis demanded that his legislature remove the 'self-governing' status of the 40 square miles of the Disney property.
This will mean that responsibility for all of the roads, water ways, policing, fire service, etc will fall to Orange County, as well as electricity and sewer service to 40,000 hotel rooms and thousands of businesses. Finally, several billions in bonds for the construction will also transfer to the county.
Is this the party of business or is the GOP set to implode?
1 comment:
I neglected to mention that Governor Abbott has expressed the intent of banning any state agency from working with any company which has abortion services in its insurance plan.
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