Last month, Ron DeSantis signed an anti-immigrant law that goes into effect July 1. It contains many shitty provisions designed to make life harder for the state’s approximately 800K undocumented immigrants.
There’s a labor shortage in Florida, and many industries, including landscaping, agriculture and construction, rely heavily on undocumented immigrant labor. In the runup to the bill’s passage and since the signing, I’ve heard rumors of boycotts and seen photos of idled construction sites and farm operations, etc., but I hadn’t personally seen any hard evidence of the backlash until Adam sent me this yesterday:
Got footage from inside this event. They admit the bill is “100% meant to scare” immigrants and beg the crowd to “urgently” convince “your people” to not leave Florida since folks in the agriculture industry are mad workers are leaving. The hypocrisy is so brazen and disgusting. https://t.co/LzsV2qgG0F pic.twitter.com/BnWnWCWqcI
— Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) June 5, 2023
Sorry about the tweets, but there it is — three South Florida GOP lawmakers addressing pastors who serve immigrant communities. The Repub hypocrites, all of whom voted for the bill, are basically begging the preachers to tell their congregants to stay in Florida so the crops won’t rot, noting that “farmers are mad” that immigrants are leaving. So yeah, it’s real, and they are in a panic.
This was totally predictable because other red states have done similar anti-immigrant stunts and wound up with no one to tend their landscaping, construct their buildings or pick their crops. But Ron DeSantis has a presidential campaign to run, and he doesn’t give a shit what happens to the suckers who reelected him (let alone the folks who tried to vote his sorry ass out).
The bill that is causing this panic also funnels more money into the undocumented immigrant “relocation” program. DeSantis uses that slush fund to pay a private jet company that’s affiliated with his administration to fly immigrants from Texas to other states, most recently California. Last night, Governor Newsom called DeSantis a “small, pathetic man” and threated to charge him with kidnapping for luring immigrants onto planes under false pretenses and dumping them in California. (LAT)
In Texas, the Bexar County sheriff also recommended criminal charges against the DeSantis administration for its Martha’s Vineyard campaign stunt. (Miami Herald) So maybe Trump won’t be the only indicted GOP presidential candidate from Florida.
Open thread.
Baud
“No one wants to work anymore.”
Maxim
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving pair of … entities.
rikyrah
Thank you for that ridiculous video
The Audacity of those clowns 😡
It’s the absolute audacity of those three lawmakers who voted for the bullshyt, telling folks that the farmers are mad at them…
Yeah, because nobody’s gonna catch a felony for them.
And, then that phucking Cuban woman, standing up there – LYING TO THEM that there are no real consequences.
YOU CATCH FELONIES
F-E-L-O-N-I-E-S
And, of course, people with FELONIES, if they ever were to pass immigration reform..
WOULD BE DISQUALIFIED FROM GETTING CITIZENSHIP.
I’m going to say this again.
The plan was to round up all the undocumented with these FELONIES.
Then, place them in the FOR-PROFIT PRISONS.
And, then, get them do to the work that they’ve been doing for $$ a day…. for bare pennies.
I know that there are those who say the plan is that they will just replace the undocumented with prison labor.
Once again, I say, look at Georgia and Alabama.
Just because we call it unskilled labor doesn’t mean that those undocumented migrants aren’t VERY SKILLED at what they do.
Using Prison labor isn’t going to work out the way that they think it will, even if they go down that path.
bbleh
Almost makes you believe in a Hell after life, just because there’s gotta be some place for those people to go.
BC in Illinois
Here is your shop for all your ” MAKE AMERICA FLORIDA ! ” merchandise, flags, etc.
Scout211
Ha ha. DeSantis is not talking about it, people! No way! He’s got important things to think about! Leave him alone, media meanies!
DeSantis tight-lipped on migrant flights as experts ponder potential legal peril
sdhays
I look forward to the 2028 election when being indicted (or convicted!) for at least one felony will be a minimum requirement for joining a Republican Presidential primary debate.
NotMax
Wasn’t all that long ago California municipalities were paying to fly the homeless one way to Hawaii.
Edmund dantes
Won’t anyone think of the produce that needs to be picked?!?
trollhattan
“I love my governor, he’s the greatest governor…” Shut up, stupid person.
Trust me, if we had different statewide demographics the rural ag district assembly critters and senators would be putting exactly the same legislation forward in California. California happens to be the nation’s largest ag state and none of it would function without immigrant labor. Period.
These Florida and Texas fuck knuckles will set themselves on fire to hurt somebody else.
Another day in Sacramento, how many migrant flights are headed our way?
kindness
I think it was LawyersGuns&Money who wrote about this a few days ago. The hypocrisy of the Republicans to ask the clergy to tell their immigrant congregants not to leave their jobs/Florida in the face of an unprecedented law Republicans pushed criminalizing immigrants so as to please the immigrants ‘masters’ was gobsmacking. Why these Republicans weren’t pelted with rotting vegetables and chased from the building is what I can’t understand
@NotMax: the 1980’s? That’s 40 years ago. California used to elect Republicans for governor & Senate. It hasn’t done that in a very long time.
brendancalling
No offense Betty, but I hope they ALL leave and the Florida economy completely craters. I can live without Florida oranges, they grow ’em in California too.
I’m old enough to remember when Florida was fun and friendly. I have great memories of family trips, learning to surf, and of course the many venues I’ve played in Florida. But frankly, now I don’t care if I ever set foot in the borders of what’s become a miserable, hatefilled shithole ever again. And yeah, I know—”not all Floridians.”
OzarkHillbilly
@BC in Illinois: I love the beer coozies on Anheuser Busch cans, the makers of Bud Light.
trollhattan
@NotMax: Who was rich enough to do that–Newport Beach?
Reno once would put them on the Greyhound to Sacramento. That was an interesting fight.
Kay
The scam seems to be on their own voters, too. I don’t know if it’s true or not but the GOP reps are telling people the bill is political and has no “teeth”.
It’s another stunt where they fleece the GOP base. They’re tricking both the immigrants who do all the work in Florida AND their most devoted voters. Just scumbags on every level.
Alison Rose
“small, pathetic man” is the perfect description for this POS
I miss my grandparents but I am so fucking glad they didn’t live long enough to have suffered under DeSantis’ fascist regime. What a sociopathic thing to do. It’s like he thinks these people aren’t actual people.
Kay
Migrant workers are cutting asparagus in western Michigan (where I now live part time) right now. They’ll cut asparagus now and be back to harvest cherries and apples later.
What do GOP voters think when they see these people doing this work? I can’t imagine how they rationalize their way out of that bit of reality right in front of them.
Ken
That’s good, because there won’t be any soon.
Alison Rose
@trollhattan: When I lived in Santa Cruz in the mid aughts, San Jose cops would sometimes give unhoused folks a one-way bus ticket over the mountains to our town. Which was cruel and also frustrating, because Santa Cruz is tiny both in area and population compared to San Jose, and we were already full up with college students and tourists. But at least most people there wanted to help them and not toss them out like garbage.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Kay:
Wait till the next hurricane hits (along with dick-sweeping tornadic winds across wide swaths), and Midwestern transplant 60-70 something Dick and Barbara find out that their 6000 square foot dream home in The Villages won’t get a new roof for the next three years or so….
OzarkHillbilly
Here in Misery they don’t. See them that is.
Maxim
@Alison Rose: Feels like most people aren’t actual people to him. He certainly isn’t comfortable peopling with them.
Alison Rose
@kindness: Well…as far as governor, we’ve had three GOPers in my lifetime (nigh 43) and Arnie wasn’t that long ago.
Alison Rose
@Maxim: LOL true.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Immigrants are demonized for “taking jobs” from hardworking American and also for being “moochers”. Its a no win situation.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s a win for the bigots.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@trollhattan:
The old pre-merged Louisville Police Department had an informal policy and agreement with the New Albany (IN) Police Department to deal with the nastiest, most combative transients they came up to – you got to do one drop on the other side of the bridge. Because the rail yards were bigger on this side of the Ohio River, Indiana got the worse end of the deal.
It led to some hilarity for me many years ago when I got appointed in the USDC SDIN to represent someone for threatening to kill Bill Clinton sometime during the mid 90s. It was legit a case of “pass the extremely muscled, unhinged, legit violent trash”, and the Secret Service ultimately got stuck with it until he got shipped to the Federal psych eval facility in North Carolina, never to be heard from around here again.
Alison Rose
@Baud: This should be the GOP’s slogan.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
It was 90 degrees last week- crazy hot for that far north and, I imagine, brutal if you’re cutting asparagus.
Tony Jay
@rikyrah:
My friend over here has been saying for years that the endgame of the whole “Benefit cheats/lazy moochers” industry in the UK has been to so demonise anyone who can’t get a job that, when right-wing economic ‘modernisation’ has thrown most people into working poverty in order to funnel every single spare penny into shareholder dividends and Cayman Island bank accounts, they’ll have already laid the groundwork for ‘realistic, adult’ policies forcing the unemployed and underpaid to ‘earn’ their benefits by doing all of the shitty jobs that immigrant/seasonal labour used to do before Brexit.
They looked at the American system of modernised chain-gangs and thought “That could work. Let’s get that going.”
I don’t even think he’s wrong. That certainly seems to be the way the future is heading over here, what with the Tories wrecking the economy and someone needing to be punished for it. Give it a couple of years and everyone claiming any kind of benefit will be issued with an orange jumpsuit (that they’ll be charged for) and a list of Payback Openings they have to sign up for, or else.
The tabloids will love it. A whole new strata of Others to run hate-brewing stories about. It’ll be like Christmas for them.
brendancalling
@brendancalling: Adding: I’ve said since the beginning of the migrant kidnapping stunts that I would gladly trade one of Philadelphia’s white heroin addicts to Texas for two of their immigrants, and now extend the same offer to Florida.
Keep your white people, Florida—and in fact have a few of ours. From what I’ve seen, immigrants strengthen and improve neighborhoods and build community. Send as many as you want, Philadelphia needs people that want to make our city better.
NotMax
@kindness
Blink of an eye. Temporal distance foreshortens perspective; comes with the territory.
;)
Kay
Big loss for Bari Weiss, Harlan Crow and the rest of the anti woke ninnies
Injunction is here if you want to read. pdf.
Here’s my favorite part:
Gvg
@Ken: California has found it. Took 20 years to kill our groves. Cal probably has some time but thats pretty bad news.
My sister reports last vacation past the former south Florida grove areas they are rotting. Abandoned farms with irrigation turned off, the low lying ones are going back to swamp and the higher ones are becoming desert like. The swampy ones smelled going past on the way to key west.
I doubt the tourists noticed and if you didn’t grow up in grove country you wouldn’t get it. I grew up in a city that had been groves decades before so all yards had trees and there were juice factories around the corner. Truckloads of oranges on the roads in season. Never again. Legislature approved small help package mostly advertising money. Whats needed is massive research in bioscience. Breeding new trees, treatments etc. Well within a smart state governments power.
SandyZ
@Baud: That’s why children need to work those jobs!
Betty Cracker
@Kay: From what I’ve read, those laws may well be toothless because they’re so poorly written, which is a chronic problem in our crappy statehouse. But it’s insane to ask vulnerable people to trust these bald-faced liars.
You’re right — the scumbags are scamming their own voters and the population they targeted for political gain. The sad fact is they will probably face no consequences for it.
Jackie
@rikyrah: Not prison labor – children labor. Pudd’n Boots will lower the legal age for children working in three… two….
scav
Flesh-eating Sargassum on their beaches, rotting unpicked produce on land — is there a term for when metaphores (or is it more a simile?) get too on-point?
Manyakitty
@Betty Cracker: grim. Realistic, but grim.
NotMax
@SandyZ
Little buggers only tall enough to pick from the dwarf orange trees, though.
//
Kay
@brendancalling:
I went kayacking Sunday in rural Michigan and encountered meth smokers on the river. Jesus Christ. You expect beer and pot smoking but now they just smoke meth everywhere? We went ahead of them and did not encounter them at the landing, although we stayed at the landing for an hour and a half. They disappeared into thin air.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: When I was a kid and SoCal was largely agricultural, I saw these guys every day.
The farmers got wise and sold off all the cropland for housing developments long ago. I haven’t seen a day laborer for thirty years. So I can well understand how the vast majority of the American populace, who live in cities, have never seen these folks. You’re simply not going to make the connection that immigrants = food.
Maxim
@Kay: Nitpick: isn’t the pot calling the kettle black supposed to mean that both sides are the same? That the kettle actually is black, as well as the pot? Which obviously does not apply in this case, since the medical folks have it right. Or has the usage morphed to include any kind of hypocrisy?
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Well, you can’t tell which is the truth because they’re giant crazy liars, but one of the reps at the meeting essentially said the whole law is bullshit and was a political stunt. She also admitted she had not read it though.
lowtechcyclist
@Gvg:
And Florida’s universities might be able to handle that research, if Rhonda Sandtits doesn’t fire or scare away all the scientists.
NotMax
@Kay
“Does this thing need recalibrating? Clocked that last kayak going by at 80 mph.”
:)
patrick II
The immigration “problem” has never been functionally that hard to remedy. People come here to work, so pass a law that forces companies to use E-verify to check a job applicant’s social security number, and only those with a valid number are allowed to work. But politically, it is very hard for the Republican party to remedy because the two main components of the party want the opposite thing. The rich want cheap labor and the populist working people don’t want the competition. So, nationally, they play a game. The Republicans in Congress, trying to please the rich, pass ineffective measures like a fence, or no measures even while pretending they want immigration reform but the bill before them isn’t perfect enough. That game has gone on forever. But now DeSantis is actually trying to please the populist Republicans with strict immigration law and there goes the cheap labor. They have been able to keep both sides of their coalition happy up to now with a scam, Desantis has actually done something that has effect. Let’s see how it works out for him.
jonas
But a six-week-old embryo is. Go figure.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Outright LIES
NO TEETH???
THEY CAN BE CHARGED WITH FELONIES 😡😡
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
They use a modified tractor – it pulls a kind of sled and the cutters sit on the sled and bend to cut the asparagus. I was glad to see every field had a water truck. The migrants in Michigan are getting some kind of reperation payment this year- it’s 600 dollars each- the growers paid into a fund because they were breaking the law and not paying them the statutory hourly. My youngest son speaks Spanish and he worked on a school project to help them apply for the 600. His Spanish was not much help though- they mostly speak some kind of dialect that he does not know so they all went to English :)
Betty Cracker
@Kay:
So true!
@Gvg: I miss the smell of orange blossoms while driving. Used to drive for miles through the groves and take in that heavenly aroma.
jonas
@Maxim: I read it as the judge calling out the plaintiffs for saying the original research was driven by politics rather than medicine when their own stance on GAC is…driven purely by politics rather than medicine.
rikyrah
@Kay:
The CUBAN
Citizen Alan
@Alison Rose: Everyday, I thank god that I was not offered that job in tallahassee. Because I feel like I would not have been able to turn it, and moving there would have put me in a bottomless pit of depression.
Mike in NC
For many months I could drive past a run-down storefront in our town where some bozo was selling used appliances. In front of the store was a pole flying a ratty “Trump” banner. A few weeks ago they finally replaced the flag with a new one, but it still read “Trump 2020”. Guess they couldn’t afford an update.
Anyway, yesterday the business appeared to have gone belly-up, with no more rusty washing machines and refrigerators sitting out front. The Trump banner was also gone. Just seems like one more instance where ‘Everything Trump Touches Dies’.
NotMax
The whole of DeSantis’ shitskrieg calls for a new acronym. Propose NSFF.
(Not Safe For Florida.)
Kyle Rayner
Very in keeping with GOP approach. “Just round up all the undesirable immigrants, but wait not those – I need them.” Same with abortion, medical care, etc. “This’ll only affect the undeserving. My family and I will still have access to what we need because we are Good and therefore we know who to talk to and have some spare cash.”
raven
They tried this shit in Georgia by “letting” prisoners do it. They preferred going back to the joint.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Tony Jay:
Forty five years of supply side, trickle down economics has funneled all of the benefit of technology-based productivity gains into the pockets of people who hoard digits in electronic ledgers. Instead of broadbased 20 hour workweeks, a lot of free time, well run healthcare systems and robust infrastructure, the money has found its way to finance dumb political, economic and political distortion, exploding rockets, multiple superyachts and the capture of social media by a few powerful people.
Say what you will about Branson, Gates and Bezos, they live and use their wealth in ways that show that they genuinely enjoy their lives. Musk, Sacks, Thiel, Crowe and the like? Not so much.
gvg
@lowtechcyclist: Exactly. We definitely can if funded well enough. And I think the farmers know it too. We have come through before. They are used to IFAS solving problems. It should have started bigger 2 decades ago though. They wanted to cut all kinds of spending though. Cheapskate your way into bankruptcy. And they were attacking immigrants even then. Republicans aren’t actually that good for farmers. They don’t see the future.
Brachiator
In the UK, support for BREXIT is collapsing. One last leg is the lie that immigration keeps wages low.
Both the Tories in the UK and Republicans in the US have fantasies in which they eliminate welfare and other social programs and force citizens to take shitty jobs for low wages.
Chief Oshkosh
@BC in Illinois: Those posters really do highlight how Florida is shaped like a limp dick.
Way to go, Ron! You fucking schmuck.
Citizen Alan
@patrick II: I’ve been convinced for years that the only reason dubya’s popularity collapsed was because he could not thread-the-needle of an immigration plan that pleased both the cheap labor republicans and the nativist republicans.
Doc Sardonic
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Gates and Bezos seem to be a little more buttoned up, but Sir Richard Branson always seems to be having the most fun you can have with clothes on.
Baud
One of my favorite provisions of federal law is the one that bars ICE from raiding farms to enforce the immigration laws.
NotMax
@Citizen Alan
Attempting to eviscerate Social Security after starting a second term played no small part.
cain
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
You mean, Chad and Karen.
Another Scott
Governor Fleece Vest has been trying to get in on the action, also too, in a small way (so far).
BlueVirginia.US.
He sent 100 VA national guard folks to Texas. It’s a stunt, and an obvious one.
Hey, don’t cite facts to GFV. He doesn’t care for them.
Grr…,
Scott.
gvg
@Betty Cracker: Yes! Though I hated the smell of processing oranges-burnt sweet peelings or something, it was too concentrated near the plant.
Sunday I finally cut down one of my trees that was infected. Tried to get it over with as quick as possible. the other shows no sign, but I will have to watch. Will not replant for awhile. My parents have to take down several large ones. They were in denial. Now their big favorites look like skeletons. I think they will probably loose them all because they waited. And we are far from the main area. History is gone.
Florida’s climate has actually changed in the last century and a half. It has gotten colder. Originally citrus was grown commercially around Jacksonville which is why their are areas named Orange Heights. Waldo had a canal and was a big orange shipping area back in the 1800’s. Then in the early 1900 Freezes drove them to central Florida. I grew up in Orlando and watched the freezes in the 80’s force them to relocate to South Florida….drove past frozen groves in the mid 80’s that never came back. Interviewed for jobs in the 90’s in south Florida and saw the new groves! Now they are dead. They still grow in Gainesville for people but not to make a living because of freezes. I hate this disease and despise the do nothing government.
cain
I wonder if the legislation understands that when the chickens come home to roost it will be them that will have to manage with the outcome of all these laws that they’ve helped usher in on DeSantis’s request. Whatever happens, DeSantis is not going to take the blame, he has a presidency to run for.
So all those angry constituents are going to have to be managed – and if things continue to fail it’s going get pretty bad.
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
said – things are going to suck if there is nobody to fix things after a disaster. There will be no one to blame at that point – it certainly isn’t going to be Democrats although the GOP is going to try.
NotMax
@cain
Chad and Karen reside in Naples.
Visited there in the early 1960s. Headquarters for country club WASP privilege central casting. Don’t imagine it’s changed much since. Although now it’s probably Brent and Brandi. ;)
ETtheLibrarian
Anyone want to bet that most farmers voted deSantis?
zhena gogolia
WereBear
I am really sorry to see Florida brought so low. I think they are uniquely vulnerable because it once welcomed the different. I grew up visiting Sarasota, where the circus people overwintered and had their own town.
When summer wasn’t always about the air conditioning. Deep cement porches, icy sweet tea, and waiting for sunset was considered to be much more neighborly.
Barbara
@Kay: Smoking meth while kayaking seems like a really bad idea. The last time we went out on the river we got into trouble and thank heaven we had sufficient strategic faculties to assess the situation and find safety. I still can’t make myself go back, or at least not to a river that is big and deep.
As for DeSantis, luring people into changing their location, but especially luring them across state lines under false pretenses from one state you aren’t the governor of to another, is human trafficking.
Betty Cracker
@gvg: It’s sad to lose a citrus tree you’ve grown to love. I knew a lady in Miami years ago who went apeshit when county officials cut down the trees in her yard to try to contain the greening. She was a Repub. Probably still is, despite a succession of shitty people she helped vote into office ignoring the problem. My theory is they’ll make more money on developments like The Villages, so they see the disease as a way to remove obstacles
ETA: I also liked the smell of the juice processing plants, but I’m weird that way. I used to volunteer to fill the gas tanks at my dad’s marina because I liked the smell. Probably explains a lot… ;-)
evodevo
@Kay: Might have been Mayan, Nahuatl or Yucatec…a lot of them are from Mexican/Guatamalan hill country, where it is still spoken …
Cameron
@raven: And that wasn’t all that many years ago. You’d think somebody down here would have paid attention.
jonas
@patrick II: Republicans have discovered they can have their cake and eat it too on the immigration question: they can come down hard on both legal and illegal immigration, making it really hard for farmers, ranchers, and processors to find affordable labor, and please their populist/nativist base by fighting the “Great Replacement”. The farmers and packers will bitch and moan, just like they did with Trump’s tariff war with China, but will they ever change their vote? No.
Win-win for the GOP.
brantl
Somebody needs to do a cartoon of Ronda cutting off a big piece of the map of Forida with a meat cleaver marked “Spite”.
Kay
@evodevo:
He really liked the work. He’ll be with me in Michigan this summer so maybe he can find something like that but a paying job :)
Tony Jay
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Yup. When I was younger, I used to read about the suicidal tax policies of the Roman and pre-Revolutionary French states, where the whole point of getting rich was to be so rich you could avoid taxation entirely, and wonder how they could have been so stupid. Who did they think was paying for everything? How did they expect it to continue? How long did they think the downtrodden 99% were going to accept the fiction of a legitimate state that did nothing but take from them to keep others in unearned luxury?
I don’t wonder anymore. Real life is a teacher.
raven
@Cameron: 2011
The Moar You Know
@Tony Jay: they certainly knew. Slaves.
Almost half the people in the Roman Empire were slaves.
FelonyGovt
DeSantis shouldn’t be fucking with Newsom. DeSantis wasn’t the only one recently re-elected, Newsom was too, with a huge percentage of the vote, and he also survived that stupid recall. And he wants to be President someday. I’m enjoying watching my Governor beat up your Governor, Betty…
Kay
@Barbara:
I love how understated your comments are :)
You must be an extremely calming lawyer.
smith
@jonas: Glad you mentioned the Great Replacement, because deep down this is not so much about jobs than it is about race. There are exactly no Americans who’ve had to give up their dreams of a career in fruit-picking or hotel room cleaning because an immigrant beat them out. And even when said Americans are out of options, they’d rather flip burgers or deal dope than slave in the summer sun out picking tomatoes all day.
patrick II
@jonas:
Trump sent big subsidy checks to the farmers to keep them in line. What is DeSantis going to do?
raven
In this decidedly sports blog probably no one cares that the PGA and LIV have merged!
Betty Cracker
@raven: I think it’s disgusting, but that won’t change a damn thing.
Betty Cracker
C3 and Di’s youngest said a thing in a London courtroom today:
Good for him.
NotMax
@raven
Difficult to discern whether you’re teed off about it.
;)
Ken
@Cameron: If anyone in Florida did look into the results of Georgia’s or Alabama’s law, they probably just blamed it on not “doing it right”. Fascism cannot fail, it can only be failed.
(Or they might have blamed Democrats, because fascism can also be stabbed in the back.)
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yep. Immigrants are easy to demonize. Also they can’t vote until they become citizens, so politically too its a low cost option to demonize them.
JaneE
I don’t know if the actions of DeSantis are criminal kidnapping or not, but if they are, he needs to be in jail. If not kidnapping, perhaps fraud.
brantl
@Cameron: Republicans, paying attention? Whatever for?
JKC
@brendancalling: I’d offer to make the same trade for some of the more bellicose yahoos here in upstate NY.
Jackie
@raven: I do. I’m also wondering if/how this will shake out re the PGA’s ban on Trump owned courses. I personally won’t watch anymore.
Tony Jay
@The Moar You Know:
Oh, it was worse than that. Slaves did the work but they didn’t pay the taxes. The solution of the later Dominate period was to basically enslave everyone who wasn’t rich and run the Empire as a vast military supply-chain rather than a civil economy, but it never got around the main problem of the very rich hoarding all the wealth and the lower classes losing any reason to be loyal to the state.
It just took Rome a loooong time to go through it, because, as we know, in the past time was younger and moved slower.
Brachiator
@raven:
Saw the story. It’s like the super rich moving money around.
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
He’s absolutely right. Hence he must be destroyed just like everyone else who challenges the narrative.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@cain:
“FEMA isn’t coming through with enough money fast enough! Shows you that government is useless!”
ARoomWithAMoose
@cain: our Florida statehouse legislators are barely compensated (look it up), they “fail” and lose their jobs because of the crappy legislation they’ve never read but voted for, they go back to “working” at their family owned car dearlership/realty company.
matt
Well, it was good theater and that’s the priority for Republicans.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Betty Cracker:
His grandmother had some ability to steer it in another direction, and as is per usual, declined in favor of wealth and privilege.
JaneE
@Brachiator: A few decades back there was a rumor going around that the “benefits” portion of hiring at Wal Mart was handing out state welfare applications. Probably not true, but a large percentage of their workforce, including full time workers, did qualify for benefits because their earnings were so low. Even single individuals might get something if they were only part time workers. Anyone trying to support a family almost certainly would get assistance for medical and more.
Chris
@patrick II:
I question the extent to which it’s two different demographics, as opposed to largely the same people with completely loony and incompatible goals. Every time some state puts up a law that suggests seriously punishing people who hire illegal immigrants, the law goes down in flames, no matter how red the district. Which I suspect is because even ordinary wingnuts know perfectly well how much they benefit from illegally employed people – even if it’s just babysitters or lawnmowers or, if you’re a business owner, for-real employees – even if they can’t bring themselves to admit it.
tobie
Anyone who has spent any time in rural America knows it’s one of the most heavily subsidized regions in the US. They simply don’t have the tax base to cover the cost of hospitals, roads, schools, emergency vehicles, social services, ag subidies, etc. Even electricity and broadband are subsidized by metro areas that pay a surcharge on these services. Yet, like the dipshit in the video, rural Americans will say that Trump was the greatest President ever and declare they’ve never taken a handout. We have a labor shortage through the country. I hope migrant labor in Florida goes elsewhere.
Baud
@raven:
Jesus. That’s like Balloon Juice and LGM merging.
Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay & @Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: I don’t pay much attention to such matters and was thinking the court case was a glorified celebrity vs. paparazzi beef. So I was surprised to hear Harry talking about the link between failed media and failed government more broadly, which is relevant on this side of the pond too.
cope
@gvg: We lived in Central Florida from 1989 until December of ’22. My observation was that there were fewer hard freezes on average over the past twenty years. In fact, we didn’t have a single really hard freeze in the last three winters or so. My impression was that loss of groves was a combination of disease and development.
Chris
@jonas:
I mean honestly, illegal immigration works great for them. It’s a steady supply of labor with no legal protections or anything of the kind. Works great for the businessmen, and as long as they’re still legally unpersons, the most important thing the racists want still applies.
raven
Jackie
So who is Santos trying to hide? We’ll find out soon!
“A federal judge Tuesday granted media organizations’ requests to unseal the names of the people who cosigned Rep. George Santos’s (R-NY) $500,000 bond in his criminal fraud case,” The Hill reports.”
“The order is a blow to Santos, whose attorney Monday asked a judge to keep the names of the bond cosigners sealed.”
Suzanne
@brendancalling:
I second this.
I will note that every person who is a “problem” in my very racially diverse neighborhood is a white dude. The drunk guy who pounded on my door at midnight, demanding to be let in (scaring the daylights out of SuzMom, who was alone in the house)….the dude who got all hopped up on meth and broke in…. The shitheads down the street who are letting their property crumble and abandoning their cars…… all white.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@zhena gogolia: Looks from the pics on the thread I read on Daily Kos that the dam may have failed in part because the Russians, who control it currently have been letting it keep filling and filling and have not opened the sluice gates at all for months. The nearby nuclear power plant may eventually start having issues although their reactors are currently not running, you still have to have cooling water to keep the fuel rods cool. They keep producing some heat even when the reactor is shut down. Bigger immediate problems after the flood subsides, are the lack of water to cities in the area and the destruction of crops already in the fields. This is really bad, whether deliberate Russian sabotage or deliberate neglect/mismanagement.
Betty
@Gvg: I doubt they will look for help from Cuba which seems to have a healthy citrus industry despite various plagues that have hit other places.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Russia destroys the Kakhovka Dam
An additional issue is there were many mines laid on the river banks and in the river. They have now been washed downriver with the flood waters…
Meanwhile: “However, it seems that things can always be worse: On Tuesday there are reports that Russia is shelling Ukrainian rescue operations as Ukrainian police and military attempt to evacuate people, livestock, and wildlife from rapidly flooding areas below the shattered dam.”
Betty Cracker
Charles Pierce at Esquire says the feds need to shut DeSantis’s kidnapping stunts down:
That sounds right to me. Seems like there’s a lot going on in Florida that should be investigated by the feds, but perhaps they are overwhelmed dealing with the criminal enterprise that is the Repub Party across multiple states.
Wapiti
@Baud: Yeah, that’s the old-fashioned hypocrisy that Repubs know and love.
ICE should raid farms, and seize the entire operation if they’re using “illegal” labor. Let the laborers go… and follow them to the next illegal farming operation.
/sarcasm, mostly.
FelonyGovt
@Betty Cracker: I don’t even get what they think they’re gaining by these immigrant kidnapping episodes. They’ve already done this several times, and the only thing they seem to get out of it is the opportunity to go “har har har we got you good, you woke-ass liberal states”.
West of the Rockies
Recap: Republicans create shitty policies, lie their fat asses off, get caught… and Republican voters don’t care. Whoo-hoo, own the libs!
Bottom line, a certain percentage of humans are really terrible: selfish, stupid, and violent. If you are one of these people, you will be drawn to vote for the Republican, the fascist, the “strong-man” or mean girl, or tribal war lord. You won’t care about children, the downtrodden, the environment, basic fairness. You will choose a fast buck or delivering an insult over basic kindness.
You are, as a great woman once said, deplorable.
Ruckus
@bbleh:
How about hell here on earth for these asswipes?
It’s what they are trying to create for the humans that they don’t like because they don’t look and hate like they do.
trollhattan
@Brachiator: One should never conflate “golf” and “sports.”
Wyatt Salamanca
George Santos news
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/judge-grants-media-requests-to-unseal-who-paid-george-santoss-bail-after-congressman-said-hed-go-to-jail-to-keep-it-secret/
Ruckus
@West of the Rockies:
They are the people that overflow hell. They wave a book that they’ve never read because they are too fucking stupid to read, or understand, and they think their shit doesn’t stink. Of course they stink worse than their shit because the stupid and hate drips out of every pore in their bodies. They have to wave that book to try and cover up and justify their hate that they aren’t equal to anyone, because they are actually the scum of the earth. And they constantly work at getting worse.
tokyokie
@NotMax:
They’re sufficiently lithe to climb the trees and don’t weigh enough to damage the branches. Like their safety is a concern.
jonas
Indeed it does, which is why a lot of growers in FL are shitting bricks over the new immigration law — it’s going to drive their workers out of the state. De Santis doesn’t care, however, because he gets credit from the nativist base while remaining secure in the knowledge that, even as their crops rot in the fields, these guys will still never back a Democrat against him. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, but Trump proved that political tribalism runs thicker than just about anything, even your family and livelihood.
schrodingers_cat
@patrick II: This is already done if you work for corporate America or at a University.
Baud
@Wyatt Salamanca:
I believe Santos.
Ruckus
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Doesn’t that shit supposedly work for the public? Or did anyway….
I like this judge, this shit is so phony and bullshits about everything that he should be exposed, and so should the people paying anything for any reason to save his butt.
tobie
@FelonyGovt: They get Eric Adams complaining about a migrant crisis in NYC on the 6 pm news and this gives them just the oxygen they need to say, “Libs are so hypocritical; look what we’re dealing with at the border.” Of course the border region also receives federal funding for processing and housing migrants.
A friend in Laredo was recently telling me that Laredo is one of the safest places to live in the U.S. whereas Anchorage, Little Rock and Chattanooga are among the most dangerous. Hmm…seems like the southern border has nothing to do with crime whatsoever.
Ruckus
@FelonyGovt:
When dealing with humans so immature that they are afraid of anything even coming close to the truth or any consequences for their overwhelming stupidity and arrogance the only thing that works is bright lights and jail sentences, and it is doubtful even that will work.
jonas
E-Verify is completely worthless. Anyone can get a SSN and fake ID in about 3 seconds, and while the system confirms its a legit number, what E-Verify can’t do is tell you if the person with that SSN is who they say they are — e.g. matching the SSN to fingerprints or other biometric identifier.
trollhattan
@Baud: “We find your offer acceptable.”
Geminid
@JaneE: Axios reported that Bexar County Sheriff Salazar recommended filing charges of “Unlawful Restraint,” both misdemeanor and felony counts. Previously, a Sheriff’s Department spokesperson said that DeSantis was not a target of the investigation, just his minions who acted in Bexar County. They seem to include Larry Keefe, DeSantis’s “public safety czar,” and retired Army Sergeant Perla Huerta, who recruited the migrants.
Ms. Huerta retired in August 2022, one month before the migrant flights. She grew up in San Antonio and more recently served at the Army medical center there. Huerta was both a combat medic and counterintelligence agent for the Army Special Forces and was stationed at Tampa, Florida when she retired.
Chris
@Mike in NC:
Had a theory for a while (ever since my first landlord in Miami) that Fox News ideology directly wrecks small businesses by giving their owners a “nothing is ever my fault, it’s all someone else’s” crutch to lean on, and thus preventing them from looking for anything they themselves could be doing differently to alter the company’s fortunes.
No idea if that’s what happened to your guy, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
hueyplong
@Baud: Santos’ preference for incarceration over public identification of the bond posters has me positively giddy as I await the list of names.
Betty Cracker
@hueyplong: Same. What could have them so spun up? Since Santos is involved, it must be scam-adjacent somehow. Harlan Crow? He’s bankrolling everyone else…
jeffreyw
This damn near ripped my heart out:
Baud
@hueyplong:
It’ll be a while. Santos has until Friday to appeal, and the appeal could take a few weeks.
James E Powell
@Betty Cracker:
Seems like a great idea, then we realize that it will end up in a federal court in Florida, in front of Judge Aileen Cannon or some other Trumpster, and it doesn’t seem like a such a great idea.
artem1s
is anyone put off by the notion that it’s OK to pay someone substandard wages just because they are immigrants? yes the laws are putting them in the position of committing felonies. but they are also protecting employers from having to yield to market forces and start paying a decent wage. I don’t care if someone is willing to do the work for less. they still should be paid a decent wage and benefits. these comments about parolees and prison labor are thinly veiled dog whistles. The farmers are bigoted against hiring Blacks (and poor Whites) who they have deemed as being too lazy to do the job.
eversor
@tobie:
Oh there is tons of crime on the Southern border. It’s just on the Mexican side. It’s also driven by Americans selling shit tons of guns to the cartels.
I’m all for securing the Southern border. From us!
Ruckus
@Kay:
They don’t rationalize, they yell and scream or they ignore. Blinders will do that. Someone, possibly someone they know, is making money off those humans picking crops or mowing their lawn and that is their rationalization of this. I believe what pisses them off is that they think the cost of all that labor should be zero, that those less than themselves really, really are or should be slaves who sweat for gruel. So they don’t have to, because they are special. Equality is for losers.
I know you know/understand this, I’m just putting it out there because we need to be reminded that rethuglicans want the world to go in reverse because they were important when everyone else suffered and they want that concept back.
Suzanne
@West of the Rockies:
This comment of hers was simultaneously absolutely, painfully, embarrassingly accurate. And it drove the MAGAts just insane.
Suzanne
@jeffreyw: I saw that on my FB feed and I’m crying. It’s been an emotional few days.
eversor
@artem1s:
Our entire economic system has always been based off some group being slave or serf labor to provide goods that the middle and working class can actually afford. If we cannot destroy the labor rights here we will instantly outsource that labor to a nation that will do it for less.
This even applies to a lot of our new tech jobs through the CHIPS act. TSMC is building chip fabrication plants here. But the first thing they did was build literal company towns named TSMC and import their labor from Asia so those jobs are not “well paying jobs for Americans” in reality.
The Thin Black Duke
Rich Eisen lets us know that the Saudis own golf now.
eversor
@Suzanne:
The fuck your feelings crowd sure has a case of the fee fees.
rikyrah
@Kay:
They thought that they were tricking the undocumented.
They didn’t realize that the undocumented would take them at their word about charging them with FELONIES and they got the hell out of there. They didn’t count on that. They thought undocumented = stupid. And, that they would be stupid enough to hang around to be arrested on July 2nd.
Let.the.crops.rot.
Chris
@eversor:
I always thought the fact that the NRA is a legally recognized institution and the Mexican cartels aren’t speaks volumes for which country is really the most corrupt.
The Mexicans have the good grace to at least pretend that violent traffickers that increasingly act like open insurgencies are not allowed by the law.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
Sounds right to me too. Every pilot need to have their license taken. Every bus driver needs their license and the companies punished for being involved with trafficking.
Miss Bianca
@jeffreyw: Awww…
Chris
@Ruckus:
Worth noting that the agricultural sector today is probably the closest we’ve come to restoring slavery.
A resource extraction economy, based on an imported workforce that has no rights or representation but does all of the work, for the benefit of a landed gentry that doesn’t do shit but nevertheless gets to hoard all the money, all the political power, and all the guns. With ever-increasing levels of racist hysteria providing the ideological foundation for the system.
As in so many other parts of U.S. politics, the root of the problem is that a stupendous number of white people have simply never gotten over losing their slaves.
Mike in NC
DeSaster has decided to copy Trump’s body language, mannerisms, and dress style. He might as well cut to the chase and start holding his very own hate rallies to use Fat Bastard’s favorite gimmick: pointing out some non-white person and bellowing that they should ‘go back where they came from’ even if they were born in this country.
Alison Rose
@jeffreyw: CRYING
Suzanne
@eversor:
That’s why it’s “Fuck YOUR Feelings”, not “Fuck MY Feelings”.
On Dreher’s blog, some of the commenters (small-town types, very white) occasionally would write about how fentanyl and opiate use has “humiliated” them and their families and towns. I think “deplorable” humiliated them, too…. and nothing is humiliating like the bang-on truth.
rikyrah
@hueyplong:
Santos’ preference for incarceration over public identification of the bond posters has me positively giddy as I await the list of names
I wanna know too :)
Captain C
@Wyatt Salamanca:
That sounds like some mafia-level shit is going on. All the more reason to bust Santos (or whatever his name is) as hard as possible
ETA: Or maybe it’s some prominent New York Republicans who just ran for office themselves. Maybe a same difference sort of thing.
rikyrah
@James E Powell:
Why in Florida? Why not California, since the latest trafficking stunt happened there?
Or why not Illinois, since they continue to do that bullshyt stunt here all the time.
Why isn’t the judge from where the crime takes place.
Kay
You may have read some dumb, lazy Right wing and centrist media people (and Supreme Court justices) blathering that US abortion limits are just like European abortion limits, but remember- they read nothing on abortion and know nothing about abortion, because they don’t care. Womens health and autonmy and agency are not areas of interest. They’re mostly interested in how today’s Yale law students have bad manners unlike back in the good ol days of the 1990s.
Here’s the truth about abortion limits in Europe:
It’s a measure of the absolute contempt they have for women – how sloppy and lazy their work is. They read nothing, prepare not at all, and yet they eagerly weigh in on womens health care.
The US is a Right wing outlier now on womens rights and agency and autonomy. We’ve lurched backward 50 years.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Got clowns on TikTok asking ‘ who did this work before the illegals’?
And, people are like, ‘ muthaphucka, seriously?’
lowtechcyclist
@raven:
LIV? You mean Super Bowl LIV? ;-)
James E Powell
@Suzanne:
White male bigot butthurt has been the driving force of Republican politics since Reagan.
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist: No, it is a Saudi owned golf tournament series.
lowtechcyclist
@ARoomWithAMoose:
That’s the rule more than the exception among state legislators, which IMHO is a real problem with respect to our democracy.
If people have to either be wealthy enough so they don’t need an income, or work in a profession that lets them take an entire legislative session away from their day job each year, that really tilts the playing field in the legislature towards those kinds of people.
rikyrah
@brendancalling:
clap clap clap clap
Soprano2
@NotMax: And Hawaii pays to fly them one way to somewhere else.
JPL
@jeffreyw: That is so sad.
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
I’m not exactly the biggest fan of the Windsors, but Harry has made it crystal clear that, in his mind, the British media and the British Establishment treated both his mother and (especially) his wife like commodities who owed them every inch of their lives in return for the most basic degree of respect. One they hounded out of the country and killed, one they hounded out of the country and called an uppity negro.
Right now he’s acting like the very definition of a NFLTG machine who has a handful of overdue receipts and is out to expose both groups for the soulless vermin they are. Got to say, that tingles all of my joybits.
Betty Cracker
@James E Powell: Good to know that federal protections are entirely fictional. I never expected to receive such a comprehensive civic education as a grownup, but here we are.
lowtechcyclist
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
She was a pretty nice girl, but she didn’t have a lot to say.
JPL
@Captain C: Who ever provided bail money would not be reelected. I assume that it’s another of George’s lies. It is probably Steve Bannon or Alex Jones.
Omnes Omnibus
Good news from a court on the gun front.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@rikyrah: This is what happens when history gets white washed to spare white peoples feelings. I learned almost nothing about slavery in the U.S. or the run up to the Civil War or all the crap that went down after the Civil War. Or the Civil Rights era, although to be fair, I was 6 in 1967 so I guess expecting current events to be discussed in History class in middle class suburbia would be asking too much.
smith
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, I’ve been wondering where all the Federal civil rights laws went. Even back in the bad old days we used to prosecute some of the worst racist violators that way.
rikyrah
@Chris:
Where is the lie.
Which is why I say….
LET.THE.CROPS.ROT.
Omnes Omnibus
@James E Powell: Not every judge is a Cannon. And, even when one is, you can appeal. Look what happened the last time she went rogue. There are real problems with our court system, but that kind of kneejerk cynicism isn’t warranted.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kay:
The honest answer is that they think urban blacks, prisoners, and the poor white people in their community they know who they think are scamming a bit with their benefits (like trading food stamp goods for other things or are on disability, despite seeming kinda healthy) should be in the fields doing that work. That is what they think. It doesn’t matter how much they are underestimating the skill involved in field work or overestimating the health and capabilities of the people they want to see doing hard labor.
JPL
@Baud: Would it still be unsealed?
Mr. Bemused Senior
@JPL:
My bet is the Russians. It may have been laundered. They’re getting sloppy though.
Citizen Alan
@Ruckus: I firmly believe that there will be a serious move within the republican party to champion the religalization of slavery. The heirs of the confederacy have never forgiven america for taking away their rightful property.
Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay: From that one piece I read on CNN, it sounds like Harry is talking about a rot in the British press that goes much deeper than tabloids harassing his mom and wife (though understandably that would be the most personal thing to him). It sounds like he’s indicting the whole dirty system, including the gross Tory-fluffing you’ve so vividly described for us. Yay!
JPL
@Betty Cracker: He wants to bring down the company that is running the throne. god how awful for him
Chief Oshkosh
@lowtechcyclist: And she changed from day to day.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@brendancalling:
I assure you they have their own, plus some meth addicts. They also think those folks wouldn’t have become addicts or would get clean if they’d been forced to do real work, like field labor.
rikyrah
@jeffreyw:
sob sob sob
trollhattan
@Tony Jay: When it comes to Harry vs. Piers Morgan I’m gladly holding Harry’s bespoke jacket and handing him a checker-face framing hammer.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: How do they think the people they would like to see doing the work would even get to the farms? Not everyone has a car, or money for gas.
I think they tried the “let’s make the prisoners do it!” thing in Georgia and most of the prisoners quit after a short time, it’s back breaking work and a lot of places don’t make sure their workers have access to drinking water (see the pregnant 17 yr old who died of heat stroke Pregnant teen’s heat related death) And since OSHA relies on businesses to report employee accidents and deaths, it probably kills more workers than we know about.
moonbat
@rikyrah:
One of the many (so many) things I detest about TFG is his “If I do it in the open, no one would dare arrest me!” attitude that the Republican Party has completely absorbed and the media has at least partially enabled. As though being brazen about criming were it’s own protection.
Accountability, accountability, and accountability need to be the watchwords of the next five administrations or we truly will have become a banana republic. Make them scared to crime out loud again.
Suzanne
@trollhattan: Piers Morgan is repulsive. He hates Meghan Markle because she didn’t want to date him. He is garbage.
Tony Jay
Oh, he is. It’s not just the Media, it’s the Establishment. I suppose you could say that he only noticed the rottenness of the edifice when his place near the top of it was threatened, but I’m a forgiving type.
The point is, he’s right, and he’s going to say it in court, a place where all the tabloid sneering and broadsheet huffing that gets used to destroy the reputations of anyone brave enough to stand up to the fuckers means precisely zero.
I hope he destroys them. They deserve it.
karen marie
@Brachiator: The British were perfectly happy when they ruled the world. BREXIT was a temper tantrum. They’re mad because they’re no longer the boss of everyone.
OverTwistWillie
“Family farm” economics only work with a whole lot of child labor.
It’s harvest season kids, don’t get run over by the combine!
Citizen Alan
@Kay: And the self loathing conservative women are the worst of all!
Gvg
@cope: freezes i was talking about had already happened by then. Farmers can’t take repeated risks. They moved south of Orlando. Still some called central Florida but the southern part of central Florida.
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist: I would defer to tony jay on this, but my feeling is that if Elizabeth had had the power to move the whole of great britain in the direction of more egalitarianism, then her uncle edward would have probably had the power to marry whoever he wanted and then later move the whole of great britain in the direction of Naziism.
eversor
@Suzanne:
Dreher’s commenters were more bonkers than Dreher.
Citizen Alan
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: In 1986, the entire discussion of slavery in my 11th grade american history class consisted of spending 3 or 4 days watching Roots while the teacher sat behind her desk doing her nails.
moonbat
@OverTwistWillie:
True that. Both my parents were born on family farms. Ten kids in one, eight kids in the other. Children’s chores were basically free labor to keep things running at cost.
karen marie
@Wyatt Salamanca: Santos should have thought about that before he posted bail. Too late, motherfucker!
Salty Sam
Thirty years ago, I hired a day laborer (undocumented) to dig a trench for my rainwater collection system. It wasn’t the first time, and I’ve always paid the going rate (~$75/day back then, plus I provided a hot meal at lunchtime) (I want to add, this was one of the hardest working young men I’ve ever seen). As we approached the house where I needed him to work, he said he recognized the area- “A man hired me to work all day, didn’t provide water or food, and at the end of a long day, he drove me back into town and dropped me off without paying me anything.”
He seemed to accept that this was his fate as an undocumented day-laborer. I believe there is a special corner in hell for those who would treat a fellow human like this.
ETA- I see Chris @#155 connected the dots to this practice. Call it what you like, it is slavery, pure and simple.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@smith:
True. But there are union contractors who couldn’t compete because of contractors who hired illegal labor to do construction and other trade work. The same is true for some factory work, too. I think some of the most rabidly anti-immigrant GOPers or former Democratic union workers would be ok with it if those workers were just in the fields.
narya
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Jorts the Cat–of all accounts–has done the most to educate me about the skilled nature of farm labor! That, and when Stephen Colbert testified in front of Congress.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@raven:
LOL. They don’t want to give prisoners a choice. They want them to be forced to do it by any means necessary.. to build character or some such garbage.
sab
@lowtechcyclist: And add in term limits (like Ohio’s) and the only people anywhere near the state legislature who understand how it works are the paid lobbyists.
Adam
I just bought a new car that had to be brought across multiple states, and it was delayed for three days because of a strike where truckers wouldn’t work through Florida. I was more than happy to wait because of it, but I bet a lot of people are fuming.
smith
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Seems to me that a straightforward way to deal with that is to actually enforce labor laws so it’s not so profitable to hire undocumented workers at below market wage. We don’t do that, though, we prosecute and persecute the most powerless actors in the equation.
And remember why our labor law enforcement and labor unions have been gutted: Republicans elected in large part by those former union Democrats have done it on behalf of rapacious employers.
rikyrah
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Here’s the thing…
Unskilled labor is very skilled. Those undocumented laborers know what they’re doing.
Prison labor is still prison labor.
If the undocumented can pick 20 barrells/day.
Prisoners can pick 4/day.
sure, you can make prisoners pick it, but, the productivity isn’t there, and in terms of crops..the crops will rot waiting for the prison labor to finish it
And, be mindful, this isn’t the case of these people ‘ learning a skill’ and doing something that might shave time off the sentence, – which is the case for the prisoner firefighters in California.
No applicable skills. No time shaved off sentence= no real incentive for prisoners to do anything above the bare minimum.
Tony Jay
@karen marie:
So, what you’re saying is that right now Americans are all fine and calm and happy with everything, but when the USA is no longer global top dog we’ll see you all get really crazy?
Scary, eh? ;-)
@Citizen Alan:
My problem Isn’t so much with the failure of the Monarchy to go beyond the constitution settlement and Green Lantern things into utopia as it is with the conscious decision of the monarchy, including the late Queen, to except herself, her estate, and her ENORMOUS wealth from any of the laws mere mortals have to obey so she could get even richer, keep owning everything and maintain her little world as a bastion of White Mischief.
She didn’t have to do that any more than Eddie had to be a Nazi sympathiser. She chose to, and so she gets judged for it.
Chris
@Salty Sam:
The wingnut thinking is that these people have already committed a mortal sin by immigrating illegally, which makes them fair game and/or means you’re helping them build character and atone through their suffering. (Same reason they think cops and prisons should be as cruel and sadistic as possible – good for the souls of “the criminal element.”)
I used to find it baffling that so many right-wing evangelicals I know adore Les Miserables (given that the whole thing was a gigantic social justice manifesto). It took me years and years to finally realize that it’s precisely the misery being portrayed that gets them off. From their point of view, it’s not a story about how society treats the people at the bottom, and how it’s a far worse crime than any crime these people could ever have committed. From their point of view, it’s a story about a sinner who finally hit rock bottom hard enough to find Jesus and turn his life around into sainthood. All the suffering’s worth it because it allows that kind of result, and besides, suffering’s ennobling. (Well, their suffering, anyway). It’s what Our Savior was all about, after all.
Suzanne
@eversor:
The personality disorders were…. significant.
Anyway
@Baud:
That sucks. Seeing how big money is always protected in the system I wouldn’t be surprised if some other judge blocks the release of the signers’ identities.
sdhays
@rikyrah: They don’t even get paid minimum wage.
Alison Rose
LOL okay dude:
Are you, though? Are you really?
rikyrah
@sdhays:
I know they don’t, which is why I am stuck on the theory that they intended to round up the undocumented already working on these construction sites and in the fields; charge them with felonies; stick them in for-profit prisons and then lease them back out to the business, who would get their ‘skilled’ undocumented prisoners for pennies on the dollar.
I will forever believe that the monkeywrench in all of this was the undocumented not sticking around to be arrested.
Now, they just have unskilled prison labor.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@rikyrah: @EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Oh I know their ideas about how to ‘fix’ the labor shortage are sadistic and exactly the opposite of the free society our founders envisioned. They really think America needs to be more like Oliver Twist and that Scrooge had some good points before his transformation.
laura
@karen marie: BREXIT was designed to avoid the financial regulations adopted by the EU in response to the Panama Papers. Rich fuckers the world over will do anything to avoid honest accounting and even minimal taxation. The racism was employed to rope in the necessary votes to get Brexit done. No plan, no goals, no forethought, no debate just absolute refusal to accept any form of accountability.
I will await Tony Jay’s evisceration of my opinion- and hopefully, he’ll use all the words and phrases that make us adore him.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Chris:
Yes! Exactly! They think think drug addiction, alcoholism, out of wedlock birth, and every sin would get cured by more suffering.
Plus it would solve our labor shortage! Take that libtards! You being kind is making everyone soft, lazy, and sick! /sarcasm
JaneE
@Baud: I have been hearing that for close to 65 years now. Back then they were already importing Mexican nationals for agriculture. It was probably between killing the Bracero program and complaining about undocumented laborers, without either of which the crops didn’t get harvested.
The Moar You Know
@Chris: Not that Fox isn’t the source of almost everything awful in America, but believe me, small business owners have had this attitude LONG before Fox was ever a thing.
JaneE
@rikyrah: Unfortunately the prison records will prevent most of them from actually getting employment as firefighters. There was some talk about changing that but I don’t think it happened.
rikyrah
@laura:
The way all the muthphuckas who shilled for BREXIT and its passage, then left the government within 4 weeks of its passage will never not make my lips purse so hard.
karen marie
@Tony Jay: Congrats. That’s some lazy whataboutism you’ve got going.
SiubhanDuinne
@jeffreyw:
Damn.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, myyy…even just at a very cursory glance, that does look like good news!
karen marie
@Anyway: If Santos didn’t have the scratch to post his own bond, who’s paying for his lawyers to appeal?
Scout211
A bit O/T but GOP shooting selves in the foot adjacent:Link
The crazy caucus sure showed Qevin who is boss by voting down the GOP agenda, the agenda that they wanted. LOL
karen marie
@laura: Yours is just a longer explication of what I said.
Chris
@rikyrah:
Sarah Taber said more-or-less exactly this a few years ago. Her observation at the time was that illegal immigration to the U.S. had slowed considerably ever since the Great Recession, while U.S. businesses’ need for it was as high as it ever was. Her expectation was that they’d start leaning more and more explicitly on prison labor to make up the difference.
Ken
I am somehow reminded of this classic (and NSFW) Onion article.
JaneE
@rikyrah: I think the last time non-Latino workers did the harvesting was during the Depression. The migrant Okies were not considered much if any better than the “illegals” are now. My mother fondly remembered one farm that provided them housing (one room) with a real innerspring mattress (on the floor, no bed). That was luxury.
sdhays
@Alison Rose: So, when’s his Twitter Spac-pocolypse scheduled for? Musk’s calendar fills up quickly (with scheduled time for trolling Twitter and “brain”storming new ways to reduce revenue).
Geminid
@karen marie: My guess is that that the people who posted Santos’s bail believe that he knows stuff that would implicate other New York Republicans in his various crimes, and are buying his silence. That may be one reason why McCarthy has squelched moves to remove Santos from Congress.
Tony Jay
@laura:
Not me, Lady, you’re entirely correct.
@karen marie:
Ha! No, it’s really not.
If it seems lazy, well, I did just turn your own swell story back around on you, so maybe it’s just the ingredients giving that impression.
Scout211
Update from Sacramento. Link
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
Hyperbole has its place. This is, after all, a comment section on a blog, not a courtroom.
Ken
@Tony Jay: Am I the only one who has pondered that Harry is one family car accident away from becoming first in line to the throne, with Meghan in line to become Queen? Not that I would wish such a thing on William and family. But the freak-out in certain segments of British society would be impressive.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Thank you! That is exactly what they are doing. It’s the back door slavery they’ve been pulling since they put the crime loophole in the 13th Amendment.
The Moar You Know
@jeffreyw: that flat-out made me cry.
Bunter
@rikyrah: I work on due diligence questionnaires (PE real estate, so construction) and one frequent question is about forced/compulsory labor and our ESG policy states “COMPANY does not have any kind of forced or compulsory labor on its projects. COMPANY monitors to assure that all its workers and first-tier suppliers’ workers are hired according to local law and are managed, paid, and respected as free individuals” with the definition of forced/compulsory labor being “FORCED AND COMPULSORY LABOR: All work or service that a person has not offered voluntarily and is made under the threat of punishment or retaliation or is demanded as a means of repayment of debt” Now, I’m not saying there might not be a loophole but I am saying that the above is pretty common language along with questions if we follow the UN Charter on Human Rights and if we “Combat forced labor, modern slavery, or child labor, and make sure the suppliers comply with labor standards and guarantee adequate working conditions” Trying to supply prison labor may not be as easy as they think. Though, I’ve lived long enough that it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a work-around.
Bupalos
@Kay: did you really just say “I can’t imagine how Republicans rationalize their way out of that bit of reality….”
They don’t even have to break a sweat on that one, I’ll renind you this is the crew blames Obama for 9/11 and Democrats for hollowing out rural schools and perverting elections. That’s not even a level 2 reality denial for an average Republican.
Suzanne
@Tony Jay: Is it just me, or does Kate have this uneducated look to her? She dresses like it’s 1962, and she has the Valium Mom gaze to match.
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: Well, she did meet William at university…but you can definitely go to school and remain uneducated, I’ll grant you that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ken: How often do you think William and his kids travel in the same vehicle? For that very reason.
Tony Jay
@Ken:
As long as the Prince of Peggers keeps his chin up and his nose brown he and his Royal Product are safe as houses. Or palaces. Well, definitely castles.
After all, he’s seen how ruthlessly the world he lives in can turn on a prince who doesn’t know everyone else’s place.
Chris
@JaneE:
More from Sarah Taber;
She had another Twitter thread much more recently about white migrant workers, many of them Southern, during the Great Depression and earlier migrations out of the South. There was more than one good point to the thread, but one of the ones that stood out was that many of them ended up going to work for big shots in farming and other extractive industries. And that those people were terrified of that influx of whites, because it was a lot harder to prevent white people from voting, exercising their rights, and, if they weren’t allowed to, garnering sympathy from the government and from society at large which might translate to political action. All the more so once the New Deal meant they had a friends in high places.
I’m sure that lesson hasn’t been lost on any of our Boss Hoggs in the years since.
Steve in the ATL
@James E Powell:
Oh please–who among us hasn’t used hyperbole in the courtroom? It’s the basis of most of my arguments!
Tony Jay
@Suzanne:
There was a time when she actually looked pretty normal, but yeah, she’s got the thousand yard stare of a woman who thought she was joining High Society, but was in fact just more fresh meat for Society
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Most? I find your use of understatement here to be interesting. In the way that a new species of toad might be interesting to a biologist.*
*Biologists would find a new species of toad interesting, right?
Baud
@Steve in the ATL:
“Your Honor, if the unions win, it’ll mean that America has fallen.”
cain
@Tony Jay: The British press is the kind of vile people I wish would turn on Republicans here so that evil vs evil.
Harry is doing the work of the just. I hope he succeeds and extracts punishment that leads to loss of stature, and a economic damage to the institution.
cain
@Citizen Alan: haha – I didn’t see roots in the class room, but I think on TV with my parents. I remember it being somewhat disturbing to me especially young Kunte.
Tony Jay
@cain:
The British Media as a whole make the US Media look dowdy and respectable and the MAGOP look like paragons of responsibility and rectitude.
Hopefully, Harry has some old Army pals with explosives experience.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tony Jay: He was light cavalry. They don’t talk to sappers. Then he was aviation. They don’t talk to anyone.
cain
@Scout211: Sacremento is getting hard working young labor (legal to boot) they are going to thrive there. Thanks Florida. Make sure they send some nice heart warming stories about how they have done and thank Florida tax payers for their kindness.
Kelly
@JaneE: California desprate for wildfire fighters now allows exfellons to work the wildfire crews. At full pay instead of ridiculous prison wages. I think it’d be good to parole felons with some money in savings accounts.
cain
@Tony Jay: I’ve detested them since before Diana died. The hounding they were doing – it was ridiculous. Everyone rewarded it by buying the papers. To some extent, British society is also to blame for buying all that filth.
Jackie
@JaneE: My Dad, grandfather and uncles were four of those Okies. Worked for food and gas money to CA then worked orchards and farms up to WA and back – following the seasons.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: I know he was Household Cavalry, but they function in the field as light cavalry. Besides, your average Hussar or Lancer JO is going to just as supercilious as the Blues and Royals.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus:
You doing SAT prep?
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Someone used it in reference to me once. I looked it up. You should see what Urban Dictionary says.
laura
@karen marie: That’s because I agree with you but needed to vent my spleen. There’s room for you and Rikyrah to sit together with me on my 18 foot long couch.
Tony Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Mmmmm. Looks like he’ll have to get Meghan’s people to talk to their agents and the cast of RED can do it. It’s crazy, but that’s the beauty of the scheme, no one would believe it.
I guess what I’m saying is I want John Malkovich to say something sneeringly final to Paul Dacre’s fat face a moment before Helen Mirren puts a bullet through his eye. That would please me.
@cain:
Yup. Vicious circle. Honest to Dog, the country never used to be this toxic.
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, the ones who study toads would.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: It takes all kinds, I guess.
James E Powell
@Steve in the ATL:
I’ve said a million times, hyperbole should be banned!
Manyakitty
@Ken: that might be enough to finally bring down the monarchy. 🤔
Gvg
@Citizen Alan: if that ever happened, most of the people who were for it would find themselves in debt peonage. They think they would be on top but its a gambler’s fever dream. And plantations went bankrupt or were sold off a lot. It was not a society that understood finance well and the current crop is a bunch of fools. Fantasy land nuts
mrmoshpotato
Maybe the Rethuglican sentient shitstains should go work the fields themselves!
NotMax
@Citizen Alan
Not Birth of a Nation?
Progress.
//
kalakal
@laura:
No need to eviscerate your opinion.
You’re spot on
Gvg
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: where did you go to school and when? Because I learned quite a lot in Florida public schools mostly white middle class 60’s thru 1980. I am sure it wasn’t as detailed as it could have been but not a lot seems to have been left out. Admittedly my cynical liberal dad raised in Jim Crow south did add a few details and would have raised a fuss if I hadn’t been getting what he thought I should be but still it wasn’t covered up in Orlando.
Gvg
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: and they can find out about sabotage next. Idiots. Crops can be easily destroyed in unprovable ways. There goes the margin of profit.
mrmoshpotato
@laura:
Yes. Absolutely correct. New EU laws were going to slap rich fuckers like BoJo (your unkempt hair isn’t fooling anyone, you asshole!) and Nigel Farage (fuck you too, you lying, racist shitstain!).
Ruckus
@smith:
I was quite young one Sunday drive when dad stopped by a, I think cotton farm and the 3 kids went and picked for a bit. I didn’t know the words pain in the ass at the time but I understood the concept. What it did was give me real respect for anyone that did jobs that were “not good enough” for the all too common white man. And I had for almost all of my working life, jobs that required scrubbing of hands with Borax and Lava soap, and work and non work clothing. Including working into my 70s.
laura
@Ruckus: this is the main reason why I have a space in the pocket of my heart for you. We salvaged the palmolive glass wall dry soap dispenser from casa spouse parents and borax is our jam! It does a great job on working hands – and that’s what I’ve got to show for all but my last couple of decades of work.
Ruckus
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Given the guy in charge in russia, given how well it’s going for him, giving that he only thinks one thing – that his shit doesn’t remotely stink, given that parts of his country are revolting, seemingly including some of his wealthy buddies – who are likely seeing the plush life they enjoy going down the drain for zero profit….. Given just the above I believe his life is rather limited and reports a while back were that he has inoperable cancer that is very likely to kill him soonish, given all that, I’d bet he thought this was a great idea. He likely is of the opinion that if he can’t have it, no one else can, so he’ll destroy whatever is not giving him what he wants. Just for the record, he is not a modern despot, willing to make things better for all as long as he benefits. He is a aged out, health poor despot, taking his last shot at ultimate power. And he seems to be losing that battle, his own country, and it is his till it’s taken away from him or he ceases to breathe, is seemingly not actually willing to follow him any longer, if for no other reason than he has absolutely lost the plot. Some will hang on to the bitter end because that’s the way it’s been there for far longer than anyone alive today, but all bad things come to an end one way or another, sooner or later.
dave319
@patrick II: Nailed it, Patrick. Xenophobia is strong juice too…..