03-20-2023 - Incursions on Democracy - Read a Newspaper - Basketball Violence

 

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A Reminder: Currently, I am sending out emails to about 60 individuals letting them know each time that a new posting has been published on JacksPotpourri.  Periodically, I ask that any readers of the blog who had not received an email notifying them that a new posting had been published let me know  so that I might advise them of new postings in the future.  I really would appreciate your doing that.  Reach me at jacklippman18@gmail.com.  Thanks.

Jack Lippman

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Incursions on Democracy and Your Remedy to Them

Watching the actions of the governor of Florida, his compliant State Legislature and the voters who have elected them, it is clear that Florida is not unhappy with a reduction of democracy in that State, apparently contradicting the popular will and interests of the majority of its residents.

It is increasingly apparent that the safeguards built into the Florida Constitution are being overturned.  Appeals to State government agencies for at least transparency are likely to fall on deaf ears.  The courts of the State have been taken over by the right wing.

It is hoped that the Florida situation is not representative of the rest of the United States and only peculiar to that State’s government.  It is difficult to blame this upon ignorance, gullibility, or stupidity when clearly, it is what the voters, not necessarily the majority of residents, of Florida have voted for.

The remaining bulwarks protecting democracy are the State’s newspapers.  It is absolutely necessary that Florida residents read a daily newspaper, either in its print or online version.  The Sun-Sentinel, the Palm Beach Post and the local papers in Tampa, Orlando,  and Jacksonville fill this need.  Without them, citizens remain uninformed of how democracy is being attacked in Florida.

If you cherish democracy in Florida, you MUST read a Florida newspaper every day.  What the State government in Tallahassee is doing is only reported truthfully by in these papers.  What the government tells residents is merely right-wing propaganda. You need to read newspapers.

(In dictatorships throughout history, foes of democracy have always attacked and eventually controlled newspapers.  Florida has started down that path with legislation limiting blogs with political contact that are ‘financially supported.’  Watch out. They want to go further.)

JL

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Basketball Violence

In the past I have criticized college football because of the excessive violence it involves in tackling, trying to create fumbles, and in ‘pass interference’ situations.  It’s time to include college basketball in that complaint.

There’s plenty of it on TV in the NCAA Basketball Tournament.  Notice the efforts made to stop a player who is attempting to drive in for a ‘lay-up’ in ‘the paint’ and the efforts of such players to force the shot blocker out of the way. Both situations, sometimes resulting in a foul being called, sometimes not, are unlike the blocking one sees in football line play.  That’s not the way basketball was supposed to be played.

Professional football and basketball tolerate more violence but that’s what their players are paid for.  It pleases the crowd, but it has no place in college football or basketball, unless we finally acknowledge that these college sports are no more than training grounds for future professional activity, and not just adjuncts to getting an education.

Pickett

A college basketball player whom I admire is Penn State’s Jaylen Pickett.  But looking at him, he transferred last year to that school from Siena College, where he had been playing, through the ‘transfer portal,’ which allows established college athletes to announce their availability to be recruited by other schools.  I believe the ‘transfer portal,’ is damaging to college sports. It makes being on a winning team, more visible to professional scouts, more important than the college whose jersey the player wears and which is giving him a free ride for a four year education. 

Also, even before college, some such athletes attend specialized private schools which concentrate on developing their athletic abilities, either on a post-high school basis or as part of a high school program.  Pickett attended such a program (Spire Institute in Ohio) before attending Siena.  There is even athletic competition between such programs at a level above that of usual high school sports to sharpen players’ skills.

We should not close our eyes to the professionalism which has infected college sports in this country.  It is the opposite of the success of immigrants and children of immigrants who treat college as an educational experience, especially in scientific, technical, engineering and mathematical areas, rather than something intertwined with competitive athletics.  The road to a successful career is far, far, narrower through athletics than through the real purpose of colleges, education.  

You can see what is happening by noting the names of prominent physicians in the nation's best hospitals as well as the names of those scientists involved in important research.

JL

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Housekeeping               

Email Alerts:  If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do.  And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted.  ( You can pass those email addresses to me by email at             jacklippman18@gmail.com . )

 

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. 

If you want to send someone the blog, exactly as you are now seeing it, with all of its bells and whistles, you can just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a link to that address in your email to them.

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it too!   Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible.  If you click on the envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, (it looks like this:  ), you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses, along with a comment from you, each of which will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you now are reading, but without the illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the ‘sidebar’ features such as access to the blog’s archives.

Either way will work, sending them that link or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting.  Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. 

             Have a nice day!

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JL

 

        

03-15-2023 - The Silicon Valley Bank Failure, My Anti-Republican Rant, and Some local Election Information for my Community Neighbors

 

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 (Before I get into the following article about the Silicon Valley Bank failure, let me quickly remind readers how banks operate.  Banks take in money by using the funds sitting in people’s savings and checking accounts and charging for services such as credit cards.  Same goes for their business clients. They use this money to provide mortgages and other loans, profiting from the interest they charge.  They try to keep their money working all of the time to make more money.  They start off with money borrowed from the Treasury Department at what is called the prime rate, and continue to borrow from the government in that manner, the interest rate of which they juice up  and pass on to those to whom they make loans. Because most of their money is tied up in such loans, they do have to keep some on hand to carry on day-to-day business. Such money is supposedly invested in conservative instruments like Treasury bonds and other very conservative bonds.  They never have enough on hand to satisfy all those whose savings and checking accounts they have, at one time, so how they invest what they have is important, at least from a liquidity standpoint, should the need arise to sell their bonds to have the funds with which to operate. This is where regulations come in. You probably knew all of this but I felt obligated to mention it.  Please now proceed to read on.)

Why the Silicon Valley Bank Failed 

Many observers of Silicon Valley Bank’s failure note that the 2018 loosening of banking regulations that had been imposed after the 2008 crash paved the way for that bank’s troubles. One of the lobbyists for this loosening was Greg Becker, who until Friday was the person in charge of Silicon Valley Bank. The best article on this that I have seen appeared in Newsweek Magazine and is reproduced here from that magazine’s website. 

Republican apologists for the bank, including the otherwise respectable Wall Street Journal, have been saying that the inclusion of a few members of minority groups on Silicon Valley Bank’s Board, and the shifting of some investments to bonds issued by environmentally and socially concerned companies caused its failure.  That is pure bullshit, provided by the Journal to give cover to its FoxNews cousin (they share the same ownership) giving them something about which to bellow.

Very simply, Silicon Valley invested heavily in Treasury bonds right before the Federal Reserve started raising the interest rates on the bonds that banks purchase, reducing the value of those bonds already on the market that were paying less interest, including the ones held by Silicon Valley Bank. They found that when they needed the funds invested in those bonds to operate, they had lost their liquidity because of the lower interest rate they paid, and could not be easily sold, and as a result, they could no longer do day-to-day business.  The bank did not do anything malicious. All it did was invest stupidly, not paying attention to the risks the bond market always poses.  

Just as there are doctors and lawyers and financial advisors who aren't as bright as we (or they) think they are, there are dumb bankers too. Perhaps that is why they all wear conservative dark suits.  See the last sentence of the article.  I've colored it pink.  It tells the whole story. They just were not paying attention.  Here is the Newsweek article:

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Trump Era Roll Back of Bank Regulations Resurfaces Amid SVB Collapse (by Thomas Kika 3/11/23 -1:20 P.M. EST)

   “Amid the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), some commentators have claimed a Trump-era rollback of financial regulations may have contributed to the situation.

   While largely unknown outside California's Silicon Valley tech corridor, SVB has for decades been a go-to financial institution for the country's technology and health start-ups. One of the 20 biggest banks in the United States, it had over $200 billion in assets by the end of last year, according to CNN.

   As of Friday, however, SVB was left in freefall as clients began a run on the institution, spurred on by higher interest rates and other factors, resulting in a spiraling chain reaction that has threatened to sink the institution and leave its customers in financial jeopardy.

   In the fallout of Friday's run on the bank, some reports noted that a rollback of banking regulations by former President Donald Trump might have weakened SVB's ability to manage risks associated with interest rates. In 2018, according to The New York Times, Trump signed a bill that axed regulatory requirements for regional banks with less than $250 billion in assets.

   Under the new rules, such institutions no longer had to submit to "stress testing" by the Federal Reserve and were no longer required to keep a certain amount of cash on hand to protect against the effects of financial shocks, the newspaper reported.

   The Times noted in its report that the bill was championed by SVB CEO Greg Becker. Becker had pressed lawmakers in Congress to lessen regulation that placed higher scrutiny on certain banks, claiming that SVB had a "low risk profile of our activities and business model." By 2018, his bank had spent roughly $500,000 to lobby for the changes that Trump ultimately signed into law, according to The Lever, an investigative news outlet.

   The rules rolled back by the bill were first introduced in 2010 by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a sweeping reform law signed by former President Barack Obama to address issues in the financial sector in the wake of the 2007-2008 global financial crisis and the Great Recession. As noted in a tweet on Saturday from businessman and former Obama economic adviser Robert Wolf, the Dodd-Frank Act originally required banks with over $50 billion in assets to submit to stress testing.

   As of Saturday afternoon, Trump has not commented on SVB. Newsweek reached out to his communications team via email for comment.

   In the wake of the run, California regulators shut down SVB and turned over control of it to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). It has since been reported that the bank had not employed a chief risk officer in the months leading up to Friday's collapse and had not insured roughly 90 percent of its deposits.” 

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It is pretty clear to me that Republican distaste for regulation of businesses, including banking and the financial marketplace, is the cause of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, and the other banks which have gone under during the past few days for the same reasons.  This is another reason that those who believe in democracy should never, ever, vote for a party like today’s Republican Party, that does not work in the interests of the people, but exists only to serve its major donors.

President Biden assures the nation that no one will suffer because of these bank failures.  Not so!  Between the Federal Reserve Bank and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), no customer of these banks will be hurt, it is claimed, even though there is no legal basis for bailing them out (above the FDIC's $250,000 limit).  Of course, that means that ultimately, it will be the taxpayer who pays to put Humpty-Dumpty together again, just as they did to resolve the 2008 financial crisis, caused by the callous packaging of the mortgage debt of those who couldn’t afford to make their mortgage payments, bundled together into a marketable instrument (they call that 'collaterizing') with a fancy name and a red ribbon.  

Irresponsible behavior, be it intentional or just stupid, will be encouraged when there is the expectation that the government will step in to bail them out in protecting the larger economy.  

Government Regulation is the only answer. and voting for Republicans is never the way to get there.

JL

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This Started Sanely and Turned into a Rant

Most newspapers, and liberals throughout the country, just don't get it. They see rights being trampled by State legislatures, of which Florida provides a prime example. 

But they forget that Florida voters overwhelmingly turned Republican last year. Rather than explaining away this by calling Florida voters ignorant, gullible, or even stupid for consistently voting for candidates whose positions are usually against their interests, WE SHOULD RECOGNIZE THAT FLORIDIANS MAY ACTUALLY LIKE IT THAT WAY!

They consistently prove at the ballot box that they are against the equality mentioned in the Declaration of Independence and are driven by the hatreds and fears of what equality would bring about, and are very comfortable with undemocratic forms of government, guns, political Christianity, and look forward to week-end football violence. That's why DeSantis will certainly get away with his book banning, his gay-bashing, his objections to American history’s truths, and his firing of the State Prosecutor in Tampa for political reasons, even if these matters go to the highest courts of Florida and the Nation. It's no coincidence that the defeated former president and the late Rush Limbaugh felt at home in Florida. Ugh.

Limbaugh and the 45th president

In Florida, voters support a Republican party whose policies are patterned after Hungary’s supposedly democratic, but actually authoritarian, Prime Minister, Viktor Orban.  Compare what Orban says with what DeSantis says. You won’t see much difference.  Floridians have legitimately elected a governor, large majorities in both houses of the State legislature, two senators and a disproportionately large majority of the State's representatives in Congress from the right wing of the Republican party.  They do that because either (1) they do not trust the equality which true democracy brings and fear it, or (2) they don't know the facts and support agendas that are not in their best interests. 

In my opinion, most Florida Republican voters are in the second category.  They just don’t know the facts.  Not many read daily newspapers any longer so they are dependent upon TV and to a lesser extent, the internet for news. Thus far the First Amendment protects these sources of misinformation, but perhaps the imminent downfall of Fox News in the Dominion litigation, and the disappearance of its liars from TV, will start the ball rolling in the other direction and lies will be recognized as lies. (See how Shakespeare approached this problem in this blog’s previous posting.  Note how he told the truth, just to set things straight, before he proceeded to lie.)  

As for those who honestly do not believe the Declaration of Independence’s words that “all men are created equal,” or even that all men should have the opportunity to achieve that equality, all we can do is hope that some day they will cease being mentally asleep and wake up to reality.  

That requires them to stop bashing Critical Race Theory and efforts toward Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, as if they were some subversive un-American conspiracy.  That is precisely why those on the right attack public education, devote great efforts to pulling books from the shelves, condemning ‘waking up,’ and thusly try to convert young people to the idea that becoming ‘woke’ is something evil.  Those right-wingers who send me 'news' articles from totally irresponsible sources are among the mentally asleep and need to be ‘woke.'  How to do this without violating their 'rights' is a challenge.  The Chinese do it with 're-education' camps but we are not into that kind of thing.

I hope that what appears to be going on in Florida is not happening in the rest of the United States.  That would be terrible.  And that's my rant!

JL                  

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If you don't live in the Cascade Lakes community in sunny Florida, you can skip the following piece.  Just forward the blog to someone. 

Thoughts After Candidates' Night

For those of the blog’s followers who reside in Cascade Lakes, here are this blogger’s thoughts on the upcoming election of three Directors for its Board.  I listened to all of them speak and answer questions at the community’s Candidates’ night, at which I was honored to serve as timekeeper for the speakers.

Three incumbent Board members are each running for two-year seats on the Board.  Their positions are based on what they claim to be the present Board’s accomplishments.  As with the case with anyone involved in any level of governance, if one looks closely enough at them, flaws can be found in any candidate.  Whether residents consider such flaws to be sufficient reason to not vote for a candidate is a decision they will have to personally make, balancing it with the Board’s supposed accomplishments and how the voter might view those accomplishments.    

There are five other candidates, one of whom has a strong record of experience serving on the community’s Committees, in its Clubs, and in the management of the community running back more than twenty years. The other four, despite their personal attributes and sincerity, have no prior experience whatsoever on Cascade Lakes’ Committees or in the management of the community. 

I have already filled out my ballot.  If any of you are interested in how I voted, you can ask me privately.

JL                  

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Email Alerts:  If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do.  And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted.  ( You can pass those email addresses to me by email at             jacklippman18@gmail.com . )

 

Forwarding Postings: And of course, please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. 

If you want to send someone the blog, exactly as you are now seeing it, with all of its bells and whistles, you can just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a link to that address in your email to them.

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it too!   Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible.  If you click on the envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, (it looks like this:  ), you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses, along with a comment from you, each of which will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you now are reading, but without the illustrations, colors, or variations in typography.

Either way will work, sending them that link or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting.  Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. 

                    
         Have a nice day.

  

03-08-2023 - Voting By Mail, a Politickler, a Cerabino Column and Homage to Shakespeare

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Now is the Time to Check on Voting by Mail

Many registered voters in Florida prefer to ‘vote by mail,’ but the ability to do so can expire without the voter being aware of it.  By visiting https://www.pbcelections.org/Voters/Vote-By-Mail, or by just CLICKING HERE, Palm Beach County residents can update their ‘voting by mail status,’ or find out whether they have already done so.  (I found that I was okay to vote by mail until Dec. 31, 2024.)  Don’t make any assumptions.  Go to the site and sign up to vote by mail;  if you already have done so, the site will tell you so.

Florida’s anti-democratic Republican politicians routinely attempt to make it harder to vote. This is only one of the traps they set, like making it a crime to offer a bottle of water to someone standing in the hot sun in a voting line on Election Day. That is why this is important.

If you vote elsewhere in Florida, contact your county Supervisor of Elections.  Elsewhere in the country, contact the appropriate State agency.

JL                  

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Shakespeare Would Definitely Understand 2023

Let's talk about William Shakespeare who would be right at home in the middle of today’s political debates between the defenders of democracy in the United States and its assailants.  This will not be as painful as it sounds.  Stick with it!

Shakespeare’s language, although English, is the English of over four centuries ago so it sometimes is hard to understand.  But stick with me.  I will help you out later on in this posting.

 Shakespeare wrote about 35 plays, many of them tragedies like ‘Hamlet’ or ‘King Lear’ and many of them lighter fare, comedies such as ‘As You Like It’ or ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ But he also wrote plays that dealt with politics.  That was tricky business because writing the wrong thing in those days could result in one’s head being chopped off.  So he set these political plays a couple of centuries earlier and presented them as ‘historical plays.’ Two of them, Henry IV - Part 1, and the very beginning of Henry IV - Part 2, are the subject of this posting.

Here’s a very brief summary of those two plays.  Henry IV (also known as Harry or Bolingbroke) came to the throne through his predecessor’s murder which he had engineered and as a result, had enemies who were out to get him.  He managed to defeat the army of Henry Percy (also known as Hotspur) who wanted to replace him as King.  That’s where Part 1 ends.  Part 2 dealt with what happened thereafter, including his conquest of France, and ended with his death, to be succeeded by his son, Henry V (also known as Hal.)  Got it?  (If you’re really interested, read both plays and learn all about Falstaff, Shakespeare’s comedy lead, and that day’s version of a would-be Steve Bannon.  In Shakespeare’s next play, Henry V, we learn of Falstaff’s death.)

Shakespeare introduced Henry IV Part 2 with an ‘induction’ that is reproduced below.  It was spoken by an actor, called ‘Rumour’ who was dressed in a cloak covered with images of tongues.  Get it?  Tongues spread rumors.  He might have been wearing a MAGA hat as well.  Here are the words Shakespeare put into his mouth, with my comments inserted in red to help guide you through it.  I have also broken the speech into paragraphs.  This stuff is really pertinent today!  Here goes.

  "Enter RUMOUR, painted full of tongues

Rumour: Open your ears; for which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?
I, from the orient to the drooping west,
Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold
The acts commenced on this ball of earth. (everywhere, I’m saying)
Upon my tongues continual slanders ride, (I am a liar)
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports. (He’s proud to be a liar and he’s talking about the kind of lies our defeated former president tells and that his followers repeat.  Big lies)

I speak of peace while covert emnity,  (I talk peace, but mean war)
Under the smile of safety, wounds the world; (my good words are harmful) And who but Rumour, who but only I,
Make fearful musters and prepar'd defence,
Whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief,
Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war, (I hide preparations for war ... these are Shakespeare’s political ‘peacenik’ political comments.)

And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe (like a wind instrument)
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, (as you find daily on Fox)
And of so easy and so plain a stop (as with the holes fingered by blowers on the pipe)
That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wav'ring multitude, (like the many who watch Fox)
Can play upon it. (and even be able to repeat it.  It's simple like the instrument shown above)  But what need I thus
My well-known body to anatomize (explain)
Among my household? (you already know I lie) Why (then) is Rumour here?

(and here is where Rumour stops lying)  I run before King Harry's victory, (carrying the news of it)
Who, in a bloody field by Shrewsbury, (that’s where Henry IV defeated and killed Henry Percy, Hotspur) Hath beaten down young Hotspur and his troops,
Quenching the flame of bold rebellion
Even with the rebels' blood. But what mean I
To speak so true at first? (But why am I telling you the truth anyway? That’s not what I usually do.  I am in the business of lying) 

My office (official task) is to noise abroad (spread the rumor) that Harry Monmouth (Henry IV was from that region of the British Isles) fell
Under the wrath of noble Hotspur's sword, (a big lie)
And that the King before the Douglas' (one of Hotspur’s associates) rage
Stoop'd his anointed head as low as death. (another lie)
This have I rumour'd through the peasant towns (I guess I’m back to spreading lies to the gullible believers in what were then the red States of England) Between that royal field of Shrewsbury (I am back to spreading these lies everywhere) And this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone, (an old castle – like Mar-a-Lago?)
Where Hotspur's father, old Northumberland, (still bitter over how Henry IV got the throne … or the defeated former president, sulking there, still denies losing the 2020 election.  Both liked hearing lies.)
Lies crafty-sick (mentally anyway). The posts come tiring on, (it’s all over the news on TV and online)
And not a man of them brings other news
Than they have learnt of me. (All they report are the lies I’ve made up, even though I knew the truth, like Rupert Murdoch) From Rumour's tongues
They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs. (smoothly reporting lies, like Tucker Carlson does, a worse thing to do than to tell the truth)"

I suppose that last line explains why Rumour, whose voice was obviously that of Shakespeare, did tell the audience the truth about the battle before he reverted to his role as a liar.  Rumour, in this speech, apparently did have a conscience.  Today, Attorney-General Garland is still seeking a liar with conscience enough to finally speak the truth.

Quite a fellow, that Shakespeare, a man for his time and for ours as well.  Maybe he should have a time slot on MSNBC.

JL    

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Politicklers

The Florida legislator who introduced legislation requiring blogs (which were compensated in some manner) that included political commentary on Governor DeSantis and his crew in Tallahassee to register and file monthly reports … is the same fellow who was connected with the stealing of elections from Democrats by running phony third party candidate to siphon off some of their votes.  Election fraud is a way of life with him.   (A Frank Cerabino column from the Palm Beach Post on this subject is included at the end of this article.)

While I am not certain that this legislation regarding blogs has DeSantis’ support, it certainly serves as an evil warning for Floridians.  In Nazi Germany during the 1930s, those wise enough to sense such warnings left the country and avoided the Holocaust a few years in the future.

Would you want Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, or their ilk in the White House?  Of course not!  Remember that Ron DeSantis was one of this unsavory team before he decided to leave Congress and run for governor.  Politically, he is still with them and that is reason enough for Americans of all political persuasions to see that he does not get the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, and if he does, to work for his defeat.

That’s difficult in Florida where DeSantis controls both Houses of the Legislature.  The Democrats do not even have a State-wide leader to head up a ‘shadow’ government working for legislation that is in the interest of most Floridians.  Both Nikki Fried and Charlie Crist were flawed candidates but the Democrats had no one better with which to oppose DeSantis last year.  So they lost.

The Cerabino column:

First they came for the bloggers

"If you’re a political blogger in Florida, look out. You may be next.

It’s hard to keep up with the forays into authoritarian dystopia going on here in the “free state of Florida.” But I’ve found that a good rule of thumb is to allow that anything is possible. So, I wasn’t completely surprised by a new proposed state law that would require bloggers to register with the state if they write anything about Gov. DeSantis, his cabinet or his Republican-controlled state legislature.

Sure, it’s cartoonishly anti-American but DeSantis has already made it known he wants to find new ways to muzzle any disobedient voices in the media.

“We’ve seen over the last generation legacy media outlets increasingly divorce themselves from the truth and instead try to elevate preferred narratives and partisan activism over reporting the facts,” DeSantis said last month as a way to chum the waters.

So, why not start at the fringes by going after the ones least able to defend themselves, the bloggers? Put on your pants and come out of your bedroom. They’re comin’ for you, fellas.

Not surprising. That’s what bullies do. But it is shocking to see just how ham-handed this effort is.

Maybe that’s why after a week of blistering bad press over the bill, DeSantis backed away from it on Tuesday, saying that he doesn’t support it.

The attack on bloggers is buried in an otherwise innocuous bill that makes some cosmetic changes to the timing and frequency of the printed public notices that are required for government agencies to make about sales of land.

That goes on for nearly the first five pages of the nine-page, Senate Bill 1316 bill. Then, surprise, surprise! The rest of the rest of the bill is devoted to creating an unrelated mechanism for the state registration of bloggers.

Political bloggers who don’t register would accrue state fines

A blog is defined in the bill as a website or webpage that “hosts any blogger and is frequently updated with opinion, commentary or business content.”

The bill exempts websites of newspapers as falling under its dragnet.

“If a blogger posts to a blog about an elected state officer and receives, or will receive, compensation for that post, the blogger must register with the appropriate office,” it reads.

It goes on to require bloggers to file monthly reports “on the 10th day following the end of each calendar month from the time the blog post is added to the blog.”

In the filing to the state Ethics Commission, bloggers are required to disclose any monetary or other compensation they get, and the identities of those who support the blog.

Late or missing reports would accrue a $25-per-day fine that would cap at $2,500 per month.

If you think this is reasonable, that the state has a vested interest in weeding out the financial underpinnings of any blogger who has the temerity to question or criticize DeSantis and his wet-noodle enablers, consider this: The sponsor of this bill aimed at finding dark money in political blogging is Jason Brodeur, a guy who ought to be the last guy picked to accomplish this dirty work.

An unlikely champion for political transparency emerges

Brodeur, a state senator from a district that includes parts of Orange and Seminole counties, was at the heart of a secret plot to fool voters in key senate races by financing sham shadow candidates during the 2020 elections.

The Seminole County Republican Chairman Ben Paris was convicted of election fraud in creating a sham independent candidate in a three-way race as a way to siphon votes from the Democratic candidate in Brodeur’s successful election effort.

The sham candidate, Jestine Iannotti, was pictured as a Black woman in election mailings sent to Democrats, when she was in fact white and planning to move to Sweden after the election. She accepted the $1,200 filing fee to get in the race through a political operative trying to get Brodeur elected.

This is part of a larger plot where some $500,000 in dark money was used by shadowy groups to break election laws to fund sham campaigns to help Republican candidates.

By the way, none of this has been investigated by DeSantis’ and his crack election crimes unit. Talk about being divorced from the truth.

Convicted fraudster, Joel Greenberg, the former Seminole County Tax Collector now serving an 11-year sentence, testified in a deposition that Brodeur was part of the planning for the fake candidate in his race, a contention that Brodeur has denied.

“Brodeur was there,” Greenberg testified. “Present in the conversation, just like he’d be sitting around this table.”

So, making Brodeur the sponsor of the bill that tries to make blogging look like political puppetry seems like a stupid idea. Even for Florida.

C’mon, Republicans. You’re not even making a modest effort at being credible anymore.

You’ve got 28 of the 40 seats in the Florida Senate. With those kind of numbers, you ought to be able to find a secret-funding sleuth better suited than Brodeur to lead on this issue.

The way it stands now, you’ve put a ridiculous bill in the hands of a ridiculous advocate.

At the risk of setting myself up for future registration requirements with Florida’s goon squad, I’m asking very reverentially if there’s some secret contest you’re all having to see who can demonstrate the least respect for the intelligence of Floridians."

Frank Cerabino is a columnist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at fcerabino@gannett.com.

 JL                  

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