Sunshine State Supremacy: The Rise of Florida

I could not be prouder of my beautiful home country, Florida.  As I am writing this article, the local news announced the signing of a bill designed to punish a degenerate rat in the center of our state.  The Florida House followed the Florida Senate with a bill to strip Disney of its sweetheart self-governance bill that included provisions such as self-certified construction permits, a complete in-state tax abatement, and its own, unregulated civic services departments (fire, police, EMTs, etc.).  Governor Ron DeSantis indicated he would sign the bill.  It is not just the Disney move, however, that has me so proud of the Sunshine State.  Throughout this article, I will lay out the recent steps Florida has taken which no other state has dared to do.  Florida grows more and more independent each day, and FLEXIT (Florida’s Exit) seems to be gaining support among normiecons and leftists alike.  Yet, before I cover the extraordinary moves Florida has made toward decoupling from the federal system, I want to gloat a little more about the Disney bill.

Moving forward, Disney will now have to deal with the same bureaucratic inertia they love supporting for everyone else.  Every time Disney wants to build a new ride or hotel, it will have to go through the county-to-state inspection process.  For Disney, that means they will have to work within the confines of Far Left Osceola and Orange Counties, where they will not only have to deal with local technocratic malaise, but also county board meetings that can be disrupted by “concerned citizens.”  One can easily see a new ride getting postponed indefinitely because Karen Steinberg is concerned about the impact of a new roller coaster on an obscure whale off the coast of Alaska.  More importantly, if Disney wants to get more aggressive in its child grooming content, conservative citizens can work within the system to effectively shut Disney down.  In effect, every time Disney wants to build, every anti-pedophilia activist can overflood board meetings to ensure Disney projects are completely halted.  The state, meanwhile, can slow or even halt Disney World activities with traffic impact studies on I-4, state sanctioned employee safety inspections, environmental assessments, etc., etc.  All of those agencies are led by one man whom Disney promised to help remove: Ron DeSantis.  But it gets better…

Heretofore, Disney has enjoyed its own police force.  It is also known for aggressively enforcing its amusement park rules.  As a private entity, Disney has enjoyed the luxury of limiting public exposure of incidents involving unruly Disney “guests,” and the enforcement mechanisms they use to extract said guests.  In fact, Disney has its own temporary jail system.  I suspect neither Osceola nor Orange Counties have the law enforcement capacity to absorb Disney’s vast responsibilities.  Consequently, most likely there will be a deputization process, by which Disney’s police force is effectively absorbed by a cross-county law enforcement agreement – much like that which governed law enforcement activity at Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport prior to the emergence of the TSA.  What does that mean for Disney? The first time they remove Shaquanda and Shaniqua for fighting over Tyrell, it will be a public event.  The first time they need to use aggressive control tactics on a noncompliant DeShawn, it will be a public event.  The first time they extricate a black family for unruly behavior, it will be a public event.  In other words, Disney should prepare for the Black Lives Matter treatment they have financially supported to put other amusement parks without sweetheart deals out of business.

As Harmonica noted in a related piece, where is Disney going to go?  Florida has the third lowest corporate tax structure.  Florida has no state income tax, so not only does Disney get away with paying its employees less than it does in high taxed California, but its executives also get to keep every dime not taken by the federal government.  Physically moving Disney is an impossibility.  Most importantly, the Covid-19 shutdowns proved Florida does not need Disney economically.  My country did just fine, even though some gay bars went out of business in Orlando. 

Still, there is more to tell.  Florida has done far more than just smack down a woke corporation.  Florida has increasingly divorced itself from the federal leviathan.  Unlike Greg Abbott’s moves in Texas, which seem gimmickry (e.g., bussing illegals to DC) and entirely about reelection in 2022, Florida has been making these moves since 2019.  Here are just a few highlights of the actions of an ascendant independent country.

Florida Left OSHA

In November 2021, DeSantis signed a bill, passed by the Florida legislature, that removed Florida from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).  Over the next two-to-five years, Florida will fully decouple from the voluntary association that no other so-called conservative governor has yet to do over the Covid-19 mandates that OSHA sought to impose.  Whereas approximately twenty-two states have their own OSHA-approved state plans (a means to save federal tax dollars by using local enforcement), it appears Florida intends to carve out its own path, complying with legally bound safety requirements.  In other words, in the event of another “pandemic,” Florida reserves the right to say, “No,” unless Congress passes a law to demand such action. 

Florida School Boards withdrawal from the National School Boards Association

The Florida School Boards Association (FSBA) decision to withdraw from the federally-backed National School Boards Association (NSBA) was not unique.  Twenty states did so after the NSBA asked the Biden Administration to direct the corrupt Department of Justice to investigate concerned parents over the woke agenda that was creeping into the curriculum.  Fourteen states followed through with their plans.  Our FSBA, however, not only unanimously chose to leave the entity (a rare unanimous decision), but did so immediately.  This act likely led to the next move by Florida.

Florida Rejected 40% of the 2022 Textbooks Approved by the U.S. Department of Education

The Florida Department of Education recently rejected 40% of new math textbooks for children K-5^th Grade because they contained LGBT and CRT propaganda into their lessons, as well as Common Core.  The U.S. Department of Education promoted these textbooks. Fifty-four of the One-hundred-thirty-two U.S. DOE approved textbooks were found to contain White hatred and pedophile grooming intermixed with lessons on arithmetic, division, and basic algebra.

Florida Health Department Rejected the “Gender-Confirmation Care” Program for Minors of the U.S. Health and Human Services

As recently as April 20^th, 2022, Florida rejected a program peddled by the federal government entitled “Gender-Confirmation Care.”  In that program, which is being adopted by Alabama, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Texas, Connecticut, Illinois, and the other forty-nine states, children are to be provided mental health counseling to help them transition even when such transgender transition is opposed by the parents.  Hormone suppressant therapies and other medical care will also get administered to children as young as five years old, with or without parental approval.  Florida’s Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo, told the federal government, “No!”

Florida Judge Lifted the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Mask Mandate

Although seated in a federal capacity, it should be noted that it was Florida-based Federal Judge, Kathryn Mizelle, who overturned the Biden Administration’s extension of a pointless mask mandate.  Ignoring that people sitting on a flying tube will not be saved from any illness thanks to a non-surgical grade mask lacking a fully sterile surgical environment, the Biden Admin sought to reimpose the shameful practice of masking on travelers.  Mrs. Mizelle, who was born and raised in Lakeland, Florida, put an end to the stupidity of the federal mask mandate.

Florida Rejected the Covid-related Federal Unemployment Extension

On May 24^th, 2021, DeSantis informed the federal government that Florida would not participate in the CARES Act, a program whereby unemployed persons were gifted an extra $300 a week, added to their Florida unemployment benefits.  The reason: Florida knows that individuals incentivized to do nothing, will not work.  The unemployment rate in Florida is 3.3% as of March 2022.  The unemployment rate in the United States is 3.6%.  The difference, however, is that the federal government’s labor participation rate of 62.4% is the lowest in the past 20 years.  Florida, by contrast, stands at 58.6% – about its historic norm, due to its large retiree population.  In other words, the federal government needed to strip people out of the workforce in order to make its unemployment numbers look better. 

Florida Recreates the State Guard

Florida has just reinstated the Florida State Guard.  Superficially, this seems like a nothing-burger.  Scratch deeper beyond the surface, however, and you will see a very interesting platform.  Whereas many states have State Guards, including Virginia, Ohio, Louisiana, and Alaska (among others), Florida’s State Guard has a unique mandate.  Florida is empowering its own weapons procurement program.  It has chosen not to outsource weapons purchases to the General Services Administration (GSA) or the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).  From what I can tell, Florida will be the only state to run its own weapons contracts.  Ostensibly, Florida chose to reinstate the State Guard to address natural disasters and civil unrest.  The former is intuitive. Florida is prone to hurricanes and tornadoes – which the federal government has already indicated a propensity not to address when it dislikes the political party in power.  The latter is likely tied to a new bill Florida passed in 2021.

Florida’s Anti-Riot Law of 2021

Billed as some crazed “fascist” suppression of AntiFa and Black Lives Matter, Florida’s Anti-Riot Law of 2021 does re-introduce the rule of law where the threat of extreme leftist violence can potentially manifest – as witnessed from Portland to Minneapolis, New York City to Atlanta.  In that law, which is lamented by the federal agencies that enjoy burning cities to the ground during election years, the state of Florida can charge an individual with a violation if, during a protest, the individual blocks traffic, initiates violence against counter-protestors, assaults law enforcement, or damages property.  Federal agents acting as rioters are not immune to state prosecution.  In addition, unlike states such as North Carolina, whereby communists tore down historic monuments in front of hapless deputies, Florida has a monument protection clause.  If you harm an historic monument in Florida, it is now a felony.  Although an Obama-appointed federal judge blocked the law temporarily, the law appears to have a good chance of being reinstated by the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals.  

Florida Stood Strong Against Covidian Insanity

Probably the most fantastic pushback of Florida occurred throughout the so-called Covid “pandemic.”  While the rest of the country seemed to lose its mind over an illness with a 99.97% survivability rate, Florida closed for about a month before reopening its businesses – beginning with partial openings and some limitations.  Shortly thereafter, Florida seemed to open fully.  With each new variant, leftist-run states shut down again – devastating small business owners, functional society, child development, relationships, and so much more. 

The draconian lockdowns led to increased suicides, alcoholism, drug addiction, and spousal abuse throughout the country.  Worse, various post-lockdown studies indicated that there was no net positive effect on Covid transmissions or related deaths when paranoid states forced closures.  The state that remained freest throughout the “pandemic,” Florida, had the largest immunocompromised population in the country (due to retirees) and the lowest proportional deaths and infections in the United States.  By contrast, New York and California were among the deadliest states in the world.  Despite various attempts by the federal government – Trump and Biden – to shut down the Florida economy, Florida said, “No.”  When Biden attempted to impose a new Covid order that would have forced vaccinations of employees with one-hundred employees or more, DeSantis led Florida out of OSHA, while the Florida legislature passed an employee protection act. 

In its totality, Florida has led nearly every anti-federal and anti-leftist initiative in the United States.  Are we perfect? Of course not.  No government is perfect.  DeSantis’ silly antisemitism bill, which only defined “antisemitism” and offered nothing more than to clarify the existing “hate crime” legislation to include Jews, is a meaningless bill. That stated, as with so many myopic Republicans, such political maneuvering is intended to excite the dispensationalist base, not excite Jews.  I am sure that the usual yahoos of the Alt-Right will complain about DeSantis sucking up to Jews, etc., etc.  Those who do so miss the point of this piece.  The people of Florida chose a governor and a legislative body that constantly rejects the federal government and leftist insanity.

If you had asked me back in 2000 which state would be further to the left in 2022 – Florida or Georgia – I would have sadly told you Florida.  Thank God I would have been wrong.  Florida is not just growing further rightwing, it has become the vanguard of truly conservative leadership.  I do not mean the wishy washy kind – although all political solutions are to some extent. I mean the “conserve” part of conservatism, with the temerity to standdown multi-billion-dollar child grooming cults.  The next step is to get leftists so angry that they trade Florida for Puerto Rico as a state –  #FreeFlorida… #VivaPuertoRicanStatehood.