150 MPH makes Ian almost as destructive as the Roberts' Supreme Court
Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) voted against funding for Florida to rebuild and recover after Hurricane Ian. Senator Marco Rubio was a no-show for the vote. Every Republican member of the House of Reps from Florida - 16 of ‘em - also voted against it.
We do, indeed, live in WhatTheHell times.
At least 72 Floridians were killed by the storm. The hurricane caused more than $55 billion in damage. Sanibel Island, with its 7,000 residents, is currently considered ‘not habitable’.
Appearing on ABC This Week today, here’s Rubio comparing it to past hurricanes::
"I don't think it has a comparison, not in Florida," Rubio, R-Fla., told "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl. "Fort Myers Beach no longer exists. It'll have to be rebuilt. It'll be something different. It was a slice of old Florida that you can't recapture."
And:
"FEMA has -- they've all been great," Rubio said on Sunday. "The federal response from day one is very positive ... and we're grateful for that."
And no Florida Republican favors funding the rebuilds. That’s just nuts.
A night in a San Antonio hotel and a meal or two isn’t likely to set you back more than $250. From there, take a flight in coach to a tourist haven like Martha’s Vineyard and your grand total still isn’t more than $800.
Now multiply that by 48 and you’re still under $40,000. Yet Florida allocated $12 million for a program to ship migrant refugees from Florida to Massachusetts to make a point, supposedly. Except they didn’t even do that, in violation of that new appropriation.
They hired an ex-Army intel agent, sent her to Texas to recruit 48 migrants for a charter jet flight, and likely violated a law against human trafficking. And the exorbitant cost for that charter jet use apparently was a payback for the jet’s owner who contributes to the campaigns of guys like Florida Governor DeSantis.
So there was a whole lot more than a political stunt going on.
Why did an intel agent use her real first name? An unusual first name, too. It seems to me she wanted to be outed, perhaps to offer her services for hire by other politicians who think nothing of blowing $12 million of Florida taxpayer dollars to fill the bank account of a friend.
It’s a good pitch for the 16 US Representatives and two US Senators from Florida that just voted against funding federal funding of their hurricane relief needs. Now they know they can create a slush fund to send Perla to Texas to get its crooked state Attorney General - Ken Paxton - out of the state so he can avoid more court summons without sweating so much.
They can ship him on a charter jet to a sanctuary country like Russia or Saudi Arabia. The latter famously took in former cannibal Idi Amin so surely they can find room for a petty thief like Paxton.
Perla’s Perpetual Vacation Express will be happy to be of service. And screw you, Florida taxpayers. You’re paying for DeSantis Socialism. And you’ll like it. Or else.
Today is the first Monday in October so you must know what that means, right?
It’s time for the annual Supremes reunion!
Ruth Marcus at WaPo:
Last term, in addition to overruling Roe v. Wade, the conservative majority expanded gun rights, imposed severe new constraints on the power of regulatory agencies and further dismantled the wall of separation between church and state.
On the power of regulatory agencies sounds so benign till you understand the case was specifically the EPA which has been a champion of clean air, land and water for just as long as Roe v. Wade.
Beyond all the squawk about ‘originalism’ with a court loaded with justices claiming the authors of the Constitution had it right all along, we’re actually seeing them practice ‘dirigiblism’, where the activist conservative judges can inflate everything into a religious argument and take us back to the original intent of the authors of the Old Testament. Slavery, incest, rape, child sacrifice, all of it. And you know the Old Testes meant nobody has to make a wedding cake for a gay couple because that’ll certainly lead to the worst evils on earth like estate taxes on the ultra-wealthy and raises in the minimum wage.
The Supremes intend to rule that lifesaving arks are limited to one per planet because so many human babies are just evil.
Marcus again:
for now, the court is marching on toward fresh territory, taking on race, gay rights and the fundamental structures of democracy — this even as the shock waves of the abortion ruling reverberate through our politics and lower courts grapple with a transformed legal regime. And there’s every indication that the court intends to adopt changes nearly as substantial — and as long sought by conservatives — as those of last term.
And:
As much as the previous term was dominated by the decision to overrule Roe, the overriding theme of the coming term will be race — with one major case on the constitutionality of weighing race as a factor in college admission and another on the fate of the remaining shreds of the Voting Rights Act.
Both implicate the same fundamental question: Does the Constitution and federal law impose an unyielding insistence on colorblindness? Or should the nation’s history of racial discrimination and its lingering pernicious effects permit some flexibility to allow consideration of race?
This majority is certain it knows the answer. Race is a triggering issue for the conservative justices, one that rivals abortion in the intensity of response that it evokes. They have made a near fetish of Justice John Marshall Harlan’s famous 1896 admonition in Plessy v. Ferguson that “our Constitution is colorblind” — somehow forgetting that statement came in the context of arguing against state-compelled segregation of rail cars, what Harlan termed “a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with ... the equality before the law established by the Constitution.” These justices are offended by the notion of allowing any consideration of race, whether the motive is malign or benevolent.
And more specifically:
The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, guarantees to every person the “equal protection of the laws.” During that very period, however, those defending race-conscious admissions point out, Congress and states also enacted special programs to help newly freed enslaved people and other Black citizens.
Don’t count on that swaying this court. “One of the striking things in this area is that originalists do not bring their usual apparatus to bear on these questions,” said Yale Law School professor Justin Driver.
The second race case, to be argued Oct. 4, concerns Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It, too, demonstrates how newly aggressive conservative states and other parties are pushing the majority to deploy the equal protection clause not as a weapon for assuring minority rights but as a guise for retrenching on them.
And she notes how bad it’s likely to get. After citing several examples, she writes:
Forget the years of Republican railing about activist judges legislating from the bench. This majority is perfectly willing to rewrite laws it doesn’t like (see its work on the Voting Rights Act) and ignore statutory text when that is inconvenient (see last term’s climate change case). It insists that constitutional interpretation must be constrained by history, but it cherry-picks that history (see last term’s gun case) in a predictable direction. It is willing to ignore its own rules about lightly discarding precedents when it has amassed enough votes to do so (see Dobbs).
Welcome to dirigiblism: “Oh the humanity!” that’s about to be blown up or burned to a crisp.
(Note: Ian damage photos lacking photographer attribution came from social media)
And now for some worthy originals.