My natural inclination is toward black gallows humor in situations like these, but I have to keep reminding myself that a lot of people are going to get harmed and laughing is an unacceptable faux pas.
I also have to remind myself that “not knowing what to do with all these feels” may result in unhelpful reactions.
Yet I still want to stand on DeSantis’ head and shout “what the hell did you damn well expect you fucking troglodyte”. Feelings are tricky.
4.6 million people voted for desantis, and 21 million people live in Florida. Less than a quarter of the people that live in the state voted him into office. It is deeply unfair to say “a lot of people voted him into office” because it ignores the people that are affected by this decision and either voted against it, can’t do anything about it, or just didn’t. I know you said most people don’t vote at all but Florida isn’t a monolith and it’s really important to remember that when things like this negatively affect millions of people that either didn’t want this to happen or had no say.
At some point, people need to take responsibility for their government. DeSantis won by 19 points with >50% turnout. That’s pretty convincing to me. Florida is no longer a swing state. GOPers moved their in droves because of DeSantis’ politics.
Sure, to an extent, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t also be empathetic to those of whom who are adversely affected by this and didn’t really have a say in the matter – kids are an example I brought up in another comment, but all of the victims of voter suppression as well. Florida should be responsible for platforming desantis but that doesn’t mean that florida deserves desantis.
You realise voter suppression is a thing right? It’s unfair to say these people asked for it. It’s also unfair to everyone stuck there and too poor to leave, or don’t want to leave because it’s their home.
1.4 million in florida have felony convictions, and a disproportionate number are minorities in florida. Then 1.8 million non-citizen immigrants in Florida, from Mexico or Cuba or other places in the Carribean. And that’s not including the people that didn’t vote because of local efforts of voter suppression, which is a nebulous number but still statistically significant.
The 21 million includes everyone, not just registered voters. Until 2015, I couldn’t vote because I wasn’t a citizen. Still had to live with the shitty policies that Floridian politicians passed into law.
By these people not voting, we assume that they are OK with how things are going in their state. In which case, they asked for it.
people have already chimed in but, as just one example of how not-clearcut this is: Florida essentially refused to implement a policy which was democratically passed that enfranchised felons. Florida has over 1 million felons, a disproportionate number of whom are black and would otherwise likely vote Democratic. when they finally had to implement the policy, they made it much harder for felons to be re-enfranchised (against the will of voters)—such that in practice, the state maintains a ban on voting while being a felon which disproportionately impacts Democratic voters. you cannot seriously blame people for the situation the state is in, except in a very abstract sense.
Unless I’m mistaken, the vast majority of the people who own houses, and therefore stand to lose them, are middle-class white people with no criminal record, not black people or felons.
i have absolutely no idea what point you’re trying to raise here when the context of the conversation is whether the people of Florida, collectively, deserve to suffer for voting in the wrong guy when:
the vast majority of them explicitly didn’t vote for the guy, and;
large—and literally decisive—numbers of them were legally disenfranchised from voting against the guy and continue to be disenfranchised under Florida law. DeSantis won the gubernatorial election in 2018 by approximately 32,000 votes against a million felons, many of whom are Black.
My argument is that the people who now stand to lose their homes are not the same people who have been disenfranchised.
Black felons did not vote for DeSantis, but the wealthy white law-abiding homeowners who are now losing their homes did vote for DeSantis, unless I’m mistaken.
My argument is that the people who now stand to lose their homes are not the same people who have been disenfranchised.
then that’s a fundamentally incorrect understanding of the situation and of how class and race disparities are going to play out during the climate crisis. white, middle-class homeowners aren’t going to lose their homes—and if they do they’re just going to move because they have the capital to do that even at a loss. the people who are going to lose their homes, or who will be stuck in their position even if they need to leave will overwhelmingly be Florida’s working poor and minority groups. this has been the story of every natural disaster in that part of the country. take, for example, Hurricane Harvey:
Among black Texans impacted by the storm, 60 percent say they are not getting the help they need. That compares to 40 percent of Hispanic respondents and 33 percent of white respondents.
Half of respondents with lower incomes say they’re not getting the help they need, compared 32 percent of people with higher incomes. The survey classified people into two income groups — those making double the poverty-level income and those making less than that threshold. Twice the poverty level is an income of $24,280 for a single person and $50,200 for a family of four.
Meanwhile, 27 percent of Hispanic respondents affected by Harvey said their previous homes remain unlivable. Twenty percent of black respondents and 11 percent of white respondents said their previous homes cannot be lived in. And 27 percent of Texans earning lower incomes say their previous homes aren’t safe, while only 9 percent of higher earners said the same thing.
The “not voting” thing is actually a little complicated.
First off - there are many people who don’t vote. The reasons are not always simple.
Yes there are lazy asshats who would support non-ghouls and could easily do it and don’t. You can shit on them.
But they aren’t necessarily the majority.
There are numerous hurdles that on their own aren’t tough, but that overlap and stack sometimes and when added up act as a significant obstacle that many just don’t see the benefit to trying to overcome :
Polling places aren’t open on weekends or holidays. And there really isn’t strong protections for workers being given time to wait in long lines to vote. Many people work 40+ hrs a week at places that - although legally technically have to give you time to go vote, really have middle management types that WILL retaliate against you in a way that is technically hazy enough that any sort of legal consequence for them doing so isn’t worth pursuing if you are barely getting by and making poverty-line income.
The Rs close polling stations ANYWHERE near poorer areas they can. That’s why places like Houston have like ONE polling station for a county with literal millions of voters. They know no one wants to stand for 4 hours in line in 105F Texas heat just to drop a ballot in a box that they also think won’t win because of how often the Rs like Cruz, Abbott, etc. keep winning or just holding on to their seats.
Democratic officials voluntarily water down their own legislation in a stupid attempt to “reach out” and seek middle ground, which only lessens the motivation for voters… like instead of “we’re going to wipe out all medical debt” you get stuff like “we’re going to allow voters to go to a website (that barely functions) and they can fill out a 12 page form that will allow them to apply for a 1-time partial percentage-based rebate that changes depending on your income and insurance information for the past 3 years.”
All this shit adds up to only make people feel discouraged or that their vote wouldn’t matter anyway, or that there’s nothing really to show up to fight for.
Yes that sucks, yes people should understand that by not showing up, they then FORFEIT various EXISTING rights like the right to an abortion… but that’s not how people think. People show up for a REWARD… not to defend what they already have but don’t know what they might lose.
Like - here’s my favorite way to help people better understand this because I get into arguments all the time about that last point :
In the US, people show up for Black Friday sales, because the reward they imagine they’ll get is a motivating factor. Now imagine if instead of getting a shitty 65" TV for 75% off, Best Buy said “come in on Black Friday and fill out a form to protect your right to get a refund within 90 days when products are defective.”
No one would show up. And when Best Buy then decided because no one showed up to fill out the form to now no longer allow refunds, suddenly would a bunch of assholes saying “TOLD YOU TO SIGN UP FOR THE BEST BUY PROTECT YOUR PURCHASES FORM! SUCKS TO SUCK LOLOLOL!” be in the right? Yeah… I guess… but - again - showing up en masse to do something that protects a possible loss isn’t how people generally think when making decisions to do or not do something that asks them to inconvenience themselves.
Yes that sucks, yes people should understand that by not showing up, they then FORFEIT various EXISTING rights like the right to an abortion… but that’s not how people think. People show up for a REWARD… not to defend what they already have but don’t know what they might lose.
Then I find it difficult to feel sorry for their losses. The history books are filled with people losing rights that they refused to defend, and we’re all taught the contents of those history books in school. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and no one born in America has any excuse for not realizing this.
This sucks. A similar thing seems to be happening in California because of the wildfires. I heard someone on a podcast recently say that it’s like “the market” is responding to climate change before governments do. Which sucks, because it’s haphazard and profit driven, so the least responsible and least protected people will likely be hit the hardest.
(Edit: don’t see how this has anything to do with desantis or his policies? Am i missing something?)
Yeah I think it is just people hating on floridians because bad politics man bad and so the people there supposedly deserve any bad thing that happens?
This is a misleading article quoting the wholesale market rates that are normally paid by factories, utility providers, etc. The vast majority of Texans pay a set rate every month to their utility provider, who ideally generates enough to cover demand, but has to buy from the wholesale market if they fall short (or can sell back to the wholesale market if they over-produce).
There’s a small number of people who pay wholesale rates for their residential service, but many of them learned their lesson after that big freeze a few years back. Generally that kind of plan is geared to people who have their own generator, solar, etc and only buy from the grid in rare situations.
This is a misleading article quoting the wholesale market rates that are normally paid by factories, utility providers, etc.
Of course they are the wholesale rates. Nobody thinks they are retail rates because we all know our retail rates are fixed. Not “misleading” to anybody. But the retail rates obviously depend on the wholesale rates, so goodluck when you have to renew your rates.
Hopefully the lemmy user base is smarter about this than Reddit was, anyhow. God knows enough people over there got confused every time a story like this was posted.
I get the feeling the author of this article, who described it as “The rate Texas residents pay for energy” might be confused on the difference between wholesale and residential rates though.
It took Conservatives doing what they said they would do - taking away a woman’s right to control their own body - to wake enough people up to get them to the polls.
Conservatives have a whole facist menu of rights they want to take away from people. Everyone better remember that they WILL do what they say if you continue to vote for them.
you guys know rn our coffee and chocolate, and our clothes, etc… are produced already by enslaved children in thirf world countries right, there is no ‘return’, theres more slaves nkw than at any point in history
While I agree that slavery is terrible and should be stopped, it’s a bit of a non sequitur to say there are more slaves than ever given there are so many more people than ever.
Now, if you’d like to talk about forced labor in developed nations, and the number of de facto slaves in specific countries where you wouldn’t expect to find any, that might be more relevant.
And yes, the vast majority of chocolate involves slavery in it’s growth and harvesting, which is also terrible.
Yeah exactly what I predicted has happened. People who were "pro-life" and protesting were still able to get abortions when they needed it. And they were taking advantage of that. But now their shitty decisions are actually affecting them, and not just every other woman who is a "murderer" but their abortion is different, and so they are not very happy that they got what they wanted.
People OVERWHELMINGLY want abortion to remain legal. Every time it's on the ballot people vote to keep it legal. That's why Republicans are trying so hard to keep it off the ballot or require a super majority of the vote. They know it's unpopular.
The whole pro-life movement is stupid anyway. It frames the debate as abortion vs. no abortion when in reality it is about legal, safe, regulated abortion vs. illegal, unsafe, unregulated abortions. They are fighting against a straw-man position of people who love abortions and want to get them all the time instead of using contraception when in reality everyone agrees that abortion is something to only be used when all other options to prevent pregnancy have failed.
In a rare move, I'm proud of my fellow ohioans. I was honestly expecting this to pass. I didn't think the 3 "no" votes from our house would amount to much. I sit here though proud of all those that saw this obvious BS and turned out to vote it down!
a huge thank you to the Ohio voters who turned out in a big way for this.
As an Ohioan I was to emphasize that part. There are 8 million registered voters in our state and there were 3 million votes cast in this election. Luckily the issue didn’t pass but I really want to know what the 5 million people that didn’t vote (you had 3 full weeks with early voting) thought was more important than preventing our Rights from eroding even further.
The easiest answer is because this was a special election in the middle of August with just one item on the ballot, which is exactly why the GOP broke their own new rule eliminating special elections in August, because they were hoping voter apathy would push them over the finish line. I’m very happy, and slightly surprised that they ended up being wrong, but I don’t think they’ll take any kind of lesson from this.
Can someone explain how 50% is more “democratic”? I feel like it would be more democratic to require supermajority to change laws in this stupid hyper partisan world. In this case it felt like the people agreed so it was bipartisan super majority. Why cant this apply to the rest of constitutional changes?
Edit: im glad i get downvoted for asking for clarification.
As the only other person said they are doing this right before a big vote.
The real problem is that they are trying to raise the current number of signatures for citizens to amend the Ohio Constitution from the requirement that they need to be gathered in 44 out of the state’s 88 counties, to the new version they would need all 88 counties. And getting rid of a 10 day grace period. This would make it nearly impossible to get anything on the ballot for a vote.
Edit: made it more clear that they would need all 88 counties instead of 44
Double edit: you got an up vote from me because it seemed like a sincere question
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