Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has scared off millions of dollars worth of business from his state with his extremist, bigoted agenda.
Fortunately for Ron and unfortunately for everyone else, he doesn’t give a shit about Florida’s economy as long as he can be the boss.
The thing about dictators is that they want more. For themselves. If gutting 100m worth services or taxes gets them $10,000 that they themselves can personally use, they’ll do it.
Everyone should read the dictator’s handbook, or some other explanation of selectorate theory.
Has he ever addressed these publications publicly? There’s been articles constantly written calling him out and how Florida is gonna hurt. But never see any follow up from him.
Unfortunately there’s no real mechanism to hold a politician’s feet to the fire except elections. He knows there’s no advantage in addressing any reality that reveals his ineptitude so he just wont.
I agree elections are important and the established mechanisms for influencing politics.
But ignoring the option for non-peaceful protest or targeted legal action/harassment (cough cough operation snow white and scientology getting tax exempt status ) at specific actors are how you control your politicians, especially when dealing with minority rule.
They’d love us to believe that a good 10 hour peaceful protest and some election 18 months away is the only way to directly influence democracy.
Real change happens when the wealthy are actually afraid of the consequences to their actions. Elections are simply a peaceful option to accomplish the same goal.
Well if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions.
One: The 2024 National Family and Community Engagement and Community Schools Conference: 2,000 attendees with accompanying hotel rooms. The organizer worried attendees would refuse to come to Florida.
Two: Supreme Council of America Inc., Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite Masons: 855 hotel rooms.
Three: American Specialty Toy Retailing Association, 3,000 people, and hotel rooms now going to Milwaukee, citing the political climate in Florida.
The original report this is citing sounds brutal
The list was compiled by Visit Lauderdale, formerly known as the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau.
Broward’s tourism arm said the lost conventions could have brought hotel stays to Fort Lauderdale and its surrounding cities, which also meant money spent on restaurants and attractions.
“We lost this program due to political climate,” according to a Visit Lauderdale spreadsheet listing the decision of the Supreme Council of America Inc., Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite Masons to cancel their convention — and 855 rooms — in August 2024.
“We were so close on this one,” reads the notes on the entry for the 2024 National Family and Community Engagement and Community Schools Conference, which needed more than 2,000 rooms and has bailed. “But, group decided to pull out of Florida due to concerns about what the Governor is doing in the education/schools and that he will likely run in 2024. They do not want to lose attendees due to this.”
I’m reading between the lines a little bit here, but I’m pretty sure that spreadsheet/list the Sun Sentinel is referencing was like an internal document they weren’t planning to publish but handed over to the Sun because they’re so pissed off about how their local economy has been trashed (like, I just spent some time searching around Visit Lauderdale’s website and I couldn’t find anything like what the Sun describes available for the public).
Can you imagine how pissed off an official tourism bureau has to be to leak bad news to a local newspaper? That just does not ever happen.
Florida wasn’t a good spot for conventions anyways, geographically speaking.
It’s an attractive location during the winter because of the warm climate, that’s pretty much it, but in terms of being a accessible location, yeah it’s going to be out of the way for a lot of people considering it’s in one of the four corners of the country.
Historically, Florida is the 2nd most visited state in the US, and a surprisingly small percentage of those people are visiting for Disney World. Seems like this is rapidly changing because of how toxic the politics are there, but if we put all that aside, there are legit reasons why it’s such a hotbed for tourism, so it would make sense why conventions would be booked here despite being a poor choice geographically.
That doesn’t even make any sense. As long as you have airport access, geographics barely matter to a convention that is held indoors.
If you want warm weather, beaches & real theme parks within driving distance & cheaper than California & Hawaii, Florida is (was) the place to go.
Honestly ever since Trump I make it a point to only vacation in blue states. I’m not spending my dollars in communities that promote violence and hate.
It’s really incredible to see a Republican launch his presidential campaign by attacking and hurting businesses both small and large…in his own state! It’s like starting the Indy 500 by getting out and stabbing holes in all your tires and telling your pit crew to fuck off.
