Good. These stadium “deals” are always a billionaire’s way to socialize the cost and privatize the profits.

The vast majority of Americans believe democracy, despite its problems, is the best system of government. But polling shows that far fewer younger voters agree.

The nationwide poll conducted in mid-March by Florida Atlantic University found 73% of voters agree that “Democracy may have problems, but it is the best system of government,” including 50% who strongly agree. Just 13% disagree.

But the youngest group of voters, those from 18 to 35, felt much differently.

Slightly more than half — 53% — agreed it’s the best system of government. Just 15% strongly agree while a quarter — 25% — disagreed.

…

People who said they plan to vote for former President Donald Trump, the presumed Republican nominee, in November were 22 percentage points less likely to agree that democracy is the best system of government than people who said they plan to vote for President Joe Biden.

Among Biden voters, 85% agree democracy is the best form of government even though it may have problems, 6% disagree, and 10% don’t agree or disagree.

Among Trump voters, 63% agree, 18% disagree, 19% don’t agree or disagree.

First part was unexpected but second part was not. Other highlight from the article was that there was no major difference by gender with men in the survey polling higher than women about their support of democracy.

The Republican-controlled Florida Legislature has unveiled another election bill that would further restrict where voters can drop off mail-in ballots and also force party primary candidates into runoffs if they don’t get more than 50% of the vote.

….

State Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, called the continued attempt at culling drop boxes “unnecessary and politically motivated.”

“Republicans continue to feed into its rhetoric that elections are stolen and are not legitimate,” Eskamani said. “… When you limit the options for folks, it is intentionally designed to just make it harder to vote.”

But Eskamani said the other major proposal in the new bill, a return to primary runoffs for state and federal races, was “worthy of exploration,” even if she couldn’t support the overall bill.

Currently, party primaries are held the third week of August. Whoever gets the most votes in their respective primaries, even if just a plurality, face off in the November election.

The new bill would change the primary date to the third week of June. Any primary race in which the winner doesn’t receive more than 50% of the vote would move to a runoff between the top two candidates in August, with the winner of that primary securing his or her party’s nomination.

Despite the unneeded restrictions on the ballot drop boxes the changing of the primaries would be really good.

From Hallandale to Deerfield Beach, local political leaders are becoming nervous about the potential delays in the development of the proposed Broward Commuter Rail service that would operate along the Florida East Coast Railway line.

The immediate chief hurdle: a new rail crossing at downtown Fort Lauderdale’s New River. Mayor Dean Trantalis and business interests that support him want a tunnel. Broward County commissioners and other local leaders favor a bridge.

The next window for a funding application to Washington opens in February and the county is nowhere near the point where it can submit one. If no agreement is reached, some fear that hundreds of millions of dollars will be lost.

Mayor Trantalis is killing the Broward Commuter Rail which in turn is ruining projects throughout SFL. Please contact the mayor’s office and tell his staff that you want Mayor Trantalis to stop blocking the bridge.

The Pew poll found strong support for policies such as legalizing accessory dwelling units, commonly known as granny flats, on single-family zoned areas; legalizing duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes; reforms to create affordable housing development near major transit; and simplifying the housing permitting process.

Efforts to expedite permitting processes gained the broadest support, with 86%, while at the lower end, 49% approved of the ideas of allowing smaller lots and homes to be built closer together.

…

In Minneapolis; Portland, Oregon; New Rochelle, New York; and Tysons Corner, Virginia, new zoning rules that allow more housing have helped slow rent growth, according to a study this year by Pew Charitable Trusts. Towns and cities in the same metro areas that did not reform zoning laws generally saw faster rent growth. While rents nationwide grew 31% nationwide from 2017 to 2023, rents in those four cities all grew under 5%, according to the study.

Despite the favorable polling on housing reforms, local political opposition to new housing development in single-family neighborhoods often can remain strong. People tend to be supportive of more housing in general, just as long as it’s not right next to them.

If you care about affordable housing, make sure to attend your own city council’s meetings to voice support for affordable housing because there is 2-12 NIMBYs already advocating against it.

Right-wing commentators like Steven Crowder and Matt Walsh have ramped up complaints in recent months that it is too easy for people — specifically women — to get divorces. All states currently have some version of a no-fault divorce law, but Republicans in Texas and Nebraska list the dissolution or restriction of no-fault divorce in their state party political platforms.

In Louisiana earlier this year, state GOP members debated officially backing the dissolution of no-fault divorce, but no decision was made.

So we have the Democratic Party protecting and even expanding women’s rights in the states they control while the GOP has already dismantled reproductive rights and are now angling to repeal no-fault divorce.

Yet millions of people will say “Both sides” as they either not vote, vote Republican, or vote 3rd party while agreeing that no-fault divorce should be allowed…

Since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when cruise ships filled with sickened passengers were blocked from U.S. ports, residents in Key West, Fla., have been trying to limit the size and number of vacation vessels on the tiny island, using the momentum created during the pandemic to argue for continuing restrictions on cruise vessels.

Activists flooded City Commission meetings, protested on the dock, collected signatures and managed to pass three ballot measures in 2020 imposing stricter controls to protect the marine environment and limit passengers to 1,500 a day — only to see the state Legislature, with the approval of Gov. Ron DeSantis, void the new restrictions the following year.

Now the wealthy hotelier who operates Key West’s cruise ship port is doubling down, asking the state for permission to expand, which would allow bigger ships with more passengers to operate legally out of the port.

The issue will soon land on the desk of Mr. DeSantis, who has received nearly $1 million in campaign donations from the pier’s owner. It represents a tough balancing act for the Republican governor, a 2024 presidential candidate who has touted his environmental record but has also been a booster of Florida’s tourism industry.

Hopefully Key West wises up and doesn’t vote for Republicans next year.

For those in Key West, get organized by joining the Florida Keys Democratic Club!

This is implying Jill Stein doesn’t know she is helping Republicans with her failed 3rd party run.

At the time, the state senator falsely claimed that an “African American Confederate soldier” had designed the flag. “I can only imagine how proud he was that his art, his flag design was chosen to represent our State and now we want to strip him of his pride, his hard work. I’m sure he put a lot of thought into this design,” Chism wrote in a June 2020 Facebook post.

In fact, a white supremacist lawmaker, Sen. Edward N. Scudder of Issaquena County, designed the 1894 flag. In a 1924 speech to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, his daughter Fayssoux Scudder Corneil explained his motives for designing the flag: “My father loved the memory of the valor and courage of those brave men who wore the gray … and has always taken keen interest in the reunions where he could meet and mingle with those of the Lost Cause. He told me that it was a simple matter for him to design the flag because he wanted to perpetuate in a legal and lasting way that dear battle flag under which so many of our people had so gloriously fought.”

Mississippi entered the Civil War in an effort to protect the institution of slavery, as the the state’s Declaration of Secession explains. Chism’s county, Union County, was formed in 1870—the same year Mississippi was readmitted to the Union.

JFC

Mr. Huckins and his wife, Ginger, were leaving Portland, Ore., one of the most progressive cities in the United States. They said Portland’s tolerance of homeless encampments, along with the open use of hard drugs and rising crime, had filled them with despair. So they headed 2,000 miles east, to deep-red rural Missouri.

Driving around their new hometown in June, about an hour outside St. Louis, they admired the old Victorians and a tractor defying the minimum speed limit on a state road.

“One thing I do like about Missouri, there’s lots of American flags,” Mr. Huckins said as he steered around a traffic circle where the Stars and Stripes flapped crisply on a pole. “In Portland, the American flag was offensive.”

One day earlier, in a neighboring state, another couple making a politically motivated move had a different flag on display — a Pride flag on a T-shirt.

Jennie and Jeff Noble were packing their possessions into a 26-foot U-Haul truck in suburban Iowa. Ms. Noble, 37, who was wearing the Pride T-shirt, and her husband were leaving Iowa for Minnesota.

Their only child, Julien, came out as transgender at age 11. Now 16, Julien uses prescription testosterone. After Iowa banned gender-affirming medical care for minors, criminalizing their son’s treatments, the Nobles — lifelong Iowans — concluded they had to get out.

“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.

“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

“There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly concluded. “God help us.”

Dysfunctional state parties is a symptom of not enough people being involved and a reason for people to get involved.

This is great news! For anyone reading, but especially those in Alabama, make sure to join one of your city/county’s Democratic club/caucus to help organize change at the local level and better influence the direction the Democratic Party takes locally and nationally!

A GOP trifecta would clear the way for Youngkin to move swiftly on what he calls his “commonsense” conservative priorities — boosting pay and funding for law enforcement, protecting parental rights in education, overhauling the mental health system, and enacting additional tax cuts and greater restrictions on abortion.

While he has notched some successes on taxes and education through bipartisan support during his first two legislative sessions, many of his priorities have been blocked — with great fanfare — by the Democratic majority in the Senate, which prides itself on being a “brick wall” against Republicans’ agenda.

Democrats, who held news conferences around the state this week, warned that total Republican control would lead to the repeal of legislation enacted in 2020 and 2021 while they ran the state government, including measures that mandated a transition to cleaner cars and electric generation, greatly expanded voting access, and added restrictions to firearms purchases and ownership.

Many Democratic candidates are also making abortion rights a top campaign issue, arguing that Youngkin’s proposed ban on abortion after 15 weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother, would endanger women’s health and infringe on their bodily autonomy. Virginia is the only state in the South that has not enacted new restrictions since Roe v. Wade fell.

Virginians, make sure to vote Democratic today if you haven’t already and join your city/county’s Democratic club/caucus to stay organized both during this election and afterwards.

More than a million Florida voters want to see a recreational marijuana legalization initiative appear on the ballot for the 2024 general election, according to data from the state Division of Elections.

In June, state officials revealed that the adult-use cannabis legalization proposal from Smart & Safe Florida had received enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. With the current count at more than 1 million verified signatures, the proposed initiative has more than 120,000 signatures beyond the approximately 891,000 needed. But before the proposal is approved for the ballot, it must first pass muster with the Florida Supreme Court, which is tasked with verifying that the measure is limited to a single issue and is not likely to confuse voters. In 2021, the Florida Supreme Court invalidated marijuana legalization bids on two separate occasions.

…

Late last month, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody filed a challenge to the proposed ballot measure with the state Supreme Court, arguing that Smart & Safe Florida’s marijuana legalization initiative should not appear before voters in next year’s general election. Kylie Mason, the communications director for Moody’s office, said that the ballot measure is likely to confuse voters.

“When voters decide whether to amend the Florida Constitution, it is essential that they know what they are voting for,” Mason in a statement. “It is the duty of our office to address the validity of an initiative petition before it appears on a ballot. It is incumbent upon us to inform the Court when a ballot summary misleads voters about the effects of the proposed constitutional change.”

For those in Florida, make sure to join a local Florida club/caucus. You can find a list of them here.

Hoping the Fediverse can be better synchronized so users can more easily interact between Kbin and Lemmy.

I’m hoping they develop it for Kbin.

I was on Reddit for over 10 years and it only became a place for niche communities when they got rid of defaults. Kbin/Fediverse will get there in a few years.

I support Elon’s decision on this and hope it becomes permanent. That way, the exodus from Twitter can continue and reputable organizations will stop considering Twitter a valid platform.

And stop engaging in political gamesmanship where they purposely tie their retirements to Republican Presidents among other GOP fuckery. John Roberts, if he actually cared about the integrity of the court, would resign now so Biden could appoint his replacement and try to reverse the politicization of the court.