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Kathy's avatar

Florida HB 433, effective July 1.Our own version of Texas’ “Death Star Law”.

“The Florida legislature passed a bill on Friday that prevents any city, county, or municipality in the state from adopting legislation aimed at protecting outdoor workers from extreme heat, prompting many to call out lawmakers for being “cruel” to the “most vulnerable workers”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/08/florida-bill-extreme-heat-worker-protection

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Ellen's avatar

That is just despicable. Don't these legislators have anything positive to contribute to society??

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Michele's avatar

Ellen, if they are MAGA Rs, at this point, no they don't....only being good members of the party of death.

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MadRussian12A's avatar

Perhaps you should give EMPTY GREENE a ring (706) 226-5320, or (866-909-4458, Waste Management cust svc). Juss sayin.

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Rob Boyte (Miami Beach)'s avatar

No, they are The Repugnant Party

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Dick Montagne's avatar

Spot on Rob, I've been calling them repugnantkins for years now they and the maggots they spawned.

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Anne Marie's avatar

Their resignations!

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Anne Marie's avatar

Reply to Ellen.

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eoleary's avatar

Florida saying to Texas, hold my beer.

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Karen Livolsi's avatar

Karen here, also from Pgh, PA. Grandfather-immigrant, coal miner at age 12 from Hungary.

Great grandparents-immigrants from Hungary, great-g-ma (15 yrs old) sponsored by upper middle class Hungarian Jewish family living in Squirrel Hill as a nanny. After she’d worked off her obligations they saw to she married a good man and remained life-long friends.

My great-grandparents had 5 children. All participated in the war efforts (WWII). Their only son served in Europe, injured in France.

Once the miners began unionizing, great-grandma made moonshine to support the family until they saved up enough to open a very nice department store. Included a butcher shop and fabric department. She didn’t want great-grandpap going back into the mines. The miners were looking for worker protections that could save their lives. Just like the ones FL and TX stripped away.

I came from immigrants looking for a better life, and willing to work hard for it.

The people coming today are looking for work. Looking to take care of their families. The same reasons they’ve always come. Mel Brooks movie, “Blazing Saddles “ says it best after Asian railroad worker faints in the dessert;

Lyle; “Come on, boys! The way you're lollygaggin' around here with them picks and them shovels, you'd think it was a hundert an' twenty degrees...! Can't be more than a hundert an' fourteen! [Asian railroad worker collapses from heat exhaustion] “Dock that Chink a day's pay for napping on the job.”

Mel wasn’t joking.

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Maureen Moeller's avatar

I recently watched Blazing Saddles again. It was a “date” movie when I was in HS. Fifty years later I wonder what was so funny, though it was clearly satirical even at the time. Mel hit every group; women, African Americans, Chinese, cowboys even the military.

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Keith Wheelock's avatar

Maureen I didn’t find Blazing Saddles funny when ZI first saw it and even less funny when I watched it again some years ago.

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Karen Livolsi's avatar

I know what you mean about movies. Everyone’s a critic. However my post wasn’t concerned with whether or not you liked Blazing Saddles.

Maybe I wasn’t clear, totally my fault.

50 years ago Mel Brooks made a movie about the racism that pervades our nation. It is called Blazing Saddles. Some people liked it some didn’t, who cares? The scene with the fainting Asian man for lack of water was exactly what I envisioned the TX and Fl legislature dreams about. It pretty much verbatim shows how white supremacists think. Hence the reference.

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Maureen Moeller's avatar

I was 16. Still a work in progress😊

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Keith Wheelock's avatar

Maureen You clearly progressed while Blazing Saddles degressed.

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Maureen Moeller's avatar

Why thanks. While I lived through the turbulent 60’s with the advent of civil rights, women’s lib (and all its accoutrements), the “make love not war” hippie movement and finally the murder of 3 political giants the application of such profound progress (other than the assassinations) was slow to take hold in the Midwest. It wasn’t until college that I truly understood the meaning and consequences of equality. Maybe Mel Brooks bemoaned that slow integration with Blazing Saddles; or maybe he believed we’d never really get there. He may have been right. As it appears today a backward trend toward the 1950’s is all the rage for a few million of our fellow citizens.

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Sharon Stearley's avatar

Florida is moving to the bottom of the barrel.

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Susan Rohrbach's avatar

This is legislated torture. People will die.

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Karen Jacob's avatar

They like the color red so much, how about a banner year of red tide and sargassum seaweed (which stinks) to close their beaches for a while?

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Robert Weekley's avatar

How do they justify such legislation? Surely it does not save the taxpayers money.

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T L Mills's avatar

Typical MAGA inhumanity; cruelty is the point, after all.

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Karen Jacob's avatar

The contractors had to hire undocumented workers to clean up after one of their hurricanes. The contractor said he couldn't get Americans to work.

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Jocelyn B's avatar

What the actual f***??? What year was that passed?

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Jocelyn B's avatar

I clicked on the link - thanks - but how does it have any effect on anything but minimum wage (which is bad enough)?

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Kathy's avatar

It’s in the text of the bill:

(2)(a) A political subdivision may not establish,mandate,or otherwise require an employer, including an employer contracting to provide goods or services to the political subdivision,to meet or provide heat exposure requirements not otherwise under state or federal law.

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Jocelyn B's avatar

Thank you. That's just sick. (I don't know why I didn't see that.)

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Elizabeth Wallace's avatar

I simply can’t understand why republicans feel the need to be so cruel.

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MaryLee G's avatar

Does the cruelty ever end?

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Karen Jacob's avatar

Lawmakers are busy drinking sweet tea or mint juleps in air conditioned offices.

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