Would be nice, but we (in France) have plenty of cameras already. They may not be branded Flock, but they're there nonetheless. And as far as I'm aware, none of them are ablaze.
Absolutely horrible. They show up on Saturday's yelling at empty buildings. Very rarely does an American protest against a government body change policy. If you want to really do something, show up on a Tuesday morning, stop traffic, flood the phone lines, and the email systems, relentlessly day after day. Americans are far too comfortable to truly protest.
It's true that the order only impacts state highways. It removes approximately 700 license plate readers and then also leaves thousands still up locally. However, in my county, the Sheriffs dept is actually taking them down voluntarily, because of the positive political reception of the state-road ban. And its happening in other jurisdictions near me.
A lot of people instinctively believe Florida only does dumb stuff, but we really do have quite responsive people in charge here. From where I sit, I see good movement on the whole Flock issue in my state and county.
Florida is also ironically how we may get cookie banners in line and to actually opt users out as they prosecute websites there as illegal wire taps if you still put cookies on the page after or before the opt out happens.
Yes, it really is. Florida is a cultural punching bag, and we take that in stride too. We have a balanced budget, no state income tax, and no flock cameras. We are close to abolishing property taxes as well. Our natural disaster response is some of the most robust anywhere in the world as well.
This is misleading. I'm not sure replacing income tax with sales tax is a positive change. The state is still collecting taxes, but the tools are pretty regressive.
Sales taxes are fundamentally a tax on the poor. Someone making 20x the median income is not spending 20x more on groceries and other goods. It doesn't scale well at all, especially when a lot of net worth goes into housing. And the GP was arguing about ending property tax...
I don't think we're in a good enough economic situation as of now to eliminate sales tax. But an ideal model is a strong progressive income tax model (I'm talking "0% tax under 40k" levels of progressive) with sales tax only employed in bad economic states. In general, taxes should be heavier in good economic times to allow bad economic situations to relax them.
I’m glad that that my state isn’t run that way. Your assumptions about consumption taxes across income brackets not scaling is factually inaccurate. If sales tax is fundamentally a tax on the poor, then so is an income tax.
Florida is one of the lowest taxed states across all income brackets, and even provides good social programs.
I’m glad that people who want to tax the rich to death for the sake of a crusade that isn’t even needed don’t have much of a voice in my state.
>consumption taxes across income brackets not scaling is factually inaccurate
I'd love to hear a proper counter-argument. Maybe Florida works different, but sales taxes tend to be constant (i.e. scaling linearly with consumption), and individual consumption does not scale linearly with income. Someone making 200k may buy more luxury food, but not necessarily 10x as much as someone making 20k. And someone making 2 million a year does not consume 10x as much as the 200k person.
>If sales tax is fundamentally a tax on the poor, then so is an income tax.
If income tax wasn't progressive it would be. But it is. Not progressive enough, but the idea is there. Higher brackets get taxed more percentage wise, not in a simple linear fashion.
>and even provides good social programs.
Sure. Give your money to insurance premiums that run away when it's time to do their job instead of government program. Sounds much better.
>I’m glad that people who want to tax the rich to death for the sake of a crusade
Always nice to have people be honest with themselves. I'm just being honest with math. We call a 10 millionaire being taxed 90% a millionaire. We call someone making 30k being taxed 10% on the verge of homelessness (likely on government assistance despite working). As long as such inequality exists, we can and should be aggressively taxing the most privileged to build a society that prevents that reality.
>don’t have much of a voice in my state.
We are both under the same federal government. Most of these large scale issues are federal anyway. The winds are changing slowly and I won't pity those who baron robbed the country one bit (many of whom tried to flee to your state) when it's time to pay the piper.
A counter-argument to what? That if you take 90% of someone’s wealth that has $10,000,000 they’re still a millionaire?
Yeah, they’d still be a millionaire.
I didn’t bring up federal tax policy but since you did, I’ll point out that what you think is happening is not happening. The winds aren’t going quite where you think they’re going. The “steal other people’s money” coalition has virtually no power or relevance federally. They have no power or relevance in Florida.
No one is going to be fleeing. There isn’t even going to be a fight, because that fight already happened. Tariffs are in full swing. The left tried to stop it. Consumption taxes are the future. The good guys won.
Nope. Florida simply led the way and calmly banned Flock cameras from the entire state. Every other state that cares about individual liberty should follow suit.
They revoked permits for all license plate readers currently placed along the state highway rights of way. They did not ban privately owned Flock Safety cameras (e.g. at a housing development or whatever), nor did they ban police from mounting ALPRs on their patrol cars. It sounds like this applies only to the "State Highway System", not to local roads - but maybe I'm misunderstanding the scope of that.
>Monday’s order did not affect cameras on private property or on local rights-of-way — which together is 98% of surveillance cameras, DeSantis said — but some localities in Florida said they were following suit.
Ironically it is the Republican governors of Texas and Florida who are leading this anti-surveillance push, even as the government of Texas has used Flock cameras in other jurisdictions to harass and intimidate pregnant women seeking out of state abortions.
I mean, let's not get carried away. Florida still has very oppressive anti-second-amendment legislation and laws on the books, and until they get rid of that, I wouldn't call them anywhere close to having individual liberty.
When I lived in FLA and it was super easy to get a concealed weapon permit. I carried a gun not infrequently just to exercise that right. I was serious about training with it as well.
The other states I’ve lived in haven’t been so straight forward.
