Gov. Ron DeSantis gave no explanation for zeroing out the $32 million in grants that were approved by state lawmakers.

Leaders of arts organizations in Florida, many of whom have worked in the state for decades, cannot remember a governor ever eliminating all of their grant funding. Even in the lean years of the Great Recession, at least a nominal amount — say, 5 percent of the recommended total — was approved.

Established arts organizations usually know better than to overly rely on nonrecurring state dollars subject to the discretion of politicians, said Michael Tomor, executive director of the Tampa Museum of Art. But to cut funding at a time when arts organizations are still struggling to recover from the coronavirus pandemic sends a concerning message “that taxpayer dollars should not be used in support of arts and culture,” he added.

Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, gave no explanation for zeroing out the arts grants. His office said in a statement that he made veto decisions “that are in the best interests of the State of Florida.”

In all, Mr. DeSantis vetoed nearly $950 million in proposed spending and proclaimed that the remaining $116.5 billion came in under the previous year’s budget.

Non-paywall link

  • Marthirial@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Florida and her meatball will be textbook evidence of a failed state swallowed by the Ocean and drowned by social conservatism terrorism.

    • uis@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      This sounds like social regressivism rather than terrorism.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      failed state swallowed by the Ocean

      Not for another 40-150 years. By then local politics will have shifted substantially in the state, and future external fascists can claim Florida was destroyed for being too brown, woke, and gay.

      • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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        7 days ago

        Florida woke and brown? Half the state literally needs to take a nap, and the only brown is in their Depends.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Florida has one of the highest Latin and African American populations in the country. They just aren’t allowed to vote.

          And over half of the under 18 population of Florida is non-white. In another twenty years it will be majority minority.

          By the time to state is fully fucked by climate change, you’re going to see reactionaries in the Midwest having a field day saying the state failed because it turned into “Detroit” wink wink nudge nudge

          • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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            7 days ago

            Detroit failed because of automation and off-shoring. Things that could have been repaired or prevented politically, sure. But not directly caused by policies based in bigotry and ignorance.

            If any correlation can be made, it’s from white-flight. Which would be caused by Detroit’s massive loss of jobs and Florida’s massive loss of land. But white flight, imo, is the reaction, not the catalyst, of its downfall.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              7 days ago

              Detroit failed because of automation and off-shoring.

              That’s the mechanism behind why it failed, but not the reason for the policy. Automation and off-shoring were tools intended to re-segregate and depress the wealth of the working class. Once the city sufficiently shocked into collapse, financial investment came flooding back into the city in the form of foreclosure sale purchases and low-wage service sector expansion. The modern city is seeing the first population expansion it’s enjoyed in decades, but with an enormous new disparity in income and political organization between the richest and poorest residents. Dan Gilbert, the co-founder of the largest private mortgage lender in the US - Quicken Loans (now Rocket Mortgage) - owns enormous swaths of the downtown district and has his talons in a host of municipal and state political figures.

              He’s revitalized the city with enormous amounts of public money, laundered into private profits, through the private lending racket. And he’s used the depressed wages and real estate values in the town to reap huge margins on the cost of labor, relative to more traditional finance centers like New York or Dallas.

      • Etterra@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Well he’s already axing that 1% in education by cutting all the arts funding. Science will probably be next.

      • solomon42069@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        A short boost from tax breaks to convince rich people to move there doesn’t make the place financially successful or livable. It just looks better for a bit.

        • Gloomy@mander.xyz
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          The category is a bit wider than that, but yes, low taxes seem to contribute.

          https://www.richstatespoorstates.org/states/FL/

          Edit:

          Did a little digging after some flaws have been pointed out by @Silentia below. This source is not neutral.

          https://ballotpedia.org/ALEC_Rich_States,_Poor_States_Report

          The American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonpartisan organization of state legislators, releases an annual report entitled Rich States, Poor States: ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index, which analyzes economic competitiveness in each state. The report is authored by Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore (chief economist at the Heritage Foundation), and Jonathan Williams, the director of the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council

          The Heritage Foundation is a conservative 501©(3) nonprofit think tank founded in 1973 and based in Washington, D.C.[1] In 2013, The Atlantic described the organization as “the de facto policy arm of the congressional conservative caucus.”[

          • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            I’m assuming that’s the Laffer behind “the Laffer curve,” AKA the unscientific bullshit “graph” he drew on a cocktail napkin that would essentially become the basis for supply-side economics AKA “trickle down.”

            That Laffer?

            Because ruining the US economy and setting us on a 3+ decade ride towards record (and frankly inhumane) income inequality once just wasn’t enough I guess.

            Fucking ghouls.

          • It’s more than half though. It really is very heavily implied here that taxes are the main way you can tell an economy is doing well.

            How the state taxes you:

            Vs how the money is spent: