They really aren’t, because that money is going to big corporations and billionaires, not to family farmers or the people of Puerto Rico.
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" 
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Buh it’s also helped almost 30000 people get a whole bunch of their life back. That does count as a victory. I’ve been actually unhoused and dependent on mutual aid groups/food banks/“stealing” from supermarkets to feed myself. I sure appreciated those resources, even though they did not end the problem of thousands of other hungry and unhoused in that city. Improving people’s lives is always a win. Not everything is a zero-sum game.
Edited because drunk.
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- They didn’t pay the total, they paid a small portion of the total.
- Bloomberg didn’t pay for it, he paid for part while arranging for others to pay the rest.
- Bloomberg could casually clear the entire debt (and do many other things) without it ever having any perceptible impact on his comfort and power.
There are no good billionaires.
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He’s repeatedly come forward as a a vocal Trump supporter, so I’m not sure this is a net positive.
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Can’t trust felons to do the right thing after all.
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No, that isn’t my position, and I’m sorry you got the impression that it is (though, rereading my post, I don’t see how you did). I agree that this small victory should be celebrated, and I join you in taking pleasure in it. My beef is specifically with the two people who implied that, because these 32K people’s poll tax has been paid, it’s now the voter-suppressing Republicans who are having hard times. As I hope you can see, that isn’t at all the case.
It’s amazing what enough money can do. Imagine 6 more actual blionaires doing as well. They could/we should, all vote.
Yeah, but see- my mild observation that the Republicans had been hoisted by their own petard was one of the two posts you inveighed against. I wasn’t sure then and I’m not sure now why you saw that as a declaration of victory.
Real victories have been rare and fleeting the last four years; I try to enjoy it when the bad guys give themselves a flat tire.
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Keep in mind that we’re talking about Florida, though, where the margins for both parties are razor thin. A portion of this many Dem-leaning voters who couldn’t vote before could cost the GOP in this swing state.
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Plus, the estimates I’d seen so far said that about 400,000 people from this group of 1 M plus who were re-enfranchised by the ballot measure did not owe debt to begin with. Who knows what the voter participation will be from that group, but you’ve got to expect pretty high participation rate from the 32,000 who had their debt paid off
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The line refers to a bomb maker being blown up by his own bomb. Hamlet uses it to summarize, metaphorically, the fate of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who try to kill Hamlet with a plot that gets them killed instead. The Florida poll-tax situation, in which the Republicans’ cruel plot was slightly weakened, would be like if Hamlet had merely gotten a leg broken.
The tax liability of a personal gift immediately came to my mind when I read this. However, if this scenario came to pass, then they would face a much smaller bill than their original fines/fees associated with incarceration. Eg, if they owed $30k, and they are in a 20% bracket, now they only owe $6k in taxes on that gift, to the feds, not to some local jurisdiction associated with an arguably corrupt justice system. Florida does not have a personal income tax, AFAIK, so that should be it.
ETA: Yes, the donors would do right by covering the tax liability, too, I agree.
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I might of engaged in some hyperbole to illustrate some of the larger plays, but you need to look at it from the point of view of Bloomberg (and his financial team) in terms of risk abatement.
Considering we are talking Florida, he wanted to reduce his risks. Especially since good deeds could be punished at 1000x of the donation value.
- Share the risk and exposure among some of his peers
- Filter these through a purpose built non-profit corporation (LLC of non-profit and limit his own liability)
- Knowing that the fines will be overturned (eventually), he wanted to still have an impact, even though he wants to limit his exposure
- Maintain a paper trail to demonstrate he had no say in who ultimately received such relief.
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- This could be part of a broader strategy to use the “economic meddling” of the courts as evidence of malfeasance, if they going to sling that accusation against Bloomberg et al.
You are choosing a strangely literal interpretation of what was clearly an aphoristic usage.
Still, I take your point and the next time I want to acknowledge an ironic reversal, I will say:
Crikey! It’s as though the enginer has dropped the petard and broken their third and fourth metatarsals. Not a mortal wound surely, but they shall be greatly vexed for a time!”
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The fuse is still lit; we will find out in November who gets blown up.
Because it’s not just the direct votes of the 432,000-ish voters re-enfranchised by the ballot measure and Bloomberg’s coalition; remember that the ballot measure was approved by 70% of voters. I imagine some of those voters are pissed that the FL legislature thinks the people of Florida are too stupid to have their will heard.
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But this isn’t an ironic reversal. That’s my whole point. It’s an ironic reversal when a con man tries to steal a million dollars and instead loses his own money. Not when he manages to steal 23/24ths of the million. In situations like this, you should say, "Crikey, the enginer tried to blow me up but instead. . . OK, he did blow me up, but to less-fine smithereens than he had intended. "
The Republicans embarked on a voter-suppression gambit. It didn’t leave them worse off than when they started, or even at the same place; it gained them nearly all of what they wrongly coveted. Not an ironic reversal. They may well lose the war, but they have, so far, won this battle.
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Of course, can’t let this go unchallenged, now, can we?
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“It is a third-degree felony for someone to either directly or indirectly provide something of value to impact whether or not someone votes,” (U.S. Rep. Matt) Gaetz said.
It would be interesting to see if the court’s meddling (by providing something of negative value, eg a fine) would put that same court in the cross-hairs for violation of that same law.
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How DARE they interfere with the Invisible Hand! A Holy Market-Based Solution was deployed. It is a sign from the Heaven$!
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