Tag: florida

CDC Reports False COVID Data for Florida and Leaves Major Questions

The CDC has been turned into a dithering, incoherent mess under Joe Biden — to the extent that it hasn’t always been that at some level. But the politics being injected into bureaucracy have certainly reached a level not previously seen. RedState has chronicled many of the CDC’s twists and turns (and outright corruption at times), but this one may take the cake.

Yesterday, the CDC reported Florida’s COVID data, something that is part of a normal cycle after a weekend, claiming that the Sunshine State saw over 28,000 new cases on Sunday. That would have been a record high, and it helped drive another round of anti-Florida media coverage.

The problem? The CDC’s reporting was false.

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Florida Sheriff’s Office Now Notifying People It Will Be Inflicting Its Pre-Crime Program On Them

The Pasco County (FL) Sheriff’s Office has been swamped with negative press coverage centering on its predictive policing program. The Office claims it’s not “predictive policing,” but rather “intelligence-led policing.” Whatever you call it, it sucks.

The Sheriff’s Office may have some lofty goals that involve stopping crime before it starts, but the supposedly forward-looking policing program does little more than subject past offenders (along with friends, families, and acquaintances) to sustained harassment by law enforcement officers. What’s supposed to keep crime down by directing resources to possible serious criminal activity has manifested as multiple visits from officers who do little more than try to coerce people into consenting to unlawful searches and write out nuisance citations for things like missing mailbox numbers or uncut grass.

The Sheriff’s Office has since spun this off to include students at public schools, presumably to prep kids for a future of pointless harassment by law enforcement officers simply because they have the misfortune of living in Pasco County.

Thanks to some lawsuits and investigations, the Sheriff’s Office is being a bit more proactive on the notification front. According to this ongoing investigation by the Tampa Bay Times, targets of the “intelligence” program are now being informed they’ve been blacklisted by the Sheriff’s Office.

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Law lets government vaccinate unwilling ‘by any means necessary’

A new Florida law that prevents companies and organizations operating there from requiring “vaccine passports,” that documentation that purports to prove an individual has been vaccinated for COVID-19, also has a stinger: a provision allowing the government to force vaccinations on people.

The paragraph in the state’s 2nd engrossed version of SB 2006, an “act relating to emergency management” and more, states: “If the individual poses a danger to the public health, the State Health Officer may subject the individual to isolation or quarantine. If there is no practical method to isolate or quarantine the individual, the State Health Officer may use any means necessary to vaccinate or treat the individual.”

The fight over mandatory vaccinations still is developing in the U.S., following the pandemic that apparently got its start in Wuhan, China, and flooded the world, killing some 600,000 people in just the United States.

Some private organizations have demanded employees be vaccinated, and fired those refusing, and a number of legal cases have developed from those demands. Governments to this point have been encouraging – even bribing – citizens to take vaccines, but have not yet been to the point of forcing them.

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Florida Supreme Court rejects ‘grow your own’ marijuana legalization initiative

The Florida Supreme Court has rejected a prospective citizen’s initiative to place a proposed constitutional amendment before voters in 2022 to legalize adult recreational marijuana and allow Floridians to “grow their own.”

In a 5-2 ruling Thursday, the court determined the prospective amendment’s ballot summary is “affirmatively misleading,” the second time since April the state’s highest court has issued that verdict to knock a marijuana legalization measure off the 2022 ballot.

Tampa-based Sensible Florida submitted its proposed amendment, Regulate Marijuana in a Manner Similar to Alcohol to Establish Age, Licensing, and Other Restrictions, to the Division of Elections on March 17, 2016.

The summary reads: “Regulates marijuana (hereinafter “cannabis”) for limited use and growing by persons 21 years of age or older. State shall adopt regulations to issue, renew, suspend, and revoke licenses for cannabis cultivation, product manufacturing, testing and retail facilities. Local governments may regulate facilities’ time, place and manner and, if state fails to timely act, may license facilities. Does not affect compassionate use of low-THC cannabis, nor immunize federal law violations.”

The proposed amendment would permit people to grow “six mature flowering cannabis plants per household member 21 years of age or older” and possess “the harvest therefrom, provided the growing takes place indoors or in a locked greenhouse and the cannabis grown is not made available for sale.”

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In secret recording, Florida Republican threatens to send Russian-Ukrainian ‘hit squad’ after rival

A little-known GOP candidate in one of Florida’s most competitive congressional seats was secretly recorded threatening to send “a Russian and Ukrainian hit squad” to a fellow Republican opponent to make her “disappear.”

During a 30-minute call with a conservative activist that was recorded before he became a candidate, William Braddock repeatedly warned the activist to not support GOP candidate Anna Paulina Luna in the Republican primary for a Tampa Bay-area congressional seatbecause he had access to assassins. The seat is being vacated by Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.), who is running for governor.

“I really don’t want to have to end anybody’s life for the good of the people of the United States of America,” Braddock said at one point in the conversation last week, according to the recording exclusively obtained by POLITICO. “That will break my heart. But if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. Luna is a f—ing speed bump in the road. She’s a dead squirrel you run over every day when you leave the neighborhood.”

Reached by text message, Braddock refused to say whether he made any threats about Luna to the personwho recorded him, Erin Olszewski.

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Rebekah Jones Admits She Was Never Asked to Delete COVID Deaths in Florida

On Twitter last night, Rebekah Jones confirmed the central case within my long piece on her deception: That she was not, in fact, asked to delete COVID deaths in the state of Florida. In a now-deleted tweet, Jones wrote: “Deleting deaths was never something I was asked to do. I’ve never claimed it was.”

But Jones has claimed it. Indeed, she’s literally claimed it, as this also-deleted tweet clearly shows… This claim — that Florida’s deputy secretary of health, Dr. Shamarial Roberson, told her “to delete cases and deaths” — is at the heart of her case. That she now insists that she never made it is extraordinary.

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Florida releases genetically modified mosquitoes in hopes to reduce spread of disease

Genetically modified mosquitoes have been released for the first time in the United States, taking flight in the Florida Keys in a pilot program intended to reduce the spread of deadly diseases such as dengue, yellow fever and the Zika virus. 

  After an odyssey spanning more than a decade to secure regulatory approval, British-based biotechnology firm Oxitec, along with the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD)launched the project in hope of reducing the Aedes aegypti species that spread the diseases. 

  While Oxitec and local authorities have high hopes for the program, local residents and environmental groups worry that not enough is known about the long-term effects of the new technology. 

  Nevertheless, the Environmental Protection Agency granted an experimental use permit (EUP) to Oxitec on May 1. 

  A half-dozen boxes containing the OX5034 mosquito created by Oxitec have been deployed in the Florida Keys, an archipelago stretching 120 miles (195 km) off the southern tip of the state. 

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Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer Borrowed Billionaires’ Private Jet to Secretly Travel to Florida During Lockdown

As previously reported, Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer vacationed to Florida during Michigan’s Covid-19 surge while telling Michiganders to stay home and avoid travel.

Whitmer specifically attacked Floridians and blamed “snow birds” traveling from the Sunshine State into Michigan for her state’s Covid surge.

The governor’s spokesperson confirmed last month that Whitmer took a “personal trip” to Florida in March during spring break.

But Brown denied the allegation. Brown said Whitmer “did not go on spring break,” but traveled “to assist her elderly father who is battling a chronic illness,” according to a report from Detroit Free Press. Brown added that Gov. Whitmer has left the state three times in the last six months.

Whitmer’s office insisted the governor didn’t travel to Florida on taxpayer dime.

Deadline Detroit reported that Gretchen Whitmer borrowed a private jet from a group of uberwealthy Detroit businessmen.

The Detroit billionaires have major dealings with the state of Michigan so when they were asked by Whitmer if she could mooch their private jet, they said yes.

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Florida Man Sells Homemade ‘1776 Boom Sticks’ At Gun Buyback, City Runs Out Of Cash In 30 Minutes

A so-called “gun buyback” event in Pensacola, Florida did not go according to plan over the weekend, as a local gun club showed up to counteroffer the city by paying actual market value for citizens’ firearms. The only weapons the buyback was able to acquire included BB guns and homemade “Boom Stick 1776” pipe guns, which forced the event to run out of cash in under 30 minutes.

Members of the local Second Admendment advocacy group Escambia Carry showed up to the event with a sign that read “Don’t Get Ripped Off By The City With This Stupid Gun “Buyback’ Program – See Me To Get Fair Market Value For Your Firearm.”

“Other than these rifles, the vast majority were junk,” Escambia Carry’s Jeremy Bosso said in a Facebook post. “Numerous people told us they sold their old junk guns to buy new firearms. Someone sold a Marine Emergency Flare gun. Other attendees had air pistols (BB/pellet guns). The City ran out of money by 9:27am – less than 30 minutes into the event.”

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