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The Florida Session Nears The Finish Line · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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And here we go, turning the page on the rundown to the third and
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final hour at least for today of the Morning Show with Preston, Scott and
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Preston. That's Grant Allen and this is Sal Newso with Consumers' Defense. Do
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tell my friend you were the first one to introduce me with the new title.
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Yeah, yeah, very goal. Yeah yeah, it's a you know,
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so explain to everybody what this is that you are now the executive director
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of Congratulations, Well, thank you very much. After an amazing ten years
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with JMI, was recruited by a group that is engaged with JMI and a
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number of things. So i am serving as executive director of Consumers Defense,
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which is a national nonprofit policy and advocacy organization. It's functions very similar to
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JMI in terms of the policy buckets, but it's dedicated to protecting markets and
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humors from the influences of crony capitalism, will, corporatism, communist China.
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The main focus of the group is combating the less efforts to impose ESG,
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environmental, social and governance standards on the US economy. So you're going to
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be kind of on the front lines with our buddy Justin Haskins absolutely, and
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had the pleasure of working with Justin from Heartland when JMI engaged on ESG legislation
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a couple of sessions ago. And so the way that I have tried to
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kind of explain it to folks who aren't as familiar with the concept is,
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if you think about ESG kind of like cancer. Cancer is a very broad
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term. There's brain cancer, colorectal cancer. Absolutely, they look different,
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the treatments are different, et cetera. Lots of different components infects in different
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ways. ESG is very similar within each of those letters that the buckets of
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environmentals and governments the left and by proxy China are looking to kind of infect
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and spread policies that ultimately, like cancer, destroy the host organism. Sure,
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and so many of the things that Jami had worked on over the years
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and that I was pleased to be a part of, in things like rooting
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out DEI on campuses, working on the pension system, healthcare, and kind
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of protecting the conscience rights of doctors, all of those flow under a particular
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bucket of ESG, and so it's kind of an umbrella term that consumers Defense
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is working. I'm staying in Tallahassee. Floria's a very pivotal state. I
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was just going to say, based in Florida's got to be helpful because Florida
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is in fact leading the way from a legislative perspective on fighting this stuff.
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Yeah. Absolutely, And so the group and the network that it's a part
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of is based in DC, but it there are executive directors of different nonprofits
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around the country. Florida is a pivotal state because, as they had kind
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of said to me as we were talking about the opportunity, Florida is the
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proving ground for legislation, and there is a sense that all eyes are on
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Florida from other conservative states. So if a state like Florida, growing at
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the speeded that it is the size that it is, with the economy that
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it has, can enact some of these things, it makes it a whole
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lot easier for other in particular red states to move forward on well. And
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on the news front, we've seen in recent weeks the decision of some pretty
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notable banks across the country getting off of one of these ESG pushes saying we're
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no longer going to be part of that, and making a big deal of
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it. But also notably, I haven't been able to talk about the story
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today. It's on the schedule for tomorrow. Blackrock has admitted in its disclosures
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for the first time ever YEP, that ESG policies are detrimental to investors.
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Well, and I would stress that the motivation for what they're disclosing right now
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is a little bit of smoke and mirrors. Sure, and so the umbrella
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of ESG, because of the work of kind of a lot of people around
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the country, it's been more noticed. And so as the as the brand
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of ESG kind of gets established a little bit more in the public lexicon,
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what we expect and this is why Consumers Defense is functioning the way that it
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is, is that the kind of the motivation goes down to the policy areas.
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So we have seen policies that have been kind of championed by groups like
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the Team Starch Union in Big Labor that fall within the S bucket and how
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they are morphing from okay, ESG bad, But the policies contain they're in.
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They're still going to be pushing them. So well, a lot of
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what we're going to be doing is figuring out some of the head fakes working
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on campaigns to how they go underground, to do it anyway like some colleges
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may try to do with the state of Florida exactly. And so that's what
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we're on the forefront of. And I am just incredibly blessed to get to
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work with an amazing group of people at Consumers Defense as well as a great
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network. And the website is Consumers Defense dot com. It's a little bit
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of a shell right now because when I came on board it was kind of
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in a build out stage. There's a partner group called Consumers Research, which
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has been around for about one hundred years, and a huge network, but
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that'll all be coming very soon back with sal Newso Consumers Defense it's still less.
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It's gonna take a little while. It's gonna take a minute. Yeah,
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I'm not going to point out you walked in with a new hairstyle.
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I'm not saying that. I bet you did. I didn't walk in with
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a new hairstyle, did I just didn't put stuff in my hair. It's
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a new hairstyle. You walked out in public and you have a new hairstyle.
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Well, going from my garage to your parking lot is that's not quite
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getting out of the public. But whatever you say, Pal, whatever you
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say however you want to try to sanitize, that's progress. You got a
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new look, all right, the veto of HB one. Yeah, so
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the guns who got shocked by this? I don't know that anybody was shocked
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by this. The governor had indicated throughout the course of the sessions weeks that
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he was uncomfortable with the provisions and the bill that were kind of an outright
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ban. He wanted something, he said, that would stick in the courts,
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and so he vetoed HB one, and in the veto letter, it's
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my guess that he had worked with the Speaker and maybe even the Senate President
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on this in advance of announcing the veto, because he also announced that the
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legislature is going to use HB three, which was a bill aimed at age
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verification for adult oriented sites, as a new vehicle to push a what he
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would consider a better policy on social media. The interesting thing to unpack is
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why that's even allowed. HB three was passed by the House, but the
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Senate took HB three and added it onto the final version of HB one that
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ultimately got passed by the full legislature. So HB three still technically exists as
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a vehicle to move policy. So instead of vetoing it and then having to
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either come back in a special session or or wait until next year, they
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have a vehicle. So they are amending HB three to be They're going to
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keep the ban in place, but they're going to allow for parental consent.
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They will still have some form of age verification. I'm waiting to kind of
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see the far version of it for how aggressive the age verification. Will that
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determine in your mind it's ultimate legality to court challenges, Yes, I think
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if the age verification method becomes too aggressive or butts up or comes too close
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to what Arkansas passed, it's absolutely going to be litigated. Yeah, just
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because it was litigated in Arkansas and in Utah. I think if the age
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verification method is something a little bit more passive, and I just don't know
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what that could be yet, but if it is passive, it may squeak
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by without litigation. But we'll have to see you and you heard us talk
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about DEI the jobs are dead, you know, Long live the King.
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I mean, I've got an email from somebody saying that you know, even
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locally at FSU, there's going to be efforts to hide some of this stuff.
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Oh absolutely, And so the more left leaning and institution is, I
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think the more of a of a liberal arts bent you've got in a university,
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the more they're going to try to push this underground. Hence what we're
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kind of charged with in my new role with Consumers Defense. So at UF,
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however, totally different story. The President Ben Sass kind of as a
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result of the legislature's kind of rooting out DEI and the state university system,
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they took the bull by the horns. Last little note here on the governor
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comparing this session to last, the fact that he didn't have too many signing
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ceremonies. Is that a result of his being in the campaign mode. I
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don't know if it's a matter of being in a campaign mode, because what
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I looked at is they have only passed fifty nine bills as of yesterday or
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the day before, whereas last session they were just sending stuff to him every
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week and they were doing things. So it's a very different tack. It's
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a little bit more traditional, I would say last session was more of an
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anomaly. The impending campaign probably leent into that, but this session much quieter
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in both chambers until now. Back with Sal Newso of Consumers Defense, I'm
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saying that over and over and over for me, you got to train yourself.
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I absolutely do. No worries. By the way, still best buds
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with with Jmi around here. My goodness, I'm gonna talking about you.
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Oh sorry, I'm talking about me. Love Jmi, I love love the
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staff, the team over there, we are. We are joined at the
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hip. Sal's just been our guy on this stuff. So we continue what
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we started. Legislature. How's the any Are there any rumors of entanglements that
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could be problematic for the budget? Nothing that could be problematic for the budget.
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The budget conferences in full swing. So you have conference committees for each
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of the major allocated categories. Okay, so you have agriculture and natural resources,
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State administration and Technology, criminal and civil justice approches, Education, health
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and human services, Transportation, tourism, and economic development. Their job is
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to basically go through the general revenue portion of the budget, which amounts to
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about forty six point seven billion. The rest of the one hundred and fifteen
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is federal dollars that are coming through for Medicaid, a number of other trust
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funds and things like that. But this is what the legislature can actually direct
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money at on their own. So they have these subcommittees on each of the
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House and Senate, and then they kind of pass back and forth offers and
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they reach agreement on them. If there's a difference that they can't kind of
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bridge, what they do is they call it they bump it. They bump
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it up to the major appropriations chairs. Now on the House side, that's
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Tom Leak and on the Senate side it's Doug Broxon. Now when it gets
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today, oh yeah, very much so. In fact, Tom Leak is
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running for a Senate seat because he's term limited out, likely to win it
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assuming he makes it through the primary, which I don't know that there's anybody
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else in there. And I want to say Doug Broxon kind of in the
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place of like he may have endorsed him. I'm not sure. But because
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this process isn't always collegial. Oh, there are years that I can recall,
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not in the far too distant past, ye where in one year,
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one of the chambers I want to say it was the House actually adjourned and
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left the city, leaving the Senate in Tallahasse. Yeah, it was just
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a crazy set of circumstances. But no, it seems to be moving very
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cleanly, very smoothly. When do they have this thing? When do they
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have to have it done? So they have to lock it in and kind
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of get the budget finalized by Tuesday at some point, which would trigger the
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seventy two hour cooling off period and then they can vote. And I know
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this is weed stuff, but I think it's interesting weed stuff. When you
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talk about lock it down, get it done, does that mean printed or
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placed in the legislator's hands via email? Do they? In other words,
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at what point does it enter the hands of the lawmakers, because that's part
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of the process, right, Yes, that is I'm assuming in the information
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age that all of that is exactly the same, timing that as soon as
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the budget is locked in and it's identical in both changing so they're crafting it
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in process, yes, and the parts like they have strikeouts and stuff that
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they need to finalize. Oh yeah, and then there's a what they call
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an implementing bill that goes along with it. And once those two things lock
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in, then it goes to everybody in the leg Oh gosh, that's an
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excellent question. I mean, I just you know, you just think what
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happens if they get a decimal point wrong? Yeah, you know, I
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mean, yeah, that's a I that this is one. I want you
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to remember it and next week I'm going to find out the answer. Today,
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thank you who proof reads for all the decimals and what happens. I'm
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even curious what happens if in misplaced decimal goes through and it's not like what
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happens there. I do know they spend a trillion dollars on Florida State University
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athletics. Yes, don't know. I do know there is an incredible staff.
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The staff and the budget sides of both the House and the Senate are
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incredible. Two more segments with Sound News of Consumer's Defense. We are talking
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about the legislative session. They still should have taken our suggestion the you know,
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put the hanky down at the beginning and then pick it up and then
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they can drop it. We had that last year. Yeah, I love
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that idea. Yeah. I floated it with a few people and they just
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kind of laughed at me. But you know, it's because they didn't think
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about it. They think about it. It's a brilliant suggestion for a granted,
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it's an oxymoronic term, a new tradition, a new tradition. Yeah,
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all right, bills that are dying. Bills are dying people. We've
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got a lot in the hopper here are that are dead, life support,
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critical condition, County Commissioner term limits dead. The Chambers couldn't agree on eight
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or twelve years, which is weird because when I was looking at the Senate
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bill, the Senate bill had eight years in there, but apparently they came
15:22
back and wanted twelve and they couldn't bridge. I'm just curious. Were they
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talking about making sure that staff couldn't be retained. I don't know. I've
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got to figure out a little bit more so, it's a good question to
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ask, though. Negligence for civil liability for fetuses that are killed dead.
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The Chambers had backed off of Senator Aaron Grahl's effort to establish what many had
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considered a first step toward a personhood statue. We need it and yeah,
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and basically the bill would have created civil liability if a pregnant mother is murdered
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or killed somehow that the fetus also exists and there is civil liability there.
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Yep, HB six thirty nine, requiring official documents to list a person's biological
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sex as opposed to their gender identity made it through the full House, but
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the Senate is not gonna hear it. In addition, that bill would have
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also mandated any insurance company that covered gender reassignment surgery they would also have to
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cover d transitioning. So I expect this bill this may come back in wyetrear.
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Why did it die in the Senate? Not sure. The Senate President
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just said they would not be hearing this bill, so I do not know
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if it was something within the caucus or it was something that she just did
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not want moving in her chamber. Because right now, I mean, we're
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protecting women's girls' sports in the state, are we not? We are?
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Indeed we are. Indeed, yeah, there is, although I will point
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out there is a rule that the Governor's office had issued to the Department of
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Transportation Florida Highway Safety motor vehicles on driver's licenses that they're not accepting gender changes
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because of trans identity. So it's something where you know at least one faster
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come. Yeah, there's more to come. Senate Bill sixteen ninety the human
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Trafficking bill that would have banned anyone under twenty one from working in an adult
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establishment. Also dead for ninety eight repealing the state preemption on single use plastic
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bands by local governments. Also dead. The Defamation Bill. It popped back
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up this year. It would have changed some of the laws governing defamation cases
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in the state. Keep my speech in my computer pocket your speech for next
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session if it comes back. Seventy to fifty THC caps on marijuana dead,
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so you don't have to worry about that if you smoke them. There was
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a separate bill from Senator Colling Burton on what was considered the fake THHC.
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The Senate moved it. The House has no taking it up on the floor
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yet. I'm guessing paying attention to this might be something that they horse trade
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back and forth. So you got that House Bill seven thirty five. It
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would have banned public officials from soliciting gifts from ford and entities. That's dead.
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Eleven ninety five, my favorite bill of twenty twenty four. It's on
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life support. It made it through the House this is the bill that would
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require a supermajority for any commission looking to raise the millage rate. It did
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not make it onto the appropriations calendar in the Senate, so it would require
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a rules waving on the Senate side. I believe it could get brought over
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in messages from the House because it's passed through, but the Senate President's got
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to authorize it. Okay. HB forty nine, revising employment rules for sixteen
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and seventeen year olds. It's on life support. Made it through the House.
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Senate's a hold up there. Senate Bill fifteen sixty eight, which was
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the Fantasy Sports Regulations. It's in critical condition, but it's reversed. The
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Senate has moved it the houses the hold up there. Interesting, yep.
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So that's what we've got in terms of the dead, dying, and on
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life support list, and that's only a small portion of it. But out
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of that list, what's the one bill that you think needs to have a
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last gasp and chance at resuscitation? Oh eleven ninety five. I really would
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love to see truth and taxation move in Florida. This bill from Rep.
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Garrison is the first step in that, and I think there's more to be
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done on that. But in order to get to full truth and taxation,
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which we can talk about in another time eleven ninety five, I needs to
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really move remember the days when times were good and life was simple. He
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still lives there. The Morning Show with Preston Scott on Used Radio one hundred
19:59
point seven wfla final segment for the week with Sal Newso next week we are
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going to kind of he's going to get answers to a couple questions that we've
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posed today and just give us a little bit of a thirty thousand foot view
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of the session. And then we're going to go into the four bills that
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will likely be signed by the governor that are most impactful, if not already
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signed. And so that's coming up next Monday on the program. But the
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bills that now are still alive, yep, still live. We're still moving.
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We do have a few days left for the chambers Senate Bill twelve sixty
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four mandating the accurate teaching of Communism beginning in kindergarten. It's through the Senate.
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The House language is awaiting the Chamber. It's on what they call the
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counter pilgrims. Hey, yeah, William Bradford wrote about communism's failure. I
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think the impetus of trying to go earlier and earlier. We're really trying to
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swing the pendulum for a generation to come, which is something that's going to
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be painful until we do yep uh one seven the anti Semitism definition. It
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is pasted the full legislature unanimously. Uh. Interestingly enough, five members of
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the House were not present, and I'm guessing that they likely avoided the vote
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because they didn't want to vote. No, Angie Nixon, Are there are
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there issues with this bill? No, No, you don't think so.
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You don't have fears of what it'll do to, you know, Bible reading
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people. No, because they added some caveats that it does not include or
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does not apply to legitimate policy, criticisms of Israel, and a few other
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things that I think are I think the concerns, while well placed, are
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a bit of a misnomer at this point in the bill. All right,
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next one thousand and six, regulating and restricting the products available for vaping.
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It's ready for the Senate floor. The House has already passed it. We
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talked about this last week. Because you've got tens of thousands, hundreds of
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thousands of people who vape. This would severely restarve it's an industry now,
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yeah, and this would restrict what can go into those vaping cartridges to about
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twenty three or twenty four different products. A lot of what people are putting
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in those cartridges are manufactured from China, and they're not kind of regulated in
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any way. I'm a limited government person, but I do kind of understand
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where the legislature's coming from here. The concern I've heard in opposition to this
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is it's going to turn big tobacco into an even larger conglomerate because they rule
22:37
that marketplace of the twenty three products. That's not a concern, that's a
22:41
reality. It is absolutely the case the large tobacco companies are the ones that
22:45
dominate those twenty three parts. So is there room in this legislation for domestic
22:51
companies to produce products if we're going to allow it, I mean that get
22:56
outside of the tobacco companies. There are, absolutely, but it's a federally
23:00
you because all that they have to do is get FDA approval. And therein
23:03
lies one of the problems that I have with the regulatory mechanism is that the
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FDA is broken. Yeah, and so it's a separate discussion. It's a
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federal issue. But one there minute left eleven eight huge overhaul the condo board
23:18
regulations. It would create criminal penalties and records for records violations, kickbacks,
23:23
condo board elections. This was birth by. There were a number of these
23:29
kind of things that had happened over the course of in South Florida and then
23:33
in the Panhandle with some kind of corrupt actors. It also would clarify some
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obligations for hurricane protection, a revision of the slap what are called strategic lawsuits
23:44
against public participation, the vacation rentals two to eighty from Senator de Segli.
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It's passing the Senate, ready for the House to take up. This would
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completely revise the regulatory system for airbnbs and vrbos HB nine nineteen AI and political
24:00
advertising. It's a disclosure law that's past I expect the governor to sign.
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Please tell me it's not the fine print disclosures that we see in so many
24:08
ads. It has to be a massive disclosure. It's somewhere between the tiny
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print and a massive disclosure. But it is. It's probably closer to the
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tiny print. That's wrong. It's not going to work. And God bless
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Senator Nict Segli because he filed a committee substitute on SB four thirty four,
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which would create a new license plate celebrating Italian American culture in Florida. I
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want a canoli on the plate pun intended. God bless you, Senator di
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Segli. You're making the Gumba Caucus very proud. How could you not exactly?
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Thanks, as always, always a pleasure. Salders Oh with us.
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He'll be back next Monday, as we continue to talk about the legislative session,
24:55
only in the rearview mirror, hopefully here in the Morning Show with Preston Scott