Florida’s Street Cleaning, Florida’s Political Hue & DHS’ AI - Top 3 Takeaways – March 21st, 2024
- Street cleaning. While street and sidewalk poo has replaced Rice-A-Roni as the San Francisco treat for those who venture into the once magnificent city (there have been over 125,000 cases of human street poo detected in San Francsico over the past three years – over 114 per day)...as former Rivera Beach Mayor Thomas Masters once said (about the fashion of wearing saggy pants – not street poo specifically)... It just won’t be happening in Rivera Beach...pull up your pants! While thankfully none of Florida’s cities have had problems so significant they required people creating a “poop map”, there are numerous cities, and numerous streets within those cities that have become homeless hot spots. As my recent analysis has suggested there are an estimated 740 homeless individuals sleeping on the streets (or often quite literally on the side of them) in Palm Beach County nightly – or about 40% of the county’s entire homeless total. That will soon be changing. Yesterday Governor DeSantis signed Florida’s Unauthorized Public Camping and Public Sleeping bill into law which will take effect October 1st. As noted by Governor DeSantis at the signing... Florida will not allow homeless encampments to intrude on its citizens or undermine their quality of life like we see in states like New York and California. The legislation I signed today upholds our commitment to law and order while also ensuring homeless individuals have the resources they need to get back on their feet. With a challenge as complex as chronic homelessness, it is all too easy to fall into the trap of comfortable inaction. In Florida, we will learn from the mistakes of cities like San Francisco, Denver, Los Angeles, and more which are paying the price for their unwillingness to act. This bill will not eliminate homelessness. But it is a start. And it states clearly that in Florida, our public spaces are worth fighting for. The status quo is not an option. In Florida we choose to act. It is simply the right thing to do. And that means, among other things, no street poo.
- It’s been a while. Gloria Estefan was with the Miami Sound Machine. The Cosby Show was the top TV show. Ronald Reagan was president (these were obviously much better times). On basically one leg Kirk Gibson hit a walk off homerun in game one of the World Series. The year was of course...1988. That also happened to the be last year that either political party had as large of a voter registration advantage in Florida as Republicans do right now. Only back then the party that dominated Florida’s political scene was the Democrat Party. The latest release of voter registration data in Florida shows that there’s been no end to the trend of Florida quickly flipping from having been the ultimate swing state into a reliably red state. Following the latest data drop from the Florida Division of Elections, reflecting voter registrations near the end of February, Republicans now lead Democrats by over 850,000 voters. That number reflects huge gains for Republicans relative to Democrats to start the year which continues a multi-year trend of Florida’s politics breaking hard towards the right. The last time either political party had that large of a voter registration advantage the year was obviously 1988 when Democrats held the advantage and held complete control of the state government. The all-time record advantage by one political party over the other in this state is the 1.63 million voter advantage Democrats held over Republicans in 1978. And while that’s a large number, one that’s essentially double the current GOP advantage, it may not necessarily be a while before it’s broken, that is if the current trend extends. It was only in October of 2021, not even two and a half years ago, that Democrats still held a voter registration advantage in Florida. It has been a while since Florida’s Democrats had a positive political trend and based on our perceived performance of their party’s leader (President Biden’s current approval rating in Florida is 35%) it’s likely to be a while before they do again.
- Artificial Intelligence. For many, if not most, the new age of AI is equal parts exciting and scary (sort of like the thought of November’s elections). Will we come out on top as beneficiaries, or will we be ruled by the machines? Now when you think about the Biden Administration, the words “artificial intelligence” conjures up a whole different meaning – especially when you bring DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas into the mix. Nevertheless, here’s where these two thoughts collide. The Department of Homeland Security has announced they’re making the move to AI based systems for three of its agencies: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Quoting Mayorkas’ announcement: (The) unprecedented speed and potential of AI’s development and adoption presents both enormous opportunities to advance our mission and risks we must mitigate. The DHS AI roadmap and pilots will guide our efforts this year to strengthen our national security, improve our operations, and provide more efficient services to the American people, while upholding our commitment to protect civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy. Now, when you hear Mayorkas effectively saying we’re from the federal government and we’re here using AI to help make our services even better to serve you...you instinctively know that’s true if you’re an illegal immigrant. But here’s where it just might work out. As DHS machine learning commences, the programs are bound to read the law. Which appears to be more than Mayorkas has ever done. And in the event that the machines do one day take over...they might even implement them – which is more than Mayorkas has ever done.