Florida Republicans Try To Give Businesses Power To Destroy Pro Worker Laws

A new piece of legislation working its way through the Florida state legislature would allow businesses to sue city governments if any local ordinances get in the way of their profits. This could be anything from minimum wage increases to environmental protections, and it would absolutely give corporations free reign to do whatever they want throughout the state. Republicans are very quickly turning Florida into an absolute hellhole, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

Become a member today!

Support us by becoming a monthly patron on Patreon, and help keep progressive media alive!

Find our merchandise at Teespring

Spread the word! LIKE and SHARE this video or leave a comment to help direct attention to the stories that matter. And SUBSCRIBE to stay connected with Ring of Fire's video content!

Support Ring of Fire by subscribing to our YouTube channel

Be sociable! Follow us on:

Follow more of our stories at

Subscribe to our podcast

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Republicans in the state of Florida are working on a new piece of legislation that actually just passed its first committee on Wednesday of this week, that would basically allow businesses, any businesses, to overthrow local city governments. And they would do that because this piece of legislation would allow for any business that suffers a loss, a profit loss of 15% or greater due to a city ordinance, they could then sue the city to make up that 15 plus percent profit loss, which of course would then force the city to remove the ordinance or the law, giving corporations, businesses, whatever they are the ultimate say in what can or cannot be a law in a particular area. Because cities aren't gonna be able to, you know, pay out 15% profit to every single business that suffers a loss because they had to put new environmental regulations in place, or they had to change business hours.

When you could be open. Where you can operate. You know, rezoning issues, anything like that. If we say, no, you can't have your business here, it has to move over here. Oh no, I lost 15% of my profits. I'm suing you city. You have to give me my money now. The biggest issue with this obviously are things like environmental regulations, minimum wage increases and other labor laws that businesses small and large would have to comply with. But I'm sorry, if your business relies on either destroying the environment to maintain a profit or paying people poverty wages to maintain a profit, then you have a business and you should go out of business. But Republicans don't want that to happen. So again, this legislation is still working it's way through the Florida legislature. It's having a good deal of success so far in the Republican controlled state Senate. And I am unfortunately pretty positive this will end up becoming law here in the state of Florida.

Businesses, again, of all sizes, not just the large corporations, but any business. The restaurant down the street dumping their grease into the sewer, they would have more say over your life and your protection than the government would. And of course, if the government wants to be stubborn and say, nope, we're leaving these laws in place because they protect people, then the business would be allowed to say, cool, you're gonna start making up my profits then. We're gonna defund the cities by bleeding them dry just so corporations and, and businesses can make a profit. Because at the end of the day, that is the only thing that Republicans care about. Let businesses make big profits because hopefully they're gonna turn right around and put some of that into my campaign. That is 100% what politics in 2022 is all about.