Florida Shit Sandwich
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The gist of the story:
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Florida got hit by Covid-19 leading to lots of workers losing their jobs.
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Florida’s unemployment system (website and such, recently revamped with a $87 million price tag) makes it hard for people to file for unemployment and makes it hard for people to keep unemployment benefits; this leads to lots of who laid off people cannot get unemployment benefits
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Why? Because it’s deliberately designed that way by former governor Rick Scott to suppress unemployment numbers so the former governor could have something to brag about
Hence the “shit sandwich” metaphor.
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From the article:
“It’s a sh-- sandwich, and it was designed that way by Scott,” said one DeSantis advisor. “It wasn’t about saving money. It was about making it harder for people to get benefits or keep benefits so that the unemployment numbers were low to give the governor something to brag about.”
Republican Party of Florida chairman Joe Gruters was more succinct: “$77 million? Someone should go to jail over that.”
With hundreds of thousands of Floridians out of work, the state’s overwhelmed system is making it nearly impossible for many people to even get in line for benefits.
After a record number of claims were reported Thursday, DeSantis said the state would resort to paper applications, build a mobile app to handle the flood of traffic and deploy hundreds, even thousands, of state workers to provide stopgap help.
