In honor of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s lousy performance in the first presidential debate, we are rerunning our episode on his intervention in wild politics of The Villages, Florida.
In 2019, residents of The Villages, an iconic retirement community in Florida, were suddenly hit with a 25 percent hike in their property taxes. In the master-planned community of 130,000 across the state’s Sumter, Lake, and Marion counties, many residents are on fixed incomes. The tax hikes were intended to subsidize new developments south of the community, rather than cover new amenities or upgrades for current residents. The entity known locally either as “the developer” or “the family” benefited from the tax hike and could then escape paying fees associated with the expansion of their development. This week on Deconstructed, host Ryan Grim takes us to The Villages to meet residents who banded together to rollback the tax hike but who were ultimately blocked by powerful players. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the local political machine run by The Villages fought the residents, leading to one of their champions being thrown in jail.
If you’d like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give, where your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference.
And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. And please go and leave us a rating or a review — it helps people find the show. If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at Podcasts@theintercept.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Line 3 and a Week of Climate Catastrophe
Andrew Quilty and Ilhan Omar on Afghanistan
Anand Gopal And Richard Ojeda On Afghanistan
The Era of Climate Denial is Over
Cori Bush on the Shame and Power of Poverty
The Coup That Wasn't
Antitrust Makes a Comeback
How “The People’s Mayor” Saved Public Power
Chelsea Manning Meets Ken Klippenstein
Joe Manchin Gets Candid With Billionaire Donors in Leaked Audio
Banishing the Ghosts of the Great Recession
Race and Taxes
Losing the Asymmetric War
Life and Death in Occupied Palestine
The System That Killed Berta Cáceres
The Deconstructed May Day Special
Matt Bruenig on Joe Biden's American Families Plan
The Whistleblower Trying to Stop the Next Financial Crisis
The New Mexico Spring
A Big New Idea to End the Border Crisis
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Jim & Bill (It‘s Another Day)
HauntingLive
Dr. Paul’s Worldviews
The Ben Shapiro Show
Morning Wire