Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, is starting to look like an artist right now. A sculptor perhaps, a bas relief sculptor, yet one whose lacy carvings cut all the way through.

Because against the great marble wall of woke which forms the establishment, he's carving out something else for Floridians, and it's a thing of beauty:

According to Crankers, cited by news aggregator Whatfinger:

Ron DeSantis continues his war on the woke. Slamming ESG as an “elite-driven phenomenon” that seeks to impose policies that would otherwise “never win favor” with the public, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has recently announced proposed legislation designed to end “ESG woke banking” in the state.

During the press conference, DeSantis said that ESG, or environmental, social, and governance standards, are a “mechanism to inject political ideology into investment decisions, corporate governance, and really just the everyday economy.” By withdrawing government support from banks that use it and creating protections for citizens, the government’s plan aims to eliminate its influence in the state.

That apparently includes this, too, according to the Free Press of Tampa:

On Monday, the Florida Republican announced he would work to prohibit financial firms that operate in the state from using “social credit scores” to evaluate customers.

DeSantis’ office said the ban would be coming in a bill proposed for the upcoming legislative session.

“Today’s announcement builds on my commitment to protect consumers’ investments and their ability to access financial services in the Free State of Florida,” DeSantis said in a statement.

“By applying arbitrary ESG [environmental, social, and governance] financial metrics that serve no one except the companies that created them, elites are circumventing the ballot box to implement a radical ideological agenda. Through this legislation, we will protect the investments of Floridians and the ability of Floridians to participate in the economy.”

It follows from his earlier prohibition on woke investing practices within public pension funds, something Florida's bureaucrats are going to have to thank him for as public pensions go belly up in woke investing states.  I wrote about that here.

Crankers noted that that measure was folded into this package.

It all demonstrates the overriding idea that, as DeSantis put it, Florida is the state where 'woke goes to die.'

The implications of this are tremendous. 

By carefully targeting problematic pockets of wokesterism, instead of just getting the wrecking ball out or going full bull in China shop, DeSantis makes it much easier for the measures to get embedded into the constitutional fabric of the state -- and much harder ultimately to get rid of them. The fact that he keeps doing this over and over, carefully selecting a target and then taking action on the target, deprives the left of a broad-based "they're killing granny" scream for the press, and makes him highly effective in changing the bad trajectory the wokesters have put government on.

We see this again and again with him. He did it with Disney when it went woke and overbearing. He did it potential hurricane looters, warning them that maybe things wouldn't quite go the way they might go in some place like California where the laws on private property are not enforced. He did it on wokester investing in public pensions, and now we see him doing this on the broader topic of banking, which includes emerging social credit score, like they have in China, as well as shutting out banks that run their businesses on ECG practices instead of making the most money they can for their shareholders.. 

He's precise, like a fighter pilot -- or a sculptor. And it certainly explains why he always seems to be bringing us good news.

It's such a striking thing about DeSantis that I actually wonder if he might be an actual artist in private lif. If so, it wouldn't be surprising. Yes, it sounds nutty, but Ulysses S. Grant and Winston Churchill were talented artists in their private lives. They were both also good at winning big and terrible wars. One wonders if Ron DeSantis might just be one of them.

Image: Gage Skidmore, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0