I'm just starting out with a STR and I'm in the process of vetting companies for tax strategy and asset protection. 

Whether they have personal property protection, and how much, should be left up them.

Choosing an STR-friendly area can save you significant hassle and protect your investment in the long run.

Some level of protection will almost certainly be provided as opposed to some sort of outright ban.  

Also, what if I hold financing in my personal name on some of these properties and I have simply moved them to the LLC for additional libiliaty protection where as I have to move them in and out of the LLC when I refinance?

LLC offers better legal protection.3) Setting up in states that allow your identity to be hid is also overblown.

Most importantly, to protect you, the investor.

Before this law, however, I only accepted applicants with "garnishable" income to help protect the landlord in the event we ended up with a defaulting tenant.

That is just not realistic in this current market.So in my opinion it's important to expose yourself to a large number of deals, so you can develop an intuitive sense of what's reasonable and what's not (and quickly discard the ones that aren't).And it's true that there is no way to 100% protect from fraud (and not just in passive real estate investments but even in public stocks etc.).

The laws protect vs detract the operations.