Wealthy ✔ GOP Donor ✔ Support DeSantis ✔ Come get your vaccine! Florida governor faces growing claims of vaccine favoritism https://apnews.com/article/seniors-...rus-pandemic-2f76fb35a316dfd9223519d12e43d710
"DeSantis for the win" -- Not content to merely block public access to COVID data, DeSantis is blocking public access to other state data. My major problem with DeSantis is his lack of transparency, manipulation, and deliberate hiding of state data -- all to drive his political agenda. The public has the right to see state data in the middle of a public health crisis - proper disclosure of state information is the very foundation that public trust is built on. DeSantis has violated it in an extreme and unacceptable manner. Keep in mind that Florida has clear sunshine laws which require the proper disclosure of this information -- there is no acceptable excuse for hiding the data. Florida blocked public access to COVID data. Now there’s even more it wants to keep secret from taxpayers https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article249701743.html For a whole year, as Floridians suffered and died by the tens of thousands from COVID-19, Florida’s government routinely kept the public from seeing detailed information about the course and intensity of the pandemic, often until the trend line had changed to better match the governor’s sunnier version. That disgraceful behavior by a state known for its broad public-records laws is detailed in a story and accompanying timeline published by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times last week. That important reporting shows that Florida’s government spent a year stonewalling, obfuscating and evading requests for information about such vital matters as the number of COVID deaths recorded by medial examiners’ offices, details about contact tracing to see where transmission was occurring and which eldercare facilities had seen outbreaks among staff and residents. Mounting such a pervasive and sustained attack on the state’s public-records law in the midst of a tragedy that has killed 31,000 people and infected more than 1.9 million in the state should outrage and offend every Florida taxpayer. In some ways, this is no surprise. Under former Gov. Rick Scott, now Florida’s junior senator, the state became increasingly hostile to open- government principles. But current Gov. Ron DeSantis has expanded on Scott’s antagonism, chipping away at the public’s right to know what its government is doing — just when Floridians most needed to rely on their leaders on life-or-death issues. That is inexcusable. Starting last spring, when the coronavirus was taking hold in Florida, and continuing to today, the state slow-walked requests to see a wide variety of information relating to the pandemic. Let’s be clear: The information we’re talking about doesn’t fall under the umbrella of national security or nuclear codes, exceptions any thinking person would agree are reasonable. No, we’re talking about the kind of information that might be critical to helping Floridians gauge the risk to themselves and their families in a pandemic — no small thing at all. For example, the state attempted to block the release of COVID death records, information used to determine how severely Florida had been hit. The DeSantis administration ignored public-records requests for specifics of contact tracing in Florida — the government-financed program that is supposed to help cut down on transmission by notifying people when they’ve been around someone who tested positive. And Florida’s government wouldn’t disclose the number of deaths at specific eldercare facilities, something that families of vulnerable seniors surely should be able to know. In a particularly egregious and revealing moment in April, the state refused requests by the Herald and family members of people in eldercare facilities to give them information that the state collected identifying which facilities had staff and residents who tested positive for COVID. When the Herald’s law firm, Holland & Knight, drafted a public-records lawsuit seeking the information, the governor’s office tried to stop the suit by pressuring the law firm, which does a lot of work for state agencies. It worked. Holland & Knight backed down, and the Herald had to find another law firm to file the suit. Secrecy gets worse Florida’s Government-in-the-Sunshine Law, a tradition of openness that includes a constitutional amendment passed by voters in 1992, is a series of statutes intended to give the people access to the meetings and records of the government they elect and pay for. But the Herald/Times report, along with additional proposed exemptions now before the Legislature, show in no uncertain terms that these are dark times for the Sunshine Law. Pamela Marsh, president of the Florida First Amendment Foundation, said governmental openness and accountability in the state have “gotten worse in every way.” From exorbitant fees for residents to obtain public records to mothballing requests until threatened with a lawsuit, the state has tried to prevent access to information that rightfully belongs to the public. Worse, those tactics often have succeeded. “Transparency has gone downhill,” Marsh told the Miami Herald Editorial Board. “It got bad under Rick Scott when he was governor, but I do think it’s gotten worse under this administration.” There already are 1,159 exemptions to the Sunshine Law — and more in the works, if some of our state legislators have their way. It’s a grim prospect, especially as Sunshine Week — dedicated to promoting open government across the country — is about to be observed March 14-20. For example, there are bills this year that would make voter-registration records secret, hide the home addresses of members of Florida’s Cabinet and Legislature (making it hard to determine whether a lawmaker lives in his or her district) and keep secret the names of candidates applying for the presidency of a university or college. Some public-records exemptions may sound reasonable on their surface — until you look deeper. Marsy’s Law, passed by voters in 2018, was part of a national push to protect crime victims from harassment by their attackers, among other things. But law-enforcement agencies in Florida are now using it to protect the names of cops after they use force, as USAToday reported. Too optimistic? Why does the state’s open-records law matter so much? Because information is power. The government works for the people. The people get to decide what the government does. And the only way for the people to do that is to have free and open access to government records and meetings. There have to be exceptions to that basic democratic premise, of course, but they should be, as noted in the Sunshine Law, as narrow as possible and fulfill a public need. Yet in this monumental, yearlong struggle with COVID, the government of Florida has tried — not even subtly — to keep pandemic information away from the people. Has the state paid too much for contact tracing? Was it effective? We Floridians don’t know — but we should. In the governor’s annual State of the State address Tuesday, he cited his pandemic response in a speech that sounded more like a campaign rally for his reelection next year than a somber address in the midst of possibly the worst crisis the state has ever faced. “Our nation and our state have endured a tumultuous year. Floridians have responded in ways that would make our founders proud,” DeSantis said. “Because of that, the sun is rising here in Florida, and the Sunshine State will soon reach new horizons.” That’s an awfully optimistic vision when cast — as it must be — against the backdrop of 31,000 deaths. But maybe Florida did avoid the worst of the pandemic. Maybe our government and governor rose to the occasion and functioned at their best in a situation terrible beyond imagination. Without transparency and accountability, we’ll never know.
Just like Trump, who denied the Covid issues but got the best medical care possible when he was infected and then jumped the queue on the vaccines.
In asking the U.S. Department of Justice to look into matter, Crist, a former Florida governor, asserted last week that DeSantis were benefiting “political allies and donors, over the needs of higher-risk communities and existing county waitlists.” Both Crist and Fried are considering campaigns to oppose DeSantis in next year’s gubernatorial election. The very definition of impartiality. Meanwhile Florida drops to number 29 in cases per 1M pop. Despite all the "corruption" in the press. Despite the worst governor ever. Despite being open since last June. Despite full time in-person classes since last August. Despite the B### whatever deadly "variant" bullshit. Despite no statewide mask mandate. All the doom and gloom, all the "look what your governor is doing!!" whining and shrieking. And Florida continues to rock the country. Is it any wonder everyone on the left hates him so much? He's the very personification of how they've been wrong all along.
If DeSantis did not criminally hide COVID data violating Florida's sunshine laws and criminal arrange for wealthy donors to be placed at the front of the COVID vaccination line ---- then these other politicians would have very little to complain about, eh.
Florida told hospital to divert vaccines to wealthy community as appointments were canceled for general public https://www.rawstory.com/florida-governor-ron-desantis/ A Florida hospital diverted vaccines from the general public to an ultra-wealthy community where its CEO and Republican donors lived. Gov. Ron DeSantis insists "the state was not involved" in helping to vaccinate 1,200 residents of the wealthy Ocean Reef community in January, but a spokeswoman for Baptist Health Systems, which administered the doses, told Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald that state officials did intervene. "It is our understanding that the Medical Center at Ocean Reef asked the State of Florida for vaccine doses, and the State of Florida asked Baptist Health to take delivery of the doses to our ultra-cold freezer storage for delivery to the Medical Center at Ocean Reef,'' said Baptist Health spokeswoman Dori Alvarez in a statement. Some of the beneficiaries had donated to the governor's political action committee, which has garnered almost $4 million, and Baptist Health Systems president and CEO Brian Keeley and his wife own a home in Ocean Reef. The spokeswoman would not say whether the couple was involved in getting the vaccine doses delivered to their community. Baptist Health canceled vaccine appointments for hundreds of people in January because not enough doses were available. Agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried and state Senate Democratic Leader Gary Farmer have asked the FBI to investigate the delivery of doses to wealthy communities that tend to back DeSantis. "If this isn't public corruption," Fried said, "I don't know what is."
If someone from the state told asked the medical center to do this, then it shouldn't be all that hard to produce an email or a name or some sort of communication that confirms this allegation, right? I mean, why is it there are always "anonymous" people involved? Find the person who said to do this, and blast their name out in the open with the evidence. Stop making accusations without any evidence. I'm all for prosecuting guilty parties. But all we seem to get is smear campaigns from media sources and politicians who are vested in taking down DeSantis.
Sure, because no politician has ever fabricated evidence or run with a media narrative that had no backup to slander an opponent before, right? Like ever. And what are you, Canadian now with the "eh"? Or are you just pandering to Nine Ender.
Looking at today's chart of covid death rate by state, Florida is middle of the pack. Nothing special either way.
They are number 27. You are correct, nothing special either way. It has never been my argument that they are special in this regard. It has, however, been my argument that if DeSantis was so bad a governor and mishandled COVID in the state that they would have been much, much worse. Considering Florida has had no mask mandate, and has been open since June of last year, this is an amazing number. That is, if those things mattered.