We can always look at the AARP data if you'd like. See how Florida is doing in comparison to the rest of the country. You remember the AARP site - the site you brought up to show how bad Florida was doing, but then I thanked you because it showed that Florida had some of the best numbers of the pandemic?
Trump attacks 'gutless' Ron DeSantis for refusing to say if he's had COVID booster They’re gutless. You gotta say it, whether you had it or not, say it." DeSantis reportedly received the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine last spring. In December, during an interview on the Fox News Channel, DeSantis was asked whether he had gotten a booster. “I’ve done whatever I did, the normal shot, and that at the end of the day is people’s individual decisions about what they want to do,” DeSantis responded. “I’ve had the booster," Trump told One America News Network in an interview. "Many politicians, I watched a couple of politicians be interviewed and one of the questions was, ‘Did you get the booster?’ Because they had the vaccine, and they’re answering like — in other words, the answer is ‘yes,’ but they don’t want to say it, because
New week, new scandal. Welcome to DeSantis' Florida. Florida officials tried to steer education contract to former lawmaker’s company MGT Consulting, led by former Republican lawmaker Trey Traviesa, was in serious talks to do the work before a bid was announced. https://www.tampabay.com/news/educa...ucation-contract-to-former-lawmakers-company/ TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Education Department is under fire for trying to steer a multimillion-dollar contract to a company whose CEO has ties to the state’s education commissioner. Records and interviews show that, before the Florida Department of Education asked for bids, it was already in advanced talks with the company to do the work, subverting a process designed to eliminate favoritism. The company is MGT Consulting, led by former Republican lawmaker Trey Traviesa of Tampa, a longtime colleague of the state’s education commissioner, Richard Corcoran. During a bidding process that was open for one week, MGT was the only pre-approved vendor to submit a proposal — pitched at nearly $2.5 million a year to help the struggling Jefferson County School District with its academic and financial needs. Documents show the department’s request for proposals was tailored to MGT. But it did not get the award. Instead, the bidding process erupted in controversy when two of Corcoran’s top deputies and a member of the state Board of Education filed a competing bid. Their effort led to an internal investigation over potential conflicts of interests — and two resignations. The Department of Education is now conducting a new round of bids for the work. But state Rep. Allison Tant, D-Tallahassee, is calling for an independent investigation, saying that even though the department claimed to have carried out a competitive bidding process, officials “clearly had someone in mind.” “These guys (MGT) clearly had the inside track to come in,” said Tant, whose district neighbors Jefferson County. “It’s really egregious, in my view.” Members of the Jefferson County School Board have been outraged for months, seeing the entire process as a way for the state to siphon more money out of a rural, majority-Black school district and into the pockets of the politically connected. The decision to hire a company to help the three schools — and have Jefferson County pay for it with federal coronavirus relief dollars — came from the Department of Education, they say. “I’m just going to be honest with you. It’s money,” Jefferson County School Board member Bill Brumfield said in an interview last month. “It’s money and it’s politics, and they are just trying to kick Jefferson County around again like a bunch of little country bumpkins sitting over there and knowing nothing.” Corcoran said his “first, last and only priority has been to ensure the students of Jefferson County receive the high-quality education they deserve.” “The Department has followed not only the letter but the spirit of the procurement process,” he said. “Our procurements are designed to attract the widest range of bidders to ensure every needed service is available for every child. Any suggestion to the contrary is uninformed.” In a statement, Traviesa said MGT got involved at the request of staff at the Department of Education. “The needs in Jefferson County align with our strengths, and we expressed interest if a competitive process moved forward,” Traviesa said. “Moving forward, the company is reevaluating its participation and will decide whether or not to participate later this month.” Company had an inside track Jefferson County, a rural county near Florida’s capital with one of the poorest populations in the state, is coming off the boldest experiment yet in Republicans’ two-decade effort to privatize public education. In 2017, amid failing grades and financial mismanagement, the state turned over control of the district and its three schools to a private charter school company — the first, and only, district in the state to be privatized. That five-year arrangement with Somerset Academy Inc. is set to expire June 30, and Somerset opted against extending the contract. Somerset continues to deal with “extreme turnover of instructional staff” and “extremely low proficiency” in math and reading among the majority of students, according to the company’s January 2021 assessment. The school district was working with the state and Somerset for a plan to take back control of the schools. Originally, the county’s plan did not include hiring another charter school company to help its transition. But the Department of Education later decided it would hire a private company to provide assistance with the transition for up to three years, and it would use $4 million of Jefferson County’s federal coronavirus relief money to pay for it. On Nov. 8, the state announced a request for quotes. The scope was narrow, sent to 25 pre-approved vendors, and all responses were due in one week. Only one company responded: MGT Consulting. Based in Tampa, MGT provides consulting services to state and local governments on technology and schools. Since 2009, 10 state agencies in Florida, including the Department of Education, have paid the company more than $11.4 million for various services. Traviesa, its CEO, is a former GOP lawmaker who was once registered on a business, Step to Success Inc., with Corcoran and his wife, a founder of a Pasco County charter school. The mission of the company, according to corporate filings, was to provide “at-risk students the tools needed to succeed in kindergarten.” (Corcoran said it was a nonprofit.) Traviesa’s business connection with Corcoran wasfirst reported in a Substack postby former Polk County School Board member Billy Townsend. Traviesa served in the Florida House of Representatives at a time whenCorcoran was chief of staff to then-House Speaker Marco Rubio. MGT had a leg up on the competition for the Jefferson County work: It had been in talks with the Department of Education for at least a week before the procurement was announced, and it was apparently tailor-made for MGT. On Nov. 1, a week before the state opened the project for bids, the Department of Education hosted a meeting to discuss the transition plan with Jefferson County school superintendent Eydie Tricquet, Jefferson County’s current charter school operator and Traviesa. Also included was prominent charter school lobbyist Ralph Arza,a longtime close ally of Rubio and Corcoranwho resigned from the Legislature in 2006after using racial slursduring a drunken tirade. Arza has four relatives, including his brother and sister-in-law, working in Jefferson County for the company currently operating the schools. Arza told theTimes/Heraldthat he was at the meeting on behalf of his job with the Florida Charter School Alliance, which advocates for charter schools, and did not stand to benefit financially if MGT won the award. On Nov. 5, a Department of Education employee was told to draft the request for proposals. She was given a proposed agreement between MGT and the department and told to base the request for proposals on that document, according to a subsequent report by the department’s inspector general. The employee told the inspector general that Jacob Oliva, one of Corcoran’s top deputies and the head of K-12 education in Florida, gave her the document. On Nov. 8, the day the request for quotes was issued, Tricquet told the School Board that state officials told her MGT had already been selected and had a contract. “I do know on Nov. 29, MGT will be taking over,” Tricquettold board members. “I’ll know more when I’m meeting tomorrow with MGT.” A ‘questionable’ process State lawprohibits state agencies from awarding contracts when a company has an “unfair competitive advantage,” defined as having “access to information that is not available to the public and would assist the vendor in obtaining the contract.” The fact that state officials were already discussing the work with MGT before it opened the bidding appears to violate the spirit of the competitive procurement process, said Ben Wilcox, co-founder of Integrity Florida, a nonpartisan watchdog group. “The company could conceivably have gained inside knowledge of what to put in their bid that would give them an advantage over other companies,” Wilcox said. “I think it is really highly questionable.” Wilcox also flagged the fact that bidding was open for only seven days. “I’m not surprised there were no other bidders on the contract,” he said. “That would be a really short time frame to put together a bid.” Corcoran said he was concerned when MGT was the only company that responded. “When MGT was the only responsive bidder to the procurement, we too were concerned, which is why I personally made the decision to rebid the procurement,” he said. “A competition of one was never the outcome we wanted.” He said there are “at least a handful” of qualified operators who could do the work in Jefferson County. Traviesa said he did not speak with Corcoran while the bidding was open. A competing bid by department insiders MGT might have won the bid if not for another proposal throwing the process into disarray. On Nov. 15, the final day of bidding, a new company called Strategic Initiatives Partners entered a $1.8 million bid for one year of work. The company was not on the state’s pre-approved list and therefore was ineligible to place a bid. But the company, formed on Aug. 26, 2021, had a trio of founders that included two members of Corcoran’s leadership team: Andy Tuck, a member of the state Board of Education, which oversees Corcoran, and whose daughter is a member of the Legislature; Jacob Oliva, senior chancellor for the department who oversees all public school operations; and Melissa Ramsey, vice chancellor for strategic improvement. Ramsey was already familiar with the situation in Jefferson County. She had been working with the county on its transition for much of 2021. She oversaw an office that providesleadership training and curriculum coaches for free to struggling schools — the same services that Corcoran’s office was now taking multimillion-dollar bids for. The unusual situation of three school officials placing a bid for a department procurement triggered an inspector general investigation into potential conflicts of interests. Ramsey told the inspector general that she didn’t believe it was a conflict because she had no say over who would be awarded the contract — she said she was under the impression that Corcoran would ultimately choose the winner. If she won, she said, she would resign. The investigation found that Ramsey directed her subordinate, Caroline Wood, to draft the bid proposal for Strategic Initiatives Partners. Wood later told investigators that she “should have known better” when agreeing to do the work. Oliva told investigators he was unaware his name was listed on the proposal and said he discouraged Ramsey from applying when she approached him about it. The investigation cleared Oliva, who continues to serve as Florida’s K-12 chancellor. Corcoran, saying he was “shocked” at the submission from Strategic Initiatives Partners, asked Ramsey and Tuck to resign their posts. They did. Investigators, who did not interview Tuck or Corcoran, considered the investigation over after the resignations. Thereport never concluded whether the competing bid was illegal or posed a conflict of interests. It also did not explore any potential concerns with MGT’s bid. Department spokesperson Jared Ochs said the department appropriately handled the competing bid. “In this case, once a conflict of interest was discovered, it was immediately investigated thoroughly, the department was able to get to the root cause of the matter, and next steps were identified quickly,” Ochs said. Ramsey declined to comment. Tuck did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for DeSantis, who appointed Corcoran to be commissioner in 2018, declined to comment. Jefferson County’s budget at stake In Jefferson County, the stakes are high. When the School Board takes over in July, it will have to make do on a roughly $8.5 million budget — about $7 million less than the charter school operator has during its current year, Tricquet, the superintendent, told board members last week. The district is trying to prevent laying off employees. It can’t afford to spend its $4 million in federal relief on consultants, interim principal Jackie Pons told the board. Tricquet told the board they should fight back against the Department of Education. She described being at the whim of Tallahassee, expected to sell department decisions that have changed repeatedly over the last six months. The School Board has had no say in those decisions. “I’m ready to fight for Jefferson County,” Tricquet said. “I’ve been compliant. I’ve been patient. I have not been invited to things, but expected to come back and sell it. I’m done with all that.” “Enough is enough,” she said.
Former DeSantis official declares Florida is ‘now essentially an autocracy’ https://www.rawstory.com/ron-desantis-florida-2656334641/
Since you're double posting, please allow me the response I had in the other thread: It's amusing to see @gwb_trading gnash his teeth over DeSantis, and post articles that don't provide anything other than a shrinking opinion of Ron DeSantis. Ron scares the NPC crowd because he's gaining popularity, goes against the establishment and ends up being right most of the time, making the NPC crowd look like complete morons. A review of the "article" posted from "Rawstory" (hey, at least it isn't BlogMickey this time). First, I'd like to post this from GWB_NPC's own favorite site to use when discrediting a media organization: Ultra left wing, with mixed factual reporting. But you'll only see the NPC pull this out when it suits him. Now onto the editorial. The "article" is basically a Trump trumpy trump obsession angry fest, but there are a few mentions of DeSantis: AMY GOODMAN: Finally, we talk about him as a model and him modeling himself on autocrats around the world. But what about him as a model at home for people like Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor? You lay out, in a very chilling piece, this image of DeSantis surrounded by the people he wants to basically deputize as what his opponent in running for governor has talked about as his “secret police.” RUTH BEN-GHIAT: Yeah, Ron DeSantis is an example — so, when you have somebody like Trump who imposes this kind of authoritarian party discipline, the system populates with mini-Trumps. They used to be called mini-Duces and mini-Hitlers, and now we have these mini-Trumps. And so, what we’ve seen is, in places like Texas and Florida, states are becoming laboratories of autocracy. And DeSantis is particularly disturbing, because, you know, he wants to have his own civilian National Guard. And many states have those, but I discovered, doing research, that he’s also establishing an office for, quote, “election integrity,” which is code speak for election fraud, where it’s going to have its own prosecutors and investigators. So, anybody who — if there’s like an election result in the state that DeSantis doesn’t like, he can have his goons go after them and accuse them of violating election law. And they’ve made what used to be misdemeanors into felonies, so these people could be put in jail. So this is an example of the kind of authoritarian system at the state level that DeSantis has planned. Right, right. "Ruth Ben-Ghiat" knows precisely what DeSantis has "planned" to take over Florida (he is winning by landslide numbers, so he needs to challenge the results, of course). Ruth, who is an avid supporter of CRT (which the NPC hates - but the NPC hates Desantis more because of how stupid the governor has made him look), and who believes the GOP is the Nazi party. Yeah, she's going to give a real balanced view on Ron DeSantis.
Normalcy for kids in Florida proves how wrong NYC’s school rules are KAROL MARKOWICZ Our family had enough of New York City COVID regulations that target kids, the least at-risk segment of the population, with no off-ramp in sight. So we moved to Florida. Hello from the other side. Last week, my children went to school maskless for the first time since March 2020. Was I worried about them getting COVID? No, because there’s a mountain of evidence that their cloth Batman masks do absolutely nothing. There has been a high cost to needlessly masking kids. Many countries weighed the risk and decided that the effect masks have on learning and human connection was simply not worth it, so they didn’t mask small children the entire pandemic. But blue areas in the United States have refused to accept science, data, reality. Winter 2022, people are finally acknowledging the fact that cloth masks are completely useless. But we’ve had this information for a very long time. Instead of realizing their error in keeping kids masked this long, they’re moving toward getting kids “better” masks. It’s maddening. It’s wrong. It’s anti-child. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis made unmasking children a priority and normalizing kids’ lives in general a primary concern. It shows. I focused a lot on masking, in these pages and in making the decision to move. Masking had come to symbolize so much that was wrong with our treatment of children throughout the pandemic. Being in Florida has brought home how much else my kids had lost that I never even considered. My youngest son had circle time on the rug in his classroom for the first time since the pandemic began. New York schools have decided that children are little disease vectors and so keep them in their seats and apart from each other. No circle time for the kids for their own good. No movement in class at all, lest they spread the one and only virus we care about. No indoor play. Safety first, childhood last. But that rug time is special and important. We understood that before the pandemic — that’s why schools had it. Destroying everything in the hope of keeping people from catching COVID became something that blue-area schools just do with no consideration of the repercussions. Children in New York City public schools eat outdoors, on the ground, because eating around other people indoors can apparently be deadly. Their parents are free to take them to a restaurant after school, but that’s totally different because … well, no one really knows, but we have to keep the kids safe. The truly at-risk population, the elderly, can be seen around the city dining at our best restaurants, not sitting alone on the freezing ground. On really cold days, schools let kids eat in the cafeteria. My middle-schooler hated those days. On indoor days, kids are forced to eat in silence and have to stay with their class, as opposed to being with friends from other classes. Of course, all the kids hang out after school, but that’s different because … still no answer on why that’s different. My daughter preferred eating outside in the cold to the insane soundless eating indoors. I don’t blame her. This week in Florida, she made a friend in one of her classes, and the two of them simply sat together and ate in the cafeteria. She was as free as any 80-year-old but in far less danger. Next week, I’m going to a “Muffins with Mom” event at my sons’ school. In-school events for parents are, obviously, not permitted in blue-area schools. It’s just not safe, they say. We used to care about parents being involved at their child’s school. No longer. The COVID mitigation strategies that have a stranglehold on blue areas are not working and have never worked. Yet officials continue them, to the detriment of kids. “We’re just keeping everyone safe” has not been a success. COVID is spreading everywhere. You can’t swing a rapid test without hitting an “I did everything right but somehow still got COVID” Facebook post, tweet or article. There is no “right,” and it’s long past time to face that. The worst response is “What’s the big deal?” “What’s the big deal about masking?” “What’s the big deal that small kids no longer get circle time?” “What’s the big deal about how the kids eat lunch?” “What’s the big deal about parents visiting their child’s school?” This nihilistic “Nothing matters” is something we say only about children. Adults know the big deal of seeing their friends, going to dinner, having experiences. The big deal is life: Our kids should be living it, not avoiding a virus that is of statistically zero risk to them. Consider this a plea from a new Floridian to her beloved home city: Stop the madness now. My children are finally in a place of sanity, and I’m so grateful, but I continue to be incensed on behalf of all the children left behind who are going through the safety theater that we all know to be pointless. Stop treating kids like none of their formative experiences matters. Wake up, New York, and give your kids back their normal lives.