education

Florida Recall Of Miami Dade Mayor A Warning To Governor Rick Scott!

Ronald 3 Comments

The shocking, overwhelming vote for recall of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez should be a warning sign to Governor Rick Scott and others in the state legislature, as well as in Wisconsin and other states, where the elected office holders are acting more like dictators, than servants of the people!

One cannot recall any election or recall where 88 percent of the people voted in unison, an unbelievable landslide of astronomical proportions!

Governor Rick Scott has angered many people with his reckless behavior and disregard for anyone but the Tea Party Movement crowd, that elected him on an agenda of making Florida a “third world nation” in public services!

Already one of the worst states in social services, particularly education and health care, Scott has cut taxes on corporations and property owners while calling for the cutting of education and health care by billions of dollars, and has made it clear that if you don’t agree with him, don’t bother him as he has no interest in listening, and will not answer to the media either!

This man is trying to privatize the state on a massive basis, and he is declaring war on teachers and other public servants, similar to Scott Walker in Wisconsin.

The damage that is being done will make Florida a less desirable place for people to live in and migrate to, and meanwhile, his demand for all public servants to undergo quarterly drug testing will invade privacy rights, and cost large scale financial investments the state cannot afford. One wonders if he has connections with those who would make profits from such testing, and would receive kickbacks, considering his felonious conduct in Medicare scams in the 1990s, for which he only paid major fines, rather than ending up in federal prison, where he should have been today, instead of being Governor of Florida!

If a public worker is shown by performance or behavior to have a problem with drugs or alcohol, then it is proper to test him and hold him or her accountable. But to require all workers to have such a test on a regular basis is bound to be declared unconstitutional, and is an invasion of privacy!

It is amazing how Scott wants to privatize everything, to make government smaller, except when it comes to interference in the private lives of people! Unless there is a problem demonstrating itself at work, it is no one’s business what one does in his or her private time away from work!

Recall of the Governor is essential if Florida is to survive intact for the long term future! Otherwise, the Sunshine State is facing “stormy weather”, which brings to mind, what is the likelihood of Governor Scott reacting appropriately to provide aid were Florida to face a new threat of hurricanes as it dealt with quite well under Governor Jeb Bush in 2004-2005, when the state was hit by eight hurricanes.

The thought that Scott would leave it to private groups, rather than government, in such an emergency, is enough to make one fear any such eventuality. Hopefully, Florida will not be tested by such an emergency!

Florida And Its Teachers And College Professors: Total Destruction Of Education In The Name Of Governor Rick Scott And The Republican State Legislature!

Ronald 1 Comment

The state of Florida has always had problems with providing its children and college students with a decent, world class education.

Always unwilling to have a state income tax and desirous of avoiding any tax they can avoid, the state legislature and its Republican Governors since 1999 have bled the public school system dry and refused to recognize that its students, as a result, score terribly on competitive exams in all fields of knowledge, as compared to many states in the rest of the country.

Students too often come to college without any general knowledge base, and are ill prepared to do college work, and the economy offers mostly low wage employment, and promotes an anti labor bias, priding itself on being a “right to work” state, meaning exploitation of workers!

With Florida near the bottom in most statistics educationally, Governor Rick Scott now wishes to bleed over $3 billion out of the state education budget, while providing further tax cuts to the wealthy and the corporate and business world, and therefore, is doing everything possible to punish educators, along with other public servants, including police officers, fire fighters, nurses, social workers, librarians, sanitation workers, prison guards and others.

Regarding education, Scott and his party are working to end tenure, and to use testing that will cost money, that does not exist in the education system, to eliminate experienced teachers whose students do not perform well on state mandated tests, failing to understand that how a student performs is much more based on his or her work habits and parental influences than being in a classroom for a few hours per day!

Also, all state workers will have to take a pay cut, after years of low wages and inadequate pay increases, to pay for their Florida Retirement System pension, plus greater costs for their medical benefits. Sick Leave not used will be forfeited, instead of being paid out at retirement.

And the worst thing of all, particularly involving education, is that after July 1, 2011, when a teacher or professor retires, he or she will NEVER be able to be employed part time at any educational institution covered by the Florida Retirement System, instead of the earlier one month and then one year limitation!

This draconian cut off of talented educators from any ability to teach part time is not only denying talented retirees the opportunity to contribute their skills to the younger generation, and locking them into an inability to pursue their profession and improve their economic status by being able to earn part time income!

It will also create a major educational crisis within a short period, as there will be a rapid depletion of available adjunct professors and teachers, who are particularly the lifeblood of any educational institution at the college and university level!

With growing enrollments expected to continue, how will college administrators and public school administrators be able to staff classrooms and provide education if the pool of available talent is so limited by forced retirement from any involvement with the educational system, simply because one wishes to retire from full time?

This is stupid, asinine policy, which will contribute to the further deterioration of Florida educationally, and will have a tragic economic effect on the future of the Sunshine State, and this all to benefit a small elite of wealthy and business people who could not give a damn about the future of anything other than their own greedy, selfish aggrandizement!

The House Republican Budget: Very Clear What The Party Is Trying To Do To America!

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The House of Representatives Budget plan devised by the majority Republicans is a clear cut attack on the middle class and the poor, and all of the social and economic progress of the 20th century Presidents and Congresses which brought prosperity and a growing middle class to American society!

The budget document is an obscene attempt to promote the super wealthy and corporate agenda at the expense of the middle class, and the poor, and with no compassion or conscience displayed at all!

Imagine this:

1. The destruction of 700,000 jobs due to the budget cuts.

2. Cutting of three million low income people from community health centers.

3.Cutting of food and health care assistance to pregnant women, new mothers, and children.

4. Major cut in funds for Head Start.

5. End of federal funding for National Public Radio and PBS.

6. Forcing states to fire teachers and aides, making class sizes dramatically larger.

7. Cutting of some or all financial aid to over 9 million college students who are low income or middle income.

8. Slashing of funds to the National Institutes of Health, cutting research on cancer, Alzheimers, and Parkinsons diseases.

9. Cutting all support of Planned Parenthood, and family planning programs.

10. Putting 10,000 veterans into homelessness because of cuts in housing vouchers.

Other plans are in the works to prevent all abortions, cut the Environmental Protection Agency ability to protect against industrial pollution, and to do nothing to create new jobs, hoping to make economic conditions worse, with the hope that the American people would blame the Democrats and President Obama for the poorly performing economy!

This is a time for all decent people to make clear through calls and emails to their Congressmen and Senators that they will not tolerate the war on America’s middle class and the poor being perpetrated by the Republican Party!

It is time that excuses for budget cuts be replaced by tax increases on the wealthy and the corporations, who have to take responsibility on the national and state levels to help resolve the inequities that exist in America. They have received enough benefits over the past ten years, and really the past thirty years, and it is time to pay up as good, responsible Americans!

Florida Governor Rick Scott: The “King” Vs. The Legislature And The People!

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Today marks the beginning of the Florida legislative session, with more than a two thirds majority of Republicans in both houses, but a new Republican Governor who fought the establishment and won the Governorship, and has acted as if he is a monarch, since he became Governor nine weeks ago!

Despite his involvement in Medicare scams in the 1990s, for which he should have gone to federal prison instead of paying heavy fines, Scott utilized $73 million of his own fortune to win the Governorship by the smallest margin in Florida history, about 50,000 votes. He was the only Governor candidate nationally, and actually the only wealthy person to win public office mostly based on his personal fortune, other than Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson. Like Ron Johnson, he ran as the anti establishment candidate of the Tea Party Movement, and he has already shown evidence that he does not wish to cooperate with his own party leadership, and to act stubborn and inflexible, and ignore the news media as much as he can.

Scott has enraged many, including his own Republican Party, by canceling the bullet train project from Orlando to Tampa, turning down $2.4 billion, which now will go elsewhere, while Florida lags on planning future transportation needs in central Florida.

Scott has refused to allow a prescription data base to keep track of pill mills, which have become endemic in South Florida, and with Florida leading the nation with drug addicts based on illegal pill prescriptions, on the basis of privacy rights, even though 42 other states have such databases. This is insane, with the reality that there are more pill mills in Broward County, Florida, alone than there are McDonalds or Starbucks in that county, with its main center being Fort Lauderdale.

Scott sold two state jet airplanes without legislative permission, and that will lead to increased costs for future Governors when they need to purchase a plane, as Scott is using his own private plane, and not thinking of future costs.

Scott unveiled his two year budget plan before a Tea Party crowd, rather than before Republican colleagues or the mainstream news media. He is calling for more than $3 billion in cuts in education and health care, while drastically decreasing corporate income taxes and property taxes by $1.7 billion, and cutting state regulation of utilities and insurance companies. College tuitions would skyrocket, and Scott has rejected taking federal funds to start implementation of the Obama Health Care Plan, and is fighting in court to repeal it.

Scott also wants to end teacher tenure, force major pension contributions by state workers, cut unemployment benefits and Medicaid, privatize state prisons, and end collective bargaining as is being attempted in Wisconsin and Ohio, and already exists in Indiana.

Scott is a nightmare even to his own party, and although they are very conservative, many of them are upset at his haughty, arrogant, dictatorial approach, as if there is no legislature or courts, and that somehow he expects that everything he wants to do will be done because KING RICK wants it so!

There is, as reported earlier, a move to pass a recall law, and some even wonder if Scott could someday face impeachment if he refuses to recognize the role of compromise, even within his own party in the legislature, let alone considering the opposition.

Florida seems to be on the road to total disaster, with the state, already in the bottom ten in education and other social services, about to face a political, social and economic crisis that will put it front and center, even ahead of Wisconsin and Ohio and other states with “bully” Governors!

The Abuse Of Teachers: A Crime Against Knowledge, Education And The Younger Generation! :(

Ronald 6 Comments

The teaching profession is an honorable commitment by millions of men and women at all levels from prekindergarten through college and graduate school, and no one goes into the profession expecting to become wealthy!

Rather, they are mostly idealists who love the world of knowledge and wish to impart their enthusiasm for knowledge to the younger generation. They sacrifice the possibility of acquiring wealth because they are drawn to the wish to affect the future in a non profit way.

They should expect respect and dignity from their supervisors, from parents and students, from politicians, from the news media, and from the corporate world!

After all, corporate chief executive officers, doctors, lawyers, dentists, accountants, engineers, professors, police officers, nurses, social workers, fire fighters, and EVERYONE ELSE not specifically mentioned, ALL are educated by teachers at all levels.

It is outrageous that conservatives and Republicans have the gall to insult and deprecate our teachers, who are unable to support their families as it is because of low wages compared to their educational preparation, and often have to work at second jobs to survive, but still are committed to do good for their students and for society!

It is about time that the vicious attack on the teaching profession come to an end, and we start treating teachers with dignity, decent pay and working conditions, and honor those who have a greater impact, much of the time, than do parents on the development and success of their children!

Florida Governor Rick Scott: 30 Days Evaluation Bad Sign For The Future! :(

Ronald 4 Comments

Florida’s Republican Governor, Rick Scott, who suddenly emerged just nine months ago in politics, after having brought about the greatest Medicare scam ever through his health care company in the mid 1990s, has now been in office one month, and it is not a good sign for the future of Florida politics! 🙁

The concept that a corrupt, crooked business executive, who enriched himself on fraud, and yet was able to avoid prison time for his transgressions, could go ahead and spend $73 million of his ill begotten fortune to “buy” the Florida governorship, is enough of an outrage by itself! 🙁

But Scott, who overcame the GOP establishment in the state to win the nomination for Governor over Attorney General Bill McCollum, and went on to defeat Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink in the closest gubernatorial election in history (about 50,000 votes), has now shown just how arrogant and destructive he really is! 🙁

Scott is setting out to destroy the Florida Retirement System, and is trashing the public servants of Florida, who went into public service understanding the low pay of most public jobs, but were drawn to the FRS as an important benefit that made up for the lack of competitive salaries.

Scott is attempting to force all public employees to take a five percent paycut to contribute toward their pension plans, at a time when there have been no salary increases for a number of years. He also wishes to take other aspects of the FRS away, and make the pension system one of the worst in the nation! 🙁

Scott shows no respect for the significance and sacrifice of teachers, police, fire fighters, paramedics, nurses, librarians, prison guards, and all the other public servants who commit themselves to the myriad of jobs that the average Floridian takes for granted.

And Scott is declaring war on the teaching profession, which will only discourage new entries into the profession by young people, and will cause many to leave the field. To blame the teachers for failures of students, rather than place it on inadequate budgets and class sizes, and the essential role of parents and families on children’s learning, is an absolute outrage! 🙁

If teachers will not have respect, decent pay and benefits, and the backing of administrators, then we will lose the chance to gain the best young minds to go into our classrooms. Mediocrity will reign, and Florida will fall further back into what one could call a “third world” mentality, one of ignorance and
narrow mindedness! If we condemn and attack our teaching force, we lose the opportunity to gain the “best and the brightest” for the future and to put Florida into the 21st century!

Not only is Scott trying to destroy education, but also he has refused to enforce the Obama Health Care legislation, is sending back federal aid to implement it, and has encouraged legal attacks on the legislation, including the recent declaration by a Florida district court judge that the whole legislation is unconstitutional! Interesting that a former health care executive who engaged in fraud is leading the charge to destroy national health care, not giving a damn about the millions of Floridians and other Americans who have no access to health care! 🙁

Beyond all this, Scott refuses to communicate with the news media other than in so called “tweets”, comments no longer than 140 characters. He would rather speak to private groups such as the Tea Party, who he will be addressing privately this coming week about his budget plans. He requires journalists who wish to address him at a public gathering to stand up before asking a question, which he then answers in a few sentences, with no desire to really explain himself in detail. After all, he is the GOVERNOR, and need not be accountable! 🙁

His budget plans call for MASSIVE cuts in Medicaid and education, with no possibility of tax increases, even though it will devastate the state, lead to much higher unemployment, and make Florida more backward than ever. And unless his party in the legislature, more than two thirds membership in each house, have the guts to fight him, he will get his way. Realize that many Republicans have their private doubts about this man who refuses to explain himself in detail, and is known as difficult to talk to, even in private, as he thinks he has all the answers! 🙁

To top it off, there are now strong rumors that Rick Scott has national ambitions, and not just for 2016, even possibly for 2012! Newspapers in the state and National Public Radio are reporting that Scott hopes to make an impression with his budget, and his stands on the health care legislation, budget cuts, and education, and utilize it as a pretext to seek the Presidential nomination of his party! 🙁

A man who should be in prison for his Medicare fraud, who refuses to communicate with the news media, who is arrogant and nasty and dismissive toward his critics, who “bought” the Florida Governorship, seems to have no limits to his ego and ambitions! 🙁

This is the man that Florida has to deal with for the next four years at least, unless the whole nation is, somehow, bamboozled to make him our President in 2013. Let’s hope that terrible, nightmarish scenario never comes to be, and that maybe, just maybe, his own party in the Florida legislature may realize how his lack of ethics and belief in obeying the law in his past, may yet lead to such abuses in the state of Florida to warrant them to forget about party loyalty and move to impeach and remove him from office! 🙁

A Time Of True Leadership Versus Demagoguery! Obama Versus Ryan And Bachmann!

Ronald 1 Comment

President Obama last night delivered one of his greatest speeches as he gave us the State of the Union, not easy for a man known for great oratory.

He appealed to our better nature, speaking up for the DREAM Act, for commitment to modernization of technology, commitment to education, research and development, and to bipartisanship as we face the challenges of dealing with the deficit and national debt.

The only disappointments in the author’s view were his failure to face the reality of the Afghanistan War, and his decision not to use the Tucson tragedy to call for new regulations on assault weapons, magazines, and the need to have new controls on who is able to buy weapons legally.

Meanwhile, the GOP response was, predictably, disappointing. Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, chair of the Budget Committee, came across as an appealing person who really introduced himself for the first time to a national audience, and accomplished the goal of making us realize that not all Republicans are loony and lacking in credibility!

But his ten minute response to the State of the Union Address was broad and vague, and he hid from us the horrific details of his plan to cut taxes for the wealthy and, despite what he claimed, destroy the safety net of the New Deal and the Great Society. What he believes in is seen as radical by most observers, and an attempt to negate 75 years of social and economic reform, and therefore, totally unacceptable, and really dead on arrival in practical terms!

Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann, Congresswoman from Minnesota, could only write her own version of history, a warped view, to say the least, although in her five minute Tea Party Movement sponsored address, she avoided the outrageous historical fantasies that she had enunciated earlier in the day. This was probably a reaction to the bitter attacks and condemnations of observers to her ridiculous and ignorant assertions about slavery in American history a few hours earlier. But she did her cause and that of the Tea Party no favors, because she is a horrible representative for her party and the movement, and the thought of her likely being on the campaign trail for the Presidency is enough to engender a massive headache! 🙁

The Danger Of City And State Budget Cuts: Future Lawsuits!

Ronald 1 Comment

The city of Camden, New Jersey has just cut its police and firefighter contingents by 45 percent, in a city infamous for the second highest crime rate and a large number of suspicious fires.

At the same time, in New York City, a 75 year old woman had cardiac arrest, and with the failure to clean up the snowstorm that hit the city, it took three hours for help to reach her, and she passed away, and now her daughter is suing the city because of the lack of response.

It is easy to say–cut, cut, cut–rather than to tax to keep services. But these developments mentioned above are happening all over the nation, and it means crime rates will skyrocket, fires will destroy much property and kill large numbers of people, education will become truly a mockery, health care in hospitals will deteriorate, sanitation will not be able to keep up with vermin that will overrun where garbage gathers uncollected, libraries will shut down that offer people a chance for an escape and to do job seeking on their computers, etc, etc, etc.

There are no winners in this situation, including hundreds of thousands or even millions of dedicated public servants who will be unemployed as a result.

Instead of everyone facing up to the reality that we do not get necessary services by praying to God, but must pay the appropriate level of taxes to keep our service, even in a difficult time, the nation will deteriorate to a level that will destroy the body fabric long term.

It also is reality that more lawsuits will ensue, which will use up city and state budgets for attorney fees, and the likelihood of payouts in the millions of dollars for reckless endangerment of all citizens because of the budget cuts!

It is due time for all citizens to face reality: we are all in this together, and must stop seeing taxes as the great evil, as lack of services is a far greater sin! 🙁

Finally, Federal Government Aid To States For Education And Medicaid Support!

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Thanks to the two Maine Republican Senators (Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins), the Senate was able to overcome a GOP filibuster and provide $26 billion in aid to the states, to help support education and medicaid, and partially relieve the crisis in state budgets in this worst economy of the past 75 years!

Approximately 160,000 teaching positions nationally will be saved, and medicaid assistance to the states will help to plug the shortfall which threatened the continuation of the essential programs for the poor and handicapped!

The House of Representatives had adjourned for the summer break, but will return next Tuesday to pass the bill and help to relieve the economic crisis for the coming year!

Again, however, the Republican leadership in the Senate, headed by Mitch McConnell, complained that the states should not receive this extra aid, an amazing assertion when McConnell’s own home state of Kentucky is one of the poorest, most backward of all the states, and yet McConnell seems to have no concern! ABSOLUTELY AMAZING AND DISGRACEFUL! 🙁

Chris Christie Of New Jersey: Education, Senior Citizens, Disabled Are Not Priorities! :(

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The new Republican Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, is rapidly becoming a favorite of right wing Republicans, as he is speaking out strongly against teachers’ unions, telling teachers if they don’t like pay cuts and freezes, they can go elsewhere for a job!

He also just vetoed a bill passed by the Democratic legislature to raise taxes on 16,000 people who are millionaires, as a way to restore property tax rebates for senior citizens and the disabled! But oh well, that is THEIR problem, if they cannot pay property taxes, already the highest on average in the nation! 🙁

The average millionaire will get a tax cut therefore, while the average homeowner will pay more, at a time when unemployment is so high in the state, and drastic service cuts are being made!

The image of the GOP helping the rich, and not giving a whit for the poor or middle class continues, and it makes one wonder why would anyone from the middle class vote for the Republican party? Why is it they seem to be so blind to how they are being victimized constantly by a party which only cares about those on top, not those in the middle or the bottom of society? 🙁