Governor Ron DeSantis: You Sick and Dying Floridians Better Not Derail My POTUS Dreams!!

[GreyhoundFan]

I guess the HQ should be in The Villages, since that's where five trumpsters have been arrested for voter fraud: "Florida governor proposes special police agency to monitor elections"

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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A plan by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would establish a special police force to oversee state elections — the first of its kind in the nation — and while his fellow Republicans have reacted tepidly, voting rights advocates fear that it will become law and be used to intimidate voters.

The proposed Office of Election Crimes and Security would be part of the Department of State, which answers to the governor. DeSantis is asking the GOP-controlled legislature to allocate nearly $6 million to hire 52 people to “investigate, detect, apprehend, and arrest anyone for an alleged violation” of election laws. They would be stationed at unspecified “field offices throughout the state” and act on tips from “government officials or any other person.”

DeSantis highlighted his plan as legislators opened their annual 60-day session last week.

“To ensure that elections are conducted in accordance with the rule of law, I propose an election integrity unit whose sole focus will be the enforcement of Florida’s election laws,” he said during his State of the State address. “This will facilitate the faithful enforcement of election laws and will provide Floridians with the confidence that their vote will matter.”

Voting rights experts say that no state has such an agency, one dedicated to patrolling elections and empowered to arrest suspected violators. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) announced the formation of a “2021 Texas Election Integrity Unit” in October, but that office is more limited in scope, has fewer than 10 employees and isn’t under the governor’s authority.

“There’s a reason that there’s no office of this size with this kind of unlimited investigative authority in any other state in the country, and it’s because election crimes and voter fraud are just not a problem of that magnitude,” said Jonathan Diaz, a voting rights lawyer at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center. “My number one concern is that this is going to be used as a tool to harass or intimidate civic-engagement organizations and voters.”

Florida’s congressional Democrats expressed similar worries when they asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate “a disturbing rise in partisan efforts at voter suppression” in the state. They took aim specifically at DeSantis’s call for election police.

“Harmful proposals to create new partisan bodies to oversee our voting process are exactly the kind of action that demand oversight as we work to ensure that our voting process is unquestionably trustworthy,” they wrote Thursday in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Unlike many past elections, the 2020 general election in Florida had few problems. The governor touted it as “the gold standard.”

“The way Florida did it, I think, inspired confidence,” DeSantis said on Nov. 4, 2020, hours after the results showed that President Donald Trump had won the state by more than three percentage points. “I think that’s how elections should be run.”

But in the wake of Trump’s ultimate defeat, as he and his supporters spread falsehoods about election fraud nationwide and demanded audits in numerous states, many Republicans in Florida pressed DeSantis to do the same.

Though he resisted an audit, DeSantis signed a controversial bill last year curtailing some voting options that had helped to expand participation. The law — which is being challenged in court, with a trial set to begin Jan. 30 — limits the use of ballot drop boxes, adds requirements to request mail ballots, and bans groups or individuals from gathering absentee ballots on other voters’ behalf.

No legislators have signed on to sponsor DeSantis’s new proposal. House Speaker Chris Sprowls (R) said DeSantis is concerned that existing law enforcement agencies don’t have the expertise necessary to find and prosecute election crimes. Yet he hasn’t embraced the governor’s approach. “We’re going to look at it, we’ll evaluate it and see what happens,” Sprowls said last week.

As with all committees in the Capitol in Tallahassee, Republicans are in the majority on the House Public Integrity & Elections Committee. Neither the committee chairman nor vice chairman returned calls for comment. The panel has not scheduled a hearing on the DeSantis proposal.

Last month, Secretary of State Laurel Lee spoke to a meeting of the Florida Supervisors of Elections association to explain the governor’s plan. Some of the officials who run elections in each of Florida’s 67 counties were alarmed by what they heard. They fear overreach from the executive branch, especially in a year when DeSantis is running for reelection.

Broward County Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott said he’s concerned that the new unit would be “applied in a very partisan way” and certain that his heavily Democratic county would be a target.

“It seems as if this is going to focus on a lot of grass-roots organizations that are out there trying to get people registered to vote, as well as people out there doing petition drives,” Scott said. “I think this is going to lead to people being intimidated if they’re civically involved. I don’t want people to be scared away from doing those kinds of things.”

State Rep. Geraldine Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the House Public Integrity & Elections Committee, thinks the new agency would be a waste of money. In addition to its funding, DeSantis wants $1.1 million for eight new positions in other departments — to address what he describes as a growing caseload of election crimes. The Department of State received 262 election-fraud complaint forms in 2020 and referred 75 to law enforcement or prosecutors. About 11 million Floridians cast ballots for president that November.

“The governor and other officials in Florida said the 2020 election was the most secure and efficiently run election that we ever had,” Thompson said. “So I see absolutely no reason for this elections commission to be established, particularly at the cost that he is proposing.”

Voter fraud is rare, and critics note that state attorneys and local police are already in place to investigate alleged election crimes. The state’s 67 elections supervisors are also trained to look for fraud.

“The bottom line is there is no widespread election fraud in Florida,” said Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren, a Democrat. “It’s a microscopic amount. Elections today are the most secure that they have ever been. This is not a serious policy proposal. This is a door prize for a QAnon pep rally.”

Hans von Spakovsky, an election law expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, supports Desantis’s plan and hopes it becomes a “model” for other states. Investigating election fraud requires special training and commitment that are lacking in many law enforcement agencies, he said. The foundation’s database of election fraud cases nationwide shows only three convictions in Florida in the last three years.

Support for the governor’s proposal should be bipartisan, according to DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw.

“Ensuring that every legal vote counts, as Governor DeSantis strives to do, is the opposite of ‘voter suppression,’ ” Pushaw said via email. “We do not understand why any politician, Democrat or Republican, would be opposed to allocating sufficient resources to ensure our election laws are enforced.”

Cecile Scoon, a lawyer who is president of the League of Women Voters Florida, called an elections security force controlled by a governor an alarming concept.

“So to have your own elections SWAT team, that would be under the direction of the secretary of state, who is under the direction of the governor, is not a comfortable feeling,” Scoon said. “Having governmental officials like this, traveling about overlooking elections just to see if there’s something going on, is very chilling, very scary and very reminiscent of past governmental interference that was directed to Black voters.”

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[Cartmann99]

Rest of thread under the spoiler.

Spoiler

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good column from Dana Milbank: "How does Ron DeSantis sleep at night?"

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Republicans are killing us.

No, really.

Until now, we’ve known that covid-19 death rates were higher among the unvaccinated, and also higher in counties that went for Donald Trump, whose supporters were more likely to resist vaccinations, masks and other pandemic precautions.

Now that the omicron wave is over, a couple of new analyses of state-by-state data both point to an inescapable conclusion: Living in states run by a Republican governor is dangerous to your health.

Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, consultant Doug Haddix reported Sunday that since July 1 (when the lifesaving vaccine was widely available), the 14 states with the highest death rates were all run by Republican governors. This included Florida (at about 153 deaths per 100,000 residents), Ohio (142 deaths per 100,000), Arizona (138) and Georgia (134). Contrast that with the deep-blue District of Columbia (only 27 deaths per 100,000) and California (58 per 100,000).

For verification, I checked with health-care analyst Charles Gaba, whose data on covid-19 and voting patterns has been widely cited. He ran the numbers for me using data mostly from Johns Hopkins and found similar results. The 16 states with the highest coronavirus death rates since July 1 were all run by Republicans. The worst was West Virginia (about 204 deaths per 100,000), followed closely by Oklahoma, Tennessee, Wyoming and the aforementioned Florida.

The states with the lowest death rates, by contrast, were all run by Democrats — or, in the case of Vermont, Maryland and Massachusetts, by moderate Republican governors who had heavily Democratic legislatures and embraced vaccines and masks. The best jurisdictions were D.C., Vermont, Hawaii and California. Looking at data from the period since May 1 (by which time all U.S. adults theoretically could have been vaccinated) produced similar results.

Florida residents were, since vaccines have been widely available, nearly seven times as likely to die from covid-19 as residents of D.C., nearly three times as likely to die as residents of California and 2½ times as likely to die as residents of New York. With Florida’s population of about 22 million, that’s a lot of unnecessary deaths.

This raises a question: How does Ron DeSantis sleep at night? Florida’s Republican governor has been among the most outspoken in raising fears of the coronavirus vaccine (most recently suggesting, falsely, that it could harm women’s fertility), suing to stop vaccine mandates, promoting ineffective cures, blocking rules requiring face masks, scolding mask-wearing kids for “covid theater” and touting misleading statistics.

It’s likely no coincidence that Florida, under DeSantis, has had by far the highest covid-19 death rate among the most-populous states and is in the top five of all states. Other factors, including climate, health-care infrastructure, and the age and underlying health of the population, don’t fully account for it. Maine, with an even older population than Florida’s, had a death rate just over half as high. Also, Florida’s vaccination rate appears to be overstated thanks to vaccine tourism.

In addition to the state rankings, Gaba’s latest county-level data confirms earlier patterns: Since May, people in the most pro-Trump tenth of U.S. counties had a death rate more than three times as high as those in the most anti-Trump tenth. The number of overall cases, however, was only 1.3 times as high, indicating that vaccines were preventing death.

Every week, it seems, brings fresh confirmation of the basic truths about the pandemic that have long been obvious to all except those consuming the disinformation of the Trumpy right: Vaccines work. Masks work. Conspiracy theories don’t.

Last week, a new CDC study confirmed that — shocker — masks prevent illness. A study of Arkansas school districts found that those with full mask requirements had a 23 percent lower incidence of covid-19 among students and staff compared to districts with no mask requirements. Those with partial mask requirements were in between, and those that switched from no mask to masks had reduced illness.

Before that, a pair of studies late last month added evidence to the original belief that the virus emerged in late 2019 in a wet market in Wuhan, China. Though the matter isn’t settled, the findings make the scenario that the virus was spread accidentally or intentionally by a lab in Wuhan — an incendiary accusation recklessly trumpeted by Trump, DeSantis, Fox News and the like — considerably less likely.

“Falsehood flies,” Jonathan Swift wrote, “and truth comes limping after it.” The truth has taken the lead, for those who care. Alas, for some of those who accepted the lies DeSantis and other leaders told about vaccines, masks and cures, it’s too late. They’re already dead.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Florida Republicans are living in a Trumped-up dystopia — and everyone’s invited"

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When Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Florida’s conservative lawmakers finally shut down the 2022 state legislative session on Monday, I had a dispiriting epiphany. These state’s Republicans are living in a Trumped-up dystopia.

Their version of Florida swarms with wrongheaded teachers who twist children’s morals and welfare by raising LGBTQ and racial realities; scheming socialist professors who spread Marxist ideas; employers who shame workers for being White; runaway voter fraud that derails democracy; coronavirus vaccines that damage people’s health and freedom; and sex education so riveting it encourages teenagers to have sex.

No wonder the governor and his fellow Republicans dominating the legislature celebrated their slate of extremist culture war bills. Florida, it turns out, is on the brink of moral collapse, requiring immediate intervention. Or at least that’s what they want their conservative fandom to believe.

As we know, fear is a powerful motivator; it is helping DeSantis Inc. raise gobs of money, secure the fealty of Republican lawmakers and no doubt secure plenty of votes for the governor’s reelection this year and possibly the 2024 presidential contest. As if to underscore the fear factor, DeSantis expressed his gratitude to the legislature for protecting his family.

“Thank you for letting me and my wife be able to send our kids to kindergarten without them being sexualized,” DeSantis said, conflating sexualization with sexual orientation and gender identity.

I’m also thankful — that I live in a Florida that bears little resemblance to the one DeSantis and his colleagues imagine. My Florida has always been unmistakably loony. But it is also full of hard-working teachers who accept kids as they are and show others how to do the same. They, along with professors, teach responsibly, without the need to propagandize or brainwash.

My Florida boasts employers who know that the workplace should mirror society’s diversity. It’s a place where voter malfeasance is minimal and committed mostly by Republicans. And it’s a state where some people choose to get coronavirus vaccines and use masks as an act of kindness and consideration, not combat.

But amid such a powerful assault on civil liberties, I see my Florida in retreat. State Sen. Tina Polsky, a Democrat, sees the retrograde drift, too. “We are quickly becoming one of those backward states that young people and businesses will run from,” she told me.

Republican legislators seem to hope that their work this year will amount to a flashing neon “welcome” sign for fellow conservatives.

“We don’t want to just win in 2022; we want to completely dominate at the federal, state and local levels,” Joe Gruters, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party and an early Donald Trump devotee, told CNN in December. “We don’t want to be a purple state. We want to make a statement that Florida is red.”

That might happen. For the first time in recent history, Florida has more Republicans than Democrats registered to vote as of last year; the latest numbers show Republicans with 5.13 million voters and Democrats with 5.04 million. GOP victory is not a given, though. The state also has 3.8 million registered voters with no party affiliation, and more of them voted for Joe Biden than for Trump in 2020. But midterm elections typically benefit the party not in the White House, and Republicans in the state are palpably more energized that Democrats.

This was a brutal year for Florida’s Democratic lawmakers. They were devastated by the Republicans’ steamrolling. Some wept during debates; others railed against Republican lawmakers’ apparent indifference to the concerns of Black people, Latinos, women and the LGBTQ community.

The Parental Rights in Education measure in line for DeSantis’s signature, which critics are calling the “Don’t say gay” bill, would ban teachers from leading lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten to third grade — which isn’t happening, — and in any grade if it’s deemed developmentally inappropriate by parents. Parents would be able to sue schools over the issue.

But the bill is vague enough that it could discourage teachers from commenting, for example, on a student’s two dads or a boy’s preference for dresses for fear that commenting could be interpreted as classroom instruction. LGBTQ students protested that the bill seeks to make them invisible.

The other bills that DeSantis has signaled he will sign are no better, including the Individual Freedom bill. Teachers and professors will have to tiptoe around discussions about race and the country’s racial history to avoid prompting “anguish” in White students. Employers will also have to tread carefully when training or hiring workers. Books in schools will be easier for activists to ban. And women will have less time to contemplate an abortion.

State Sen. Gary Farmer, a Democrat, summed it up as the legislature raced to finish. He said Republicans were pursuing a “4H agenda” — “hurtful, harmful, hateful and homophobic.”

Has the deep-red Florida of DeSantis’s dreams really vanquished the purple one I’ve known and loved? We won’t know until November.

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[Cartmann99]

  

Spoiler

 

[fraurosena]

On 4/16/2022 at 12:30 AM, Cartmann99 said:

  

  Reveal hidden contents

 

All part and parcel of the 'keep 'em stupid'  policies. Uneducated and gullible is how the Republicans need their citizens, or nobody will vote for them, and they know it.

[Cartmann99]

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[fraurosena]

It never ceases to amaze me that once you start digging, everything, literally everything is about money when Republicans are involved.

Rest of the thread:

Spoiler

 

 

[Ozlsn]

If ever there was a time to start rethinking the use of textbooks...

[WiseGirl]

Me too and they can stop donating to repugs and start backing dems. Why do we still only have 2 parties? It's insane.

[Cartmann99]

 

[Cartmann99]

Unrolled version of thread is here.

[Cartmann99]

 

[Becky]

Love this! 
 

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/26/1094740651/florida-man-asks-schools-to-ban-the-bible-following-the-states-efforts-to-remove

[Cartmann99]

Raise your hand if you remember this from Rich Lowry:

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I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it.

He's now running the Ron DeSantis fan club:

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[SassyPants]

On 6/2/2022 at 6:39 PM, Cartmann99 said:

 

So Desantis will penalize the Rays for the statement and donation to an anti-gun violence group. What do you bet he has taken campaign money from the NRA? 

[Cartmann99]

Draft legislation shows DeSantis wants more power over Florida's colleges and universities.

A Grab for Power

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Public higher education in Florida has come under fire in a variety of ways in recent years. The state Legislature has restricted the teaching of certain controversial topics, administered political litmus tests to faculty and subjected professors to additional posttenure scrutiny. Universities themselves have clamped down on faculty free speech to comply with state laws.

But documents show the worst may be yet to come.

Recently uncovered draft legislation from Florida’s spring legislative session reveals plans to consolidate power in state boards run by Governor Ron DeSantis’s political appointees, to make colleges more reliant on money controlled by the state Legislature, to impose restrictions on what can be taught in Florida’s colleges and universities, and to strip university presidents of certain hiring powers.

The Florida draft legislation was first reported by Jason Garcia, an independent journalist who uncovered the plans as the result of public record requests seeking communications between DeSantis and state lawmakers from the legislative session, which ran from January to March. Though none of the major proposals materialized during the session, the documents offer a stark picture of how Florida lawmakers envision fundamentally reshaping public higher education in the state.

Critics of the proposals warn that the plan threatens academic freedom and institutional autonomy for Florida’s state universities. Some see it as a dire warning of what’s on the legislative horizon.

The Plan

The draft legislation proposes giving more authority to the Board of Governors to investigate university presidents, veto proposed budgets and fire individual employees. It also seeks to limit the ability of the board to delegate administrative powers.

Though each of the 12 member institutions of the State University System of Florida has its own board, those bodies fall under the Board of Governors, whose 17 members include 14 handpicked by DeSantis.

The draft legislation also aims to limit the ability of boards to raise student fees, thereby making universities more dependent on state funding controlled by Tallahassee, giving lawmakers a greater say in how that money is used. Another component suggests that universities that run afoul of particular state laws will be financially punished with funding cuts. Garcia reported last week that one version of the draft legislation “specifically ordered cuts to universities and colleges that don’t participate in DeSantis’ ‘intellectual diversity’ surveys” and “another version of the bill would have made the university and college systems submit reports every three months ‘assuring’ the governor and the Legislature that schools aren’t defying” state laws.

According to curricular requirements in the documents Garcia obtained, general education courses “must promote the philosophical underpinnings of Western civilization,” including studies of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and amendments, and the Federalist Papers.

Related Stories

The draft legislation goes on to state that “general education courses may not suppress or distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics, such as Critical Race Theory, or defines American history as contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.”

Critical race theory, a once-obscure academic concept, has become a bogeyman for conservatives who accuse colleges of misleading students about American history. Critical race theory, or a distorted version of it, has been under attack by numerous state legislatures.

According to HB 7, or the Stop Woke Act, passed earlier this year, Florida colleges and universities can lose performance-based funding for teaching certain “divisive concepts” such as CRT.

The draft legislation also aims to give boards more power over hiring: “Each university board of trustees is responsible for hiring faculty. The president may provide hiring recommendations to the board; however, the president or the board is not bound by recommendations or opinions of faculty or other individuals or groups,” the documents read. “The board may delegate its hiring authority to the president; however, the board shall approve or deny any selection by the president.”

The Pushback

As the proposals have made the rounds in Florida higher ed circles, reaction has been muted. Of the half dozen universities Inside Higher Ed contacted, none provided a comment. Neither the Florida Board of Governors nor DeSantis’s press office responded to inquiries.

Of the half dozen faculty senates Inside Higher Ed contacted, only two offered statements.

“I find the report deeply concerning. This is my third day as Faculty Senate Chair and, as I begin my term, I remain dedicated to protecting the independence of this institution so that it continues to serve as an important source of knowledge and research for the people of Florida and the world,” Amanda Phalin, chair of the University of Florida Faculty Senate, said by email Friday.

Eric Chicken, Faculty Senate president at Florida State University, said by email that “the twelve institutions in the state university system are quite distinct from one another in terms of size, mission, and focus” and that centralized control was neither appropriate nor efficient.

“Hiring is best handled by the academics within each university,” he added. “Departments and colleges in each state university differ significantly from each other in terms of expertise, training, and performance expectations. The faculty in these departments are the most qualified to make hiring recommendations through their deans to their presidents. The members of the Boards of Trustees generally do not possess the specialized academic knowledge needed to make faculty hiring decisions. The presidents of the universities, on the other hand, are immersed in their local academic environment on a daily and intensive basis, and many of them are former faculty themselves with a good understanding of the requirements for hiring new faculty.”

Chicken also noted that “academic freedom is essential to a university’s mission.”

Higher ed observers outside Florida also expressed skepticism about the plan.

Henry Stoever, president and CEO of the Association of Governing Boards, said by email that he was “concerned about the increasing politicization of higher education across the country,” noting that “effective board governance requires board independence from undue external influences.” He added that board members should be committed to the institution—not to outside influences.

“Governing boards must respect the difference between the board’s role to oversee the affairs of the institution and the administration’s role to manage the operations of the institution. Governing boards select and inspire the chief executive, and they work with the administration to determine strategic priorities, policies, and financials of the system or institution. They are accountable for ensuring that desired outcomes are aligned with priorities. In Florida, those responsibilities are shared between the system Board of Governors and the institutional governing boards,” Stoever said. “Boards provide advice and counsel to sharpen strategy, but the chief executive and administrators are responsible for the day-to-day management of the institution. Accreditors keep a close eye on these types of issues, and changing accreditors will not protect institutions from facing scrutiny and the potential loss of accreditation—and therefore federal funding.”

Sondra Barringer, a professor of higher education at Southern Methodist University and an expert on higher ed governing boards, described DeSantis’s proposals as unusual. Barringer was particularly concerned about the way the plan undermines university presidents, who are responsible for day-to-day operations, by elevating boards, which are responsible for long-term strategic planning. Shifting those responsibilities blurs the lines of governance, Barringer said.

“I think it would be unusual for [faculty hiring] to be under the purview of the board,” Barringer added. “And I think that would have potentially chilling implications, for example, with the University of Florida presidential search. That may affect the pool of candidates for that position.”

Barrett Taylor, a counseling and higher education professor at the University of North Texas who studies higher education policy, organization and governance, suggests that these proposals would compromise the institutional independence of members of Florida’s state university system.

Taylor said the draft legislation, even if it isn’t introduced and signed into law, is important because it signals “what a political coalition is considering at any given point in time.”

In Florida, this particular legislation sends the message that higher education is not trusted and needs to be radically reshaped. The draft legislation is just as much of a message to voters, a culture-war rallying cry, as it is an actual effort to remake higher education, Taylor explained.

“I think sowing that mistrust is itself concerning, even if we don’t yet know what will be enacted,” Taylor said.

Though much of the draft legislation did not become law, some groups are warning that these proposals signal what’s to come for Florida higher education in the next legislative session.

“The particular proposals outlined in the article were not passed this legislative session, but similar attempts will certainly be made next year to do so. This gives us insight into their next moves,” United Faculty of Florida, the statewide faculty union, tweeted Thursday.

 

[fraurosena]

What DeSantis is doing is a blueprint of what Republicans will do if they win in the Midterms.

Be afraid. Very, very afraid.