The Orlando Sentinel reports that the Republican-controlled legislature passed a tax cut of $500 million that will apply only to the state’s biggest corporations, excluding 99% of all businesses.
The tax bill was quietly passed last year in response to intense lobbying by the state’s biggest corporations. At the time, it’s sponsors said the cuts were small and wouldn’t amount to much.
But $500 million would be enough to double the state’s funding of pre-kindergarten programs, which consistently rank among the bottom 10 in the nation. It’s more than the state spends to combat toxic algae bloom, which threatens the state’s fisheries; more than it spend to combat the opioid crisis; more than it spends buying conservation land and building beaches—combined.
The Republicans who control Florida’s government would rather reward the powerful than to invest in the future.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Holy cow! What is WRONG with America?
Seems America has gone to the THUGS.
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The sunshine state often prefers to operate in the shadows where billionaires use dark money to pull the strings of political puppets. This tax give away is a perfect example of what is wrong with many in the state legislature. The Koch Brothers have given some members of the state legislatures an A+ rating. Richard Corcoran, the recently appointed commissioner of education, is a Koch brothers puppet with an A+ rating for undermining the common good.https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/50-florida-lawmakers-get-an-a-rating-from-the-koch-brothers-americans-for-prosperity-9529652
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Of course it will. https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/why-you-should-move-to-florida/
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Thanks for your entertaining link. It was an enjoyable read. While Florida has more than enough bugs and snakes, I have never seen so many of both as in rural, coastal Texas. I once had to dash from my car to the house with at least twenty mosquitoes dining on my arms and legs. When I picked up the welcome mat to sweep off the patio, a rattlesnake slithered off, luckily not interested in me. As far as I am concerned, Texas wins in the scary creature category.
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Our scariest creatures are Florida Men
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But we here in Florida like a good competition. Alas, we are short on Gila monsters and tarantulas, though we now have plenty of pythons and Zika-carrying mosquitoes. And Karenia brevis algae that cause red tide. And this just in, courtesy of the global warming that our IQ45 president denies, new, fun Vibrio vulnificus bacteria that cause Necrotizing fasciitis. And. . . .
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Conan to offer Florida for Greenland.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.firstcoastnews.com/amp/article/news/nation-world/conan-obrien-to-trump-trade-florida-for-greenland/507-6384330c-3524-4acc-a118-e1ce90d434ef
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LOL!!!
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Florida is the ed reform lodestar. They’ve so ridiculously over-hyped and over-sold their success there I’m not sure it’s possible for anyone to ever get an accurate read on what the reforms have or have not accomplished. It’s Jeb Bush’s entire legacy and the sole reason he’s still treated like an all-knowing wise man in ed reform. If anyone pokes holes in the Florida narrative the whole “movement” takes a hit. So no one will try.
DeVos talks more about Florida much than she does about Michigan, which is interesting, given that her (and her huge piles of campaign cash) created the whole Michigan ed reform system.
It’s informative to look at the cities and states ed reformers choose to study and promote. Ohio has the exact same set of ed reforms as Florida does, yet no one in the “movement” brags about the privatized systems they created here. Nothing on Michigan or Pennsylvania, either. The omissions are as telling as what they choose to include. The cherrypicking is baked in.
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I have demolished the Florida Myth here.
On NAEP, Florida is no better than average
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As I wrote to you recently, regarding the total control of our national media by the very power elite you describe here, who have given a pre$ent to the MSM.
THIS, for me, IS ALL ABOUT THE UTTER SILENCE IN THE MEDIA! Someone has to do what I do…. Describe the DIVISION that makes it easy to CONQUER. DESCRIBE, EXPLAIN show how easy it is to GAME THE SYSTEM and HIDE not merely the robbery of our money– that should be going to public education— but the demolition of education in this nation.
Your excellent posts always nail the latest scam in too many of our 50 states; you report the shameful, corrupt behavior that has taken down the schools in almost SIXTEEN THOUSAND (15,880) separate school systems … BUT it reminds me of hearing constantly of Trumps latest shenanigans… and then, in a few days, hearing of the next one, and then, next week another.
To me, it is WAY PAST THE TIME to see some action, and grasp by our people that something is very amiss!
It is not enough to change things, these days, by endlessly reporting the corruption, and outright GRAND THEFT of our taxpayer money.
Don’t get me wrong — I am delighted and relieved, that you, the NPE and the activists, shine a light into the darkness — I keep links to all of your posts in a file called 15,880 — where, daily, I add to the links showing the corruption in Alabama, Oklahoma, Detroit, Ohio Florida, (etc, etc etc…). I added San Antonio, yesterday, and Pa https://dianeravitch.net/2019/08/17/pennsylvania-the-political-contributions-of-the-owner-of-the-states-largest-charter-school/
I post your critical reports of outright sabotage of the only road to income equality at OpEd, and some folks read it. But Diane, as you recently told me, I have pointed to the war on public ed beginning with the removal of the best teachers) for TWO DECADES
You, Tom, Peter, Valerie, and the others who ‘cover’ education put real real facts out there —>>>but it ends there!!!!!. They are winning, because THE Main Street MEDIA –LOCK , STOCK AND CABLE Channel — is NOT speaking a syllable about THE SCHOOLS, and are not addressing this tragedy. So there can not be a solution. DUH!
They will talk endlessly about a pediphile but there is not even a WIMPER of the enormous HARM to our children (our future voting citizens) that is occurring as the power elite SELLS ROTTEN EDUCATION !
Bernie is suddenly taking about the schools, but he ain’t telling the story of HOW THE INSTITUTION OF PUBLIC EDUCATION has been dismantled simply by takin git apart, one little piece at a time.
The debates had NOT EVEN A SINGLE QUESTION pointing to ANY ISSUE on public education. Security and Health Care are NOT ALONE in the DEFINITION of THE COMMON GOOD, which is the foundations for our government for WE THE PEOPLE as the CONSTITUTION demands.
NO ONE I meet ANYWHERE realizes that the hidden system we call PUBLIC EDUCATION is made up of TENS OF THOUSANDS of independent school boards in FIFTY states –>>> where legislatures run the show! We know who pays them, but our citizens are CLUELESS as the power-elite DO THE ONE THING that will END the America as the founders envisioned it — GET’EM WHILE THEY ARE YOUNG! (There is a reason why Saudia Arabia has their Madrases!!!! )
When KOCH writes curricula he re-writes history, and thus, THE END IS NIGH!.
YOU posted this years ago! https://dianeravitch.net/2014/12/07/civics-lessons-financed-by-the-koch-brothers/
That is how they get away with it!
The SILENCE about THE ASSAULT ON TEACHERS led the way.
With the real voices of the classroom practitioner, gone from the conversation about WHAT LEARNING LOOKS LIKE and what is really ESSENTIAL FOR LEARNING TO OCCUR — we get Orwellian CONVERSATION about ‘choice’ and magic elixirs
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
Rhee, Klein, Duncan and OMG DeVos speak nonsense about what is ESSENTIAL We need YOU..on the tv, OFTEN. You were ass’t the Sec’y of Ed. It is time you went viral!
I got this FROM YUR SITE , years ago– even before the internet gave them more power to lie: The EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX https://greatschoolwars.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/eic-oct_11.pdf
FINALLY, to return to what I said at the beginning:
It is the CRUX of why we hear NOTHING…NADA… about the WAR ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS: “Former MSNBC producer Jeff Cohen has published an article in Salon https://www.salon.com/2019/08/16/memo-to-mainstream-journalists-can-the-phony-outrage-bernie-is-right-about-bias/. where he details his experience with the way corporate media outlets keep a uniform pro-establishment narrative running throughout all their coverage … Cohen’s exposé follows the phenomenal segment recently aired on The Hill’s show Rising, in which former MSNBC star Krystal Ball and her co-host Saagar Enjati both detailed their experience with the way access journalism, financial incentives, prestige incentives and peer pressure were used to push them each toward protecting establishment narratives in their respective mainstream media careers. Ball said at one point she was literally called into the office and forbidden from doing any critical Hillary Clinton coverage without prior approval in the lead-up to the 2016 election, saying that in mainstream journalism jobs “you are aware of what you’re going to be rewarded for and what you’re going to be punished for, or not rewarded for.”
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“outright sabotage of the only road to income equality at OpEd”. Socialism is the only road to “income equality.”
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Perhaps our schools should start teaching explicitly about taxes and what exactly they fund. Instead of just teaching the Constitution, teach about government agencies. Oh, I forgot, it’s much more important to teach “21st Century Skills”.
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LMAO. Yup.
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Well, I hate to dump on FL w/o personal experience, but 60 yrs of anecdotal evidence from friends, relatives & neighbors seems to square up w/comments posted here. My basic reaction is, so what else is new?
I’m wondering if FL would have been the ed-reform lodestar, had it had some native-born Floridian at the helm instead of Jeb Bush. His national luster is via Bush family wealth/ political connections, & is thought of by most as a Texan (even though he’s been in FL 40 yrs).
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But then again, who’da thunk the lousy ed-reform of NOLA, run by then-little-known Jindal would be declared a “miracle” to be copied by MI, TN, Chicago & Philly?
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Good thing, with 3500 teacher vacancies, that they don’t fritter away that money paying for education.
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Exactly, Arthur! Very well said!
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I get the allure of Florida. When we visit the pine forest of the panhandle, we find a wonderful spring of migrating warblers, nesting thrashers and mockingbirds, and hundreds of wading birds in hundreds of swamps. All this despite the best efforts of human beings to destroy it all. I like the bike paths and the beaches.
As for the heat, I cannot abide it. As for the snakes, they are preferable to rodents, whether they be like Jeb Bush or some other being that inhabits the midden heaps of humanity.
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