Jeb's Plan B: Church-State Showdown In Florida on November's ballot.

How did the state of Florida get to this point where people will be voting to give public tax money to private religious schools...and not even know it?

From the AU article below:



If the ballot initiatives work here, they will at once be tried in other states. The word "voucher" is never used in the amendments. The public will not be quite sure what they are voting for in those amendments.

Money given in vouchers to private schools or private religious schools is money taken away from funding good public schools.

From Americans United:

Storm Clouds over the Sunshine State.

Jeb Bush pushed forward a series of vouchers in 1999 for students at "failing" schools (so-called) to attend private or religious schools with public money.



Howard Troxler of the St. Pete Times put it succinctly:



A favorite Florida Blogger Ybor City Stogie referred to this issue with the label....The Citrus Taliban. He mentioned that one of the ones leading this effort is Patricia Levesque, Jeb's former Deputy Chief of Staff for Education.

The journal of DUer and Floridian Seafan tells more about the role of Patricia Levesque. This was covered by AU.



The Bush family is still at work in Florida. As Les Miller said, the Supreme Court has spoken and said this is unconstitutional.

However it still made it onto the November ballot, and no one will know it's true purpose unless we get the word out.

Several groups, including the teachers' unions here are joining with the ACLU in a lawsuit.

Florida trying for two tiers of schools...public and unaccountable private religious schools.



Our tax money could go to private religious schools, and we would not be able to hold them accountable. The amendments are couched in confusing language that make them sound like a good thing....instead they will diminish the public school in this state. The vehicles they use will be Amendments 7 and 9 which are due to be on the November ballot.

Jeb Bush's Plan B is on the ballot in November.

florida has long had more registered dems than republics and i imagine the spread is even greater now. however, florida has been gerrymandered into a repug majority. hopefully, floridians will finally get smart and vote the bastids out of office. one can only hope.

ellen fl

These are some of his Citrus Taliban posts. Enjoy.

http://yborcitystogie.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Citrus%20Taliban

One of my favorites is "Florida As Intellectual Ghetto" featuring Ronda Storms.

As a teacher, I'm tired of hearing, from RWers, about the brilliance of Jeb Bush and Florida for their "teacher accountability" and the "miracles" it's brought about. It will be nice for them to finally get a face full of a RW failure that clever statistics can't mask.

Let them do it, and let it be a failure for the country to see and reject.

I vote "no". FL's sorry state of eduction is already on display in Jacksonville with lots of failing schools. Doing this will endanger the eduction and future of innocent children. While I can see that it's tempting to let them hang themselves, it's not fair to the children this would impact.

As a retired teacher I agree...there would be little accountability on those vouchers.

"The St. Petersburg Times warned that the ballot amendments “will make Florida a national battleground” and “the campaign will be ugly, costly, divisive – and just the kind of politics that Bush relished.”

The Times added, “The way the Commission put the items on the ballot hints at the deceptions that lie ahead. Neither question mentions the word ‘voucher.’… Call this Bush’s post-gubernatorial ‘devious plan.’”

Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen opined, “If the measure passes, Florida would be the first state in the country to formally trash the concept that the roles of church and government should be separate.”

The Bradenton Herald was even more critical.

“Though voucher proponents cast their zeal in the shining light of a better education for all students,” the newspaper said, “this is just a way for rich people to subsidize their children’s private schooling. Would right-wing Republicans ever push for vouchers if they truly benefited the poor? No. This is a cynical attempt to undermine public education and further divide the classes.”

..."Miami Herald columnist Hiaasen said adoption of the amendments would send a message, “Translation: Rush out and start your own church as soon as possible, because deals are waiting in Tallahassee.”

http://www.au.org/site/News2?abbr=cs_&page=NewsArticle&id=9858

on top of this evolving catastrophe? :wtf: was Karen and her minions doing? Florida is already 50 out of 50 I guess they figure that you cannot get ANY lower no matter what... and who gives a fly'n F*ck anyway... Its not Jeb's kids... They just want everybody to be indoctrinated morons who work hard and die young ALL fer da man! :wtf: :puke:

Turn everyone who isn't a powerful rich crony into poor uneducated wage slaves. Everything they do supports this one end. They want to turn America into a third world country with them as dictators for life. Having an educated populace is a big threat to their plans, ergo get rid of education for everyone but the rich.

:mad:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-capview0308aug03,0,1128100.column

"The decade-long ideological struggle over taxpayer-funded grants for children to attend nonpublic schools is again on a collision course with the same state Supreme Court majority that struck down the nation's first statewide voucher program more than two years ago.

A national pro-voucher group called All Children Matter has raised $2.1 million -- nearly $1.4 million of it from the Arkansas heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton -- to elect pro-voucher legislative candidates here this year. And supportive lawmakers this spring expanded the state's corporate tax-credit program that funds thousands of vouchers."

..'"The voucher right-wing proponents around the country will all come to Florida and spend money to reinvigorate their voucher movement here," said Ron Meyer, a Tallahassee lawyer for the Florida Education Association, which is challenging two voucher-related constitutional amendments.

The FEA is asking a Leon County circuit judge Monday to invalidate the two proposed amendments on the Nov. 4 ballot because, it argues, neither makes clear to voters its real intent -- expanding vouchers."

But will the packed Supremes ki$$ some more Bu$h a$$?

I talked to two retired teachers this week, one nearby and one in Lake County....they have no clue what the amendments are. No one is talking about it, the Democrats are silent mostly.

scotus but jebbie will push that if we do not vote this down. the bush crime family has got to be the worst thing that ever happened to this country.

ellen fl

That is why Jeb & Co. are trying to put through these new amendments to the Constitution. If they pass, unless the Florida Supreme Court can find a defect in the new amendments, they cannot overthrow new law on vouchers. That is the agenda here, taking away our rights to fight this.

.

phone banking.

ellen fl

I have been hoping to hear from the state Dems about an effort...but nothing from them.

https://secure.aclu.org/site/SPageNavigator/FL_Amend79Volunteer?JServSessionIdr009=2cr4euwoh2.app20a

Mission Accomplished.

(edited to limit discussion to florida).

Now let's make sure those public schools fail.

http://www.pamspaulding.com/weblog/2005/01/no-child-left-behind-bush-family.html

You're one of the best! K&R!

But there several here who write a lot about Florida. The media won't do its job so we try. :hi:

Turning Florida into an Xtian version of Afghanistan.

I'm afraid.

sunshine state.

Maybe one in each town. There would be a huge influx of people who want their kids to go to private schools of all types paid by the pubic. Never mind the trouble it will be to the public schools this will bankrupt the whole state.

I think we can all agree that his school should not have been 50% funded by any state funds.

That is in the AU article I posted.

You are right...if one religion gets funds all must.

:applause:

Appreciated. I can't believe there is no awareness of this issue in my state by the people here.

Some of us here post about it...then it disappears from view..Then some media might mention it. Then they forget too.

"The Family," by Jeff Sharlett, everybody!

Children should be protected from "faith-based" ignorance until they have a chance to make up their own minds. You can be sure that critical thinking skills will not be part of the curriculum in these religious schools.

private, unaccountable religious schools, funded with OUR money

then, a new constitution, based on the old testament

think I'm nuts?

look up who's behind it....you'll recognize the names of many, and be surprised at how much in the 'mainstream' of public thought they are

scarier than shit

... in the Halls of Congress. Harper's had an article months ago about Hillary's involvement with The Family/Fellowship and the National Prayer Breakfast.

Obama is cozying up to extreme fundamentalist Christian groups.

I definitely don't think you're nuts. Being an uppity woman, and having a daughter who is one, too, I'm very concerned about what's coming down the pike. Women in subjection to men. Yeah, that's it!

:toast:

Where would the world be without us uppity women and men challenging the status quo?

Each and every one of them seems to think that they have some special connection to a higher truth. I think there must be some kind of sickness that is passed down to each of their mentally stunted progeny. How could an evil this blatant survive from the 1920 time frame until now? For all the rw moaning about the Kennedy's, I dare you to site instances of pure evil in them. Maybe the cousin Smith, but the real Kennedy's have always been progressives, trying to elevate the middle class. These vampires have to be stopped by legal means, so that there can be no repeats of this class warfare that they are waging.

the evil in their genes goes way back. I bet if you dug, you'd find evil in the family before him - but he set the target for them - world domination by facists.

If you or your family are smart enough, ruthless enough, conniving enough or maybe even lucky enough to get to the top of the heap, you do WHATEVER IT TAKES to stay there.

These folks frequent the same country clubs, yacht clubs, business and government organizations (can you say Republican Party and Democratic Party elite?). They are in an endless feedback loop of how wonderful and industrious they are and how they have EARNED what they have, while the rest of us are whiners who don't appreciate THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOCIETY. They consider themselves to be the WINNERS and they pump each other up about how they deserve more and how they deserve to BE IN CHARGE. The rest of us are simply here to enable them to live their lives of splendor by consuming and serving as worker drones.

To them it's all about what they have done and what they deserve. And unfortunately, most of them have the financial resources and the connections to keep the gravy train rolling. Witness the last seven years in America. But it's not just these last seven years, even though they've been by far the worst. This started a long time ago and is just now reaching its ascendancy.

The Bushes are just the most visible apples on a genetically-defective apple tree that has been producing poisonous fruit for centuries.