Thus moving this from Politics vs Children’s Health to Politics vs the Law in Florida…..
The Florida Department of Education on Monday defied a recent ruling from a state judge and leveled its first sanctions against school board members who rejected the DeSantis administration’s orders on local mask mandates.
State officials withheld monthly salaries from board members in Alachua and Broward counties who supported the mask requirements, marking a major turning point in the weekslong fight over face coverings in schools.
“We’re going to fight to protect parents’ rights to make health care decisions for their children,” Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran said in a statement. “What’s unacceptable is the politicians who have raised their right hands and pledged, under oath, to uphold the Constitution but are not doing so.”
The fines come even as a circuit court judge on Friday ruled the DeSantis administration lacked authority to punish schools for implementing up mask mandates. DeSantis had vowed to appeal the decision, but the sanctions leveled Monday from the education department appears to be a repudiation of the judge’s ruling. The judge in that case, Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper, ruled from the bench on Friday and an official order has yet to be posted by the court.
The move by the state department of education is the latest development in the weekslong fight over masking students in Florida amid the surge in coronavirus cases. Already, 11 counties have rejected the governor’s rules preventing schools from mandating masks, including school districts in three Republican-leaning counties….
DeSantis is just what the Republican Party is looking for …
An Authoritarian anti democratic Right Winger.
Teresa Hanafin in The Boston Globe’s “Fast Forward” newsletter:
I have a simple question for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, also posed by New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow: How many COVD deaths are enough?
How many deaths are you willing to cause in order to advance your political career?
How many infections are you willing to tolerate, many with devastating long-term effects, to get yourself re-elected as governor?
How many kids have to fall ill, miss school, and endure scary stays in the hospital — some on respirators — to boost your presidential aspirations?
Please send some numbers. We’re all curious if there is a limit to your narcissistic cruelty.
***
Phil Valentine, a 62-year-old conservative radio host in Nashville, Tenn., who had a nationally syndicated show, repeatedly questioned the need for the coronavirus vaccine. It should be a personal choice, he argued; that’s just common sense.
He got infected, and changed his tune. His radio station said he regretted not being more vehemently “Pro-Vaccine.”
He died last week.
Dick Farrel, another conservative radio host who broadcast from Florida, was far more vocal in his opposition, condemning the vaccine and calling Dr. Anthony Fauci a “power tripping lying freak.”
He got infected, and changed his tune. He urged a longtime friend to get the vaccine and regretted not getting it himself.
He died Aug. 4.
Marc Bernier, another Florida conservative radio host, also publicly railed against the COVID-19 vaccines, comparing the federal government’s push for vaccinations to Nazis.
He got infected, but his friends and family won’t say if he changed his tune.
He died Saturday.
***
There’s another story about somebody who died because of COVID-19, even though he was not infected.
Daniel Wilkinson was an Army veteran who came down with gallstone pancreatitis, an eminently treatable illness, but one which his local hospital in Bellville, Texas, wasn’t equipped to handle. He needed a specialist.
Knowing that time was of the essence, his Bellville doctor frantically started calling facilities he knew had the advanced level of care Wilkinson needed.
But they couldn’t take him because their ICUs were filled with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients.
He finally was airlifted to a VA hospital in Houston, but it was too late. He died.
“I’ve never lost a patient from this diagnosis, ever,” the Bellville doctor, Hasan Kakli, told CBS News. “We know what needs to be done and we know how to treat it, and we get them to where they need to go. I’m scared that the next patient that I see is someone that I can’t get to where they need to get to go.”
***
A pastor and spokesman for the National Religious Broadcasters organization appeared on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC Aug. 18, and said he supports vaccines. In fact, he said, his evangelical faith had motivated him to get vaccinated because it furthers the idea of loving one’s neighbor.
He was fired.
Charles Blow in The New York Times:
Perhaps no politician has taken the reins from Trump with more vigor — and disastrous effects — than Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a man who thinks he could be the next Republican president. But to supplant the last leader of his party, he has to out-Trump Trump.
To accomplish this meteoric rise, he needed to do two things. First, become the darling of the Trump freedom fighters, fighting for the right to get sick and die. And second, he has to be the opposite of the establishment, in this case Joe Biden and his administration. If Biden swerves left, DeSantis must swerve right, even if the hospitals in his state are overrun and the funeral parlors reach capacity.
It hasn’t necessarily been easy for DeSantis to bait Biden. As The New York Times reported in March, Biden’s top advisers said they saw “no benefits in waging a culture war against Republican governors while they are fighting to contain the pandemic.”
But as the Delta variant became more of a threat and people like DeSantis became more entrenched, waging war against mask mandates in their states, Biden had no choice but to engage more directly. (Luckily, a Florida judge rejected DeSantis’s mask ban on Friday.)
Enticing Biden into open battle is what DeSantis wants and needs. It takes attention off the unbelievable tragedy playing out in his state, a tragedy in which he is complicit.
As The Times reported on Wednesday: “More people in Florida are catching the coronavirus, being hospitalized and dying of Covid-19 now than at any previous point in the pandemic.” The Times continued, “This week, 227 virus deaths were being reported each day in Florida, on average, as of Tuesday, a record for the state and by far the most in the United States right now.”
The citizens of Florida do not even support DeSantis’s politically calculated pandemic positions. A Quinnipiac University poll released last week found that “six in 10 Floridians support requiring masks in schools,” and “61 percent say recent rise in Covid-19 cases in Florida was preventable.”
But there are two things more important to DeSantis than those numbers. First, a different Quinnipiac poll found that regardless of how few Floridians approve of his performance, his approval rating is still higher than Biden’s in the state.
Second, DeSantis is playing to an electorate beyond the panhandle. As long as he is still mentioned in the same breath as Biden, even if the coverage is negative, he is playing well among Republicans. As long as he is fighting Washington and Democrats and experts, it doesn’t matter to entrenched Republicans that he’s not fighting the plague.
Some bodies must be sacrificed to appease the gods of partisan resistance.
To keep the spotlight, DeSantis is employing many of the same tricks as Trump: fighting with the media about coverage, deflecting blame onto Biden and convincing his followers that folding to facts is the same as forfeiting freedoms.
As DeSantis said in early August, “We can either have a free society, or we can have a biomedical security state.” He continued, “And I can tell you: Florida, we’re a free state. People are going to be free to choose to make their own decisions.”
Yes, Florida, DeSantis is allowing you to choose death so that he can have a greater political life.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/29/opinion/ron-desantis-covid-death.html
Politics OVER Health in Florida with a eye towards 2024?…..
DeSantis though is broadly representative of today’s Republican Party…
Hate filled, mean spirited, Liars, cheats, thieves….
All wrapped up in this creep…
A worthy successor to Trump.
Trump though is just a grifter with no beliefs other than how something could benefit him.
This POS is far far worse than Trump.
DeSantis has gotten the Florida Department of Health to use a statistical sleight of hand to make it appear there are fewer deaths from Covid in Florida than there actually is.
Cuomo was blasted in New York for some similiar hanky pinky with virus numbers .
Where is the outrage over DeSantis from the uh “librul media?”
This is against JUST the board….
NOT teachers or Education admin…..
What will the courts do down there?