Monthly Archives: April 2014
Scathing report on school privatization and poor kids released
A report by Dr. Gordon Lafer from the University of Oregon has been released that comes to scathing conclusions about school privatization. More from Ruth Conniff in the Progressive.
Performance Measures: How is the Florida Democratic Party doing?
Over the last few days, Florida’s mainstream media has been quite critical Florida Democratic Party. The Tampa Bay Times’ Adam Smith, who has been favorable to FDP political director Christian Ulvert in the past, has now come out and said that Democrats should be worried because of the lack of candidate recruitment by the party, among […]
Is Michelle Rhee’s “Students First” preparing for another faux campaign next week?
With the final week of session almost upon us and the fate of the dangerous school “choice” proposals still undecided, Michelle Rhee’s Step up for Students has engaged once again in the voucher battle here in Florida. Last year, Rhee’s organization rated Florida second on its report card of states based on voucher legislation and […]
Video: Step up for Students on school “choice” and courting Democrats
The above video has several tidbits that will interest our readers. The most interesting may come near the 7 minute mark with this quote: “We also discovered that a lot of these schools in these low income areas were affiliated with churches that were run by ministers who were absolutely king-makers in Democratic politics in […]
Flashback Friday: The Legislature in 1996
Yesterday, while doing some spring cleaning (ie. throwing things out) I stumbled upon the 1996 edition of the always handy “Know Your Legislators” legislative directory put out each year by Associated Industries of Florida. This happens to be the very last session the Democrats had a majority in the House. The spread in the Senate […]
Thursday Bookshelf: The Conscience Of A Liberal Krugman and Wellstone versions
Today we look at two books with the same name: The first by Clark Medal Medal and Nobel Prize winning Economist and now syndicated New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and the other, from the late Progressive Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN), that in fact share the same title, serve the same purpose: a response to […]
1935 Labor Day Hurricane now classified as strongest ever to hit the US
The National Hurricane Center has reclassified the 1935 Keys Labor Day Storm, one of the greatest tragedies in Florida’s History as the strongest storm to ever hit the US mainland. One of the great tragedies of the Labor Day storm was the death of hundreds of World War I veterans who were building the Overseas […]
Is SunRail the right choice for Central Florida? – Part Two.
Here is Part Two of the SunRail article, which will look at the cost effectiveness of this system compared to other systems of comparable sizes. Since the main goal of this research is to determine whether the SunRail project is economically sound for Central Florida, the units of analysis for this research will be other […]
Inside the numbers in Jolly vs Sink – Was the targeting flawed?
We have heard various theories as to why Democrat Alex Sink was defeated by Republican David Jolly in a high-profile nationally watched Congressional special election last month. We’ve written extensively about the failures of the Sink campaign, who blew double-digit lead to lose on Election Day. The role of the Florida Democratic Party and Democratic Congressional […]
Is SunRail the right choice for Central Florida? – Part One
This is Part One of a two-part series on the SunRail project in Central Florida. While many are happy that some form of passenger rail has finally reached the Orlando area, it the type of service they are providing (which is commuter rail) beneficial? Today’s section will look at the history of the light rail/commuter […]
The Florida Squeeze 