DeSantis vetoes all arts grants in Florida
Gov. Ron DeSantis gave no explanation for zeroing out the $32 million in grants that were approved by state lawmakers.
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Leaders of arts organizations in Florida, many of whom have worked in the state for decades, cannot remember a governor ever eliminating all of their grant funding. Even in the lean years of the Great Recession, at least a nominal amount — say, 5 percent of the recommended total — was approved.
Established arts organizations usually know better than to overly rely on nonrecurring state dollars subject to the discretion of politicians, said Michael Tomor, executive director of the Tampa Museum of Art. But to cut funding at a time when arts organizations are still struggling to recover from the coronavirus pandemic sends a concerning message “that taxpayer dollars should not be used in support of arts and culture,” he added.
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Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, gave no explanation for zeroing out the arts grants. His office said in a statement that he made veto decisions “that are in the best interests of the State of Florida.”
In all, Mr. DeSantis vetoed nearly $950 million in proposed spending and proclaimed that the remaining $116.5 billion came in under the previous year’s budget.
Might be that they will, but for now they are doing very well on an objective scale, beeing placed on #1 for education and economy compared to the other states and beeing on #9 overall.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/florida
If this is able to hold will remain to be seen.
This is the same Florida where the governor has already gotten rid of some AP courses and has suggested getting rid of them completely, right?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2023/02/14/desantis-florida-ap-courses-college-board-feud/11250682002/
This is also the same Florida that now teaches children that black people learned useful skills when they were slaves, right?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-florida-standards-teach-black-people-benefited-slavery-taught-usef-rcna95418
Sounds like pretty low bar.
That is one sketchy ranking if I ever saw one.
OP is being dishonest about it too. It's #1 for higher education in Florida, #10 for K-12. And I'm not sure where they get #10 from because it looks like it's marginally above average based on their own numbers.
In fact, as far as I can tell, their whole metric for #1 is because Florida college students end up in less debt than in other states. And that is great, don't get me wrong, but not exactly the best education metric.
It's a bit silly that Florida ranks above states like Massachusetts and California when it comes to higher education. I don't know that any Florida university comes close to Harvard or CalTech. Cheaper, sure. A better quality education? I doubt it.
Same for economics. Their metrics are slightly above average, how is that #1?
I hadn't even looked into it after seeing how bogus the education numbers were, but that also doesn't shock me.
It also occurred to me that their main metric for K-12 education was high school graduation rate and since there's no national education standards, that can mean different things for different states. The other metric was a math score based on something I've never heard of, but it was not a test my 14-year-old here in Indiana has taken yet and it's not the SATs.
And part of their education score is "citizens holding degrees" which... That's not education, that's attainment rate.
And a lot of those citizens are retirees from other states who can afford to retire in Florida. So of course they're more likely to hold degrees.
"Your education system is better because it has a lower percentage of school age children"
Brilliant
Their whole methodology is not well outlined, and it's unclear how they calculated anything. For example, they ranked Florida as having cheaper college than Wyoming, but on average college in Florida costs 3 times as much as in Wyoming?
I'm sort of wondering if the ranking is based on how much money the state has given U.S. News to rank them where they're ranked.
Because DeSantis using money that could have otherwise been used as arts funding to pay off organizations to give Florida high education rankings would be pretty on brand for him.
The quality of education in these states varies radically by zip code and regional average income.
In California, the local school board superintendent Joseph Komrosky lost a recall election for trying to ban critical race theory (a thing his district wasn't formally teaching) on campuses, among other shady bullshit. But his ilk isn't unusual in the right wing fruit basket of SoCal or the Techbro patriarchy infesting the Stanford campus.
Education in these states can be better. But it can also be right in line with the Florida reactionary crowd, and for the same reasons. This is a national project by American plutocrats to brainwash the next generation of young people.
Well he's already axing that 1% in education by cutting all the arts funding. Science will probably be next.
A short boost from tax breaks to convince rich people to move there doesn't make the place financially successful or livable. It just looks better for a bit.
The category is a bit wider than that, but yes, low taxes seem to contribute.
https://www.richstatespoorstates.org/states/FL/
Edit:
Did a little digging after some flaws have been pointed out by @Silentia below. This source is not neutral.
https://ballotpedia.org/ALEC_Rich_States,_Poor_States_Report
It's more than half though. It really is very heavily implied here that taxes are the main way you can tell an economy is doing well.
How the state taxes you:
Vs how the money is spent:
Also, the higher the minimum wage, the lower the ranking.
Did some digging, you are spot on. Please see my edit of the original post.
I'm assuming that's the Laffer behind "the Laffer curve," AKA the unscientific bullshit "graph" he drew on a cocktail napkin that would essentially become the basis for supply-side economics AKA "trickle down."
That Laffer?
Because ruining the US economy and setting us on a 3+ decade ride towards record (and frankly inhumane) income inequality once just wasn't enough I guess.
Fucking ghouls.
If billionaire real estate magnets say your education system is good, who are we to argue?
magnates, I hope you meant.
"magnets: how do they work?" - ICP
I took a look at the first ranking I saw. You a free to have a look for studys or other objective sources that come to a different conclusion.
I don't wish to invest that time right now, but I'll be happy to be proven wrong by a better source if you want to look for one.
Maybe don't cite something if you have no idea how it reached its conclusions.
Fair point I guess.