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FLORIDA POLITICS
Since 2002, daily Florida political news and commentary

 

UPDATE: Every morning we review and individually digest Florida political news articles, editorials and punditry. Our sister site, FLA Politics was selected by Campaigns & Elections as one of only ten state blogs in the nation
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Welcome To Florida Politics

Thanks for visiting. On a semi-daily basis we scan Florida's major daily newspapers for significant Florida political news and punditry. We also review the editorial pages and political columnists/pundits for Florida political commentary. The papers we review include: the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, St Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and, occasionally, the Florida Times Union; we also review the political news blogs associated with these newspapers.

For each story, column, article or editorial we deem significant, we post at least the headline and link to the piece; the linked headline always appears in quotes. We quote the headline for two reasons: first, to allow researchers looking for the cited piece to find it (if the link has expired) by searching for the original title/headline via a commercial research service. Second, quotation of the original headline permits readers to appreciate the spin from the original piece, as opposed to our spin.

Not that we don't provide spin; we do, and plenty of it. Our perspective appears in post headlines, the subtitles within the post (in bold), and the excerpts from the linked stories we select to quote; we also occasionally provide other links and commentary about certain stories. While our bias should be immediately apparent to any reader, we nevertheless attempt to link to every article, column or editorial about Florida politics in every major online Florida newspaper.

 

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The Blog for Saturday, July 30, 2005

One Florida Flop

    Finally, a little editorial commentary on "Jeb!"'s silly - and now flopping "One Florida" scheme (see "One Florida On The Skids"), this from the Palm Beach Post:
    Florida officials want to withhold judgment on preliminary data that show the number of African-American freshmen admitted to the state university system for the fall has dropped by 1,400 from three years ago. The silence about the nearly 11 percent projected decrease in black freshmen enrollment is odd, because this usually is when Gov. Bush begins leaping through verbal hoops to justify the contradictions of his One Florida plan to "transcend" affirmative action.

    Gov. Bush promised the exact opposite effect on black enrollment, of course, with his 1999 initiative to outlaw race as a consideration in university admissions. ...

    African-American numbers haven't kept pace with the rest of the university system's population. When black student enrollment stayed flat, Gov. Bush shifted to declaring success by claiming credit for it not plummeting. Blaming economic factors and increasing academic standards, as Florida Atlantic University President Frank Brogan did last week, is another dodge. The key economic factor, higher tuition costs, has been controlled by Gov. Bush and the Legislature. Their lack of need-based scholarships is consistent with the idea of diverting scholarship money, as FAU did, to fill its athletic program's budget holes.

    "Relentless media criticism cannot obscure the fact that One Florida is working better than its critics ever imagined," Gov. Bush insisted in 2002, responding to the numbers, which showed then that minorities were losing ground. Board of Governors Chairwoman Carolyn Roberts is correct that a real discussion of the numbers requires the real numbers, due in September. That also was true in the past when, without them, Gov. Bush was spinning One Florida.
    "Black enrollment decline a knock on Bush policy".

    I feel for the poor bureaucrat preparing the "real numbers, due in September", (s)he must be under even more pressure from "Jeb!" than a Buddy Dyer grand juror.

10:34 AM

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