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What You Missed This Week in La Gaceta

From As We Heard It, by Patrick Manteiga

► There is continued interest by Republicans to add a question to the Census forms regarding whether the person is a citizen. They want the question because they want to exclude noncitizens from the population totals that decide how many congressional seats are allocated to each state and how many Electoral College votes each state gets in the presidential election.
Republicans believe the new rule, if passed, would benefit their side in the presidential and congressional elections. … Florida could lose two to three congressional seats and areas of Florida with big foreign-born populations such as Miami, the congressional district boundaries would grow in size meaning South Florida would bear the biggest loss of congressional power in the state.
None of the noncitizens vote, so it doesn’t change the voting results in Florida, but every time we have a redraw of congressional district lines in Florida, the Republican-controlled process always hurts Democrats and benefits Republicans.
The chances of this plan passing hinges on Donald Trump winning the White House, the Republicans gaining control of the U.S. Senate and gaining quite a few seats in the house.
This would be a dramatic change in our American democracy. The U.S. Constitution, which Federalist judges love, mandates a head count every 10 years of everyone residing in the U.S. That headcount has always been used to determine the number of congressional districts each state has since the first Census, with the caveat that each state have at least one.(to read more, buy a paper)

► Florida serves orange juice at three of the welcome centers near the border of our state. The funding for this has been cut, but it is still over $200,000, which is a lot of cups of juice. … Perhaps we should update our promotions at the visitor center for things Florida is known for now. Orange juice should be out. DeSantis has made us the Gunshine State. Handing out free ammunition at our visitor centers would better celebrate DeSantis’ Florida.
(to read more, buy a paper)

► When you can’t raise money and are losing the race in voter registrations, what do you do? Well, Nikki Fried, our Florida Democratic Party chair, changed the Florida Democratic Party logo. Take that, Ronald DeSantis.
She and the Democratic think tank decided to replace the donkey with a Florida panther. While the panther is fierce, it is also on the endangered species list. And while its numbers have rebounded, Florida’s new 1,000 residents a day (mostly Republicans) are causing it’s southwest Florida habitat to lose thousands of acres to new subdivisions and roads. …(to read more, buy a paper)

► Florida ranks 50th in the nation in the average teacher salary on a list of 50 states plus the District of Columbia. We are almost dead last. Florida has the most teaching vacancies in the nation.
When Governor Ronald DeSantis says we are No. 1 in education, he is talking about a magazine’s ratings of universities and K-12. Florida’s place on that list is based mostly on having cheap college tuition, graduating on time and college readiness of 12th graders, and not necessarily academic excellence.
What is really telling about the governor’s position on public education is that while we are last in public school teacher pay, Florida is near the top in using public money to fund private schools.
He is purposefully ruining public education and propping up private schools to show public education doesn’t work, and it doesn’t with this governor and this Legislature.
Our local school boards are scrambling to pass local property tax increases to make up for the State’s failure to fund schools.
DeSantis said this week, “When you’re running big budget surpluses, you’ve got to be able to return some of that back to the taxpayers.” A wise governor would use those surpluses to pay teachers. …(to read more, buy a paper)

► The governor is starving our teachers, the legislature is killing teachers unions and Rick Scott is spending millions to make people hate teachers.
U.S. Senator Rick Scott has a TV commercial in English and Spanish with a script that reads, “As parents, we teach values to our children, the difference between right and wrong, truth and lies.
“But then we send our kids to school where some radical socialist teacher doesn’t teach them math or English.
“No, they’re taught that men can have babies and become women and that we should worship the God of government, not the God who created us.
“That is socialism.
“I’m Rick Scott, our schools should never undermine our values.
“I approve this message.”
I have never met this teacher who dumps their lesson plan for an indoctrination into atheism and a lesson on medical procedures to transplant a working female uterus into a male.
I never met this teacher and neither has Rick Scott because this teacher doesn’t exist.
Messages such as these sow hate and suspicion against teachers. It poisons those with little education against public schools. His message is especially insidious when targeted to Hispanics in the Spanish language. Many in this group have a distrust in government and weak relations with their schools and teachers due to language barriers. Misleading and poisoning Hispanics against public schools where their kids can get a good free education is harmful.
Scott is purposefully trying to flame hate against teachers and should be ashamed. He should spend more time praying for wisdom from the God who created us.(to read more, buy a paper)

From Chairman of the Bored, by Gene Siudut

► … I don’t know of a word that means angry and heartbroken at the same time, but that’s what I felt. I was angry with the parents for having the kids in the elements and angry at anyone who felt shipping these people to freezing temperatures as a political tool can call themselves Americans.
Children being used to tug heartstrings is not new, nor is it foreign to Tampa. Just a drive down to the Target on Dale Mabry, just north of Kennedy, will show a father, mother and a few kids braving the heat all year round asking for change. Anytime I drive by there I have the urge to get out of the car and beat the living hell out of that father, but how much more crap do his kids have to witness.
Somehow, to my knowledge, nothing is done about this obvious child abuse. I’ve lamented about that specific family in this column and called the City about it, yet nothing seems to be done.
There did appear to be one big difference between the homeless in Chicago and Tampa. Chicago’s seemed mostly Latino while Tampa’s seem mostly white. Maybe white homeless people have better curb appeal than minorities and are allowed to stick around longer. …(to read more, buy a paper)

From The Reasonable Standard, by Matt Newton

► Just over a month has passed since the Florida Supreme Court heard oral arguments concerning the suspension of Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell.
The Governor summarily suspended Ms. Worrell on August 9, 2023, for allegedly “neglecting her duty to faithfully prosecute crime in her jurisdiction.” The governor conveniently executed the move at a time when his presidential campaign’s poll numbers could use a bump.
The suspension’s effects appear to be cascading. Based on the tone and tenor of the Dec. 6, 2023, oral arguments, this selfish political stunt may now be unraveling the entire institution of hometown democracy.
The case relates to a political matter, and who should address it: the State Senate or the Orange County’s voters. … (to read more, buy a paper)

From In Context, by Doris Weatherford

► … It’s also telling that Trump has not led any effort to provide legal aid to the literally thousands of his supporters who have been convicted by juries of their peers of crimes related to the 2021 attack on the Capitol. I see that three Polk County men were charged just this week, but neither Trump nor the Florida Republican Party do anything to help these victims of their demagoguery. Presumably they pay their own legal bills, and their families must survive without the men duped by Trump. And formerly proud boys are shocked that prisons are not the luxury resorts they once believed them to be.
The threat of intimidating mobs was very much on the minds of the men who wrote the Constitution because they had seen it – and a few had encouraged it. What we call the Boston Tea Party was in fact a mob, a bunch of men dressed up as Mohawks who frightened off British tax collectors. The tax was legitimate, as Britain had a right to expect its American colonizers to help pay the costs of its recent victory in the French and Indian War, but like Trumpsters, these folks did not want to pay taxes. …(to read more, buy a paper)

From Silhouettes, an interview with Dontrel Hall, by Tiffany Razzano

► Hillsborough County educator and YMCA staff member Dontrel Hall has a new title to add to his belt: children’s author.
The Pompano Beach native was a student-athlete growing up, which offered him many opportunities, and ever since college, he hoped to one day write a children’s book series to help inspire and motivate other young athletes.
His parents were both “very active” and supportive of his goals. Hall grew up playing football and his mother, a nurse, always stressed that academics came first. Meanwhile, his father, an entrepreneur who owned janitorial and detailing companies, was “a huge football fan” who encouraged his son’s athleticism. …(to read more, buy a paper)

From Líneas de la memoria, por Gabriel Cartaya

► El 15 de enero de 1945 murió en La Habana Dulce María Borrero, a los 61 años de edad. Aunque es una figura imprescindible en la historia de la literatura y pedagogía cubanas, apenas aparece su nombre –y mucho menos sus propuestas pedagógicas– en el ámbito escolar de las últimas décadas, cuando su utilidad formativa debería no solo aprovecharse en su país, sino desbordar sus fronteras.
Probablemente, hacia las décadas de 1970-80 los maestros cubanos escucharon más el nombre de Nadezhda Krúpskaya –ajena a la tradición pedagógica de la Isla– que el de Dulce María Borrero, cuando ella ocupó un lugar muy visible en el ámbito pedagógico de la primera mitad del siglo XX de su país. La también poetisa y bibliógrafa nació en La Habana el 10 de septiembre de 1883, en una familia de reconocidos intelectuales, como lo fue su padre Esteban Borrero (médico, pedagogo, poeta, narrador) y su hermana Juana Borrero (poetisa modernista y pintora).
Dulce María, al nacer en un ambiente en que sus padres simpatizaban con la independencia de la Isla, tuvo que salir al exilio muy temprano y a los 12 años está viviendo en Cayo Hueso, donde se integra a la efervescencia patriótica que caracterizó a sus compatriotas emigrados. Allí, en revistas cubanas dio a conocer sus primeros versos. Más tarde se trasladó con la familia a Costa Rica, donde vivió hasta el regreso a La Habana en 1899, recién concluida la Guerra de Independencia. … (to read more, buy a paper)

From Briznas culturales, por Leonardo Venta

► La ópera Carmen es una de las obras más célebres del compositor francés Georges Bizet. Se trata de una pieza tragicómica en cuatro actos con libreto de Ludovic Halévy y Henri Meilhac, basada en un relato de Prosper Mérimée. Se estrenó sin gran éxito en la Opéra-Cómique de París el 3 de marzo de 1875.
Entre una fábrica de tabacos y un cuerpo de guardia del Regimiento de Alcalá, se inicia la trama. Don José, un apuesto cabo, es embrujado por la hermosura de Carmen, quien hace su entrada triunfal con la interpretación de la célebre habanera, para luego retirarse bajo el acoso de extasiadas miradas.
La atmósfera se torna convulsa. Un grupo de agitadas cigarreras le informan al teniente Zúñiga que Carmen acaba de herir a otra cigarrera en la cara. Don José, obedeciendo órdenes de Zúñiga, la detiene, pero ella le promete que si la deja en libertad se reunirá con él en la Taberna de Lilas Pastia.
Al comenzar el segundo acto, en la susodicha taberna, Carmen se entera de que don José, quien había estado preso por haberle viabilizado la fuga, ya disfruta su libertad. El torero Escamillo, en su primera entrada en escena, queda infatuado con la belleza de Carmen; mientras, cumpliendo a su cita, don José llega a la taberna. Allí, en un diálogo aparte, la cigarrera le propone a don José que se vaya a vivir con ella a la sierra. …(to read more, buy a paper)