This morning at 7:30 in front of WMNF: 1210 E. Martin Luther King Blvd., Tampa

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Florida’s church day care voucher program, aka pre-K, aka UPK, is designed in such a way that it will be impossible for public schools to participate. It looks like it may also be nearly impossible for kids to participate.

The state wants parents and schools interested in participating in Florida’s new universal pre-kindergarten program to start signing up for the program Tuesday, but it’s unclear where they should go to sign up for classes that startin August.

Private preschool owners don’t know whether they will qualify for the program or how much money they will get from the state if they do. Public school districts are expected to have a tough time meeting certification requirements.

State officials are advising people interested in state-funded pre-K programs to watch state websites for information. But the website, www.upkflorida.org, offers no information on how to sign up.

”We’ve been getting many calls from parents asking where to sign up,” said Susan Morris, early-childhood supervisor for Hillsborough County schools. “At this time, we’re telling people we just don’t have enough information.”

Gladys Wilson, deputy director of the state Office of Early Learning, said there’s an online application planned but no details are available.
……

Florida voters mandated the program in 2002 by a constitutional amendment that said a high-quality pre-K program must be available to any 4-year-old whose family wants it by August 2005.

Officials say they will need public, private and faith-based programs and even homes to accommodate everyone because public schools don’t have enough space.

But there may not be many public schools participating. To be eligible, a district must meet class-size reduction requirements for regular school, another constitutional provision voters approved in 2002. School districts also must certify that they will continue meeting the requirements and need no additional capital outlay funds through the 2010-2011 school year.

”It is anticipated that very few school districts, if any, will be able to certify to the requirements,” Shan Goff, director for the state Office of Early Learning, wrote in an e-mail Friday.

SUMMER PROGRAM

Under the new state law, school districts are required to provide a 300-hour summer preschool program with certified teachers beginning next year. That’s separate from the 540-hour school year program starting this year.

Kris Giordano, executive director of the Early Learning Coalition of Polk County, said she wished public schools would have a role in the year-round program.

”They’re mandated to do the summer program, which is almost impossible,” she said. “And they’re not being allowed to do the year-round program. And that’s too bad.”

Profiles of qualified providers are expected to be posted on a state website. State payments would go to providers as a voucher.

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President Governor Bush remains adamant that lowering taxes leads to increased job growth, despite real numbers that continue to prove him wrong. President Governor Bush pushed tax breaks and watched as jobs were lost during his first term, the worst record for a President since the great depression. job growth in the state fell to the lowest level since 1970.

State employment figures show that Gov. Jeb Bush has presided over the lowest job-creation rate of any governor since 1970, appearing to call into question his claim that his tax cuts have created new jobs.

Bush, who is proposing $285 million in new tax cuts this year, has for years attributed the state’s creation of new jobs during his tenure to his tax cuts, which have totaled $11 billion since he took office.

“This notion has been proven,” he said during a Jan. 12 news conference. “It has been proven in our state by the economic data that we see.”

But an analysis of statistics from Bush’s Agency for Workforce Innovation shows that every previous governor going back as far as Reubin Askew enjoyed higher job-growth rates than Bush — even though those earlier governors all raised taxes.

Lawton Chiles, Bush’s Democratic predecessor, had an average job growth rate of 2.7 percent over his eight years, compared with Bush’s 1.9 percent over six years.

Republican Bob Martinez, Bush’s former boss, had a 4 percent average over four years.

Democrat Bob Graham had a 4.7 percent average, and Democrat Askew enjoyed a 5.1 percent average.

With the exception of Martinez, each of the previous governors, like Bush, suffered through a recession, with Askew taking the worst hit during the mid-’70s oil crisis that devastated the state’s tourism industry.

Moreover, each of the four previous governors had significant tax increases during his term.

Chiles raised the intangibles tax on investment portfolios.

Martinez raised the intangibles tax, the sales tax and the real estate transaction tax.

Graham, while he lowered the property tax for homeowners, raised the sales tax a full penny, as did Martinez.

And Askew, who had the highest growth rate of all the recent governors, also had the largest new tax — a corporate income tax, which he pushed during his campaign as a ballot question.

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I finally got a chance to catch the WMNF newscast from this past Friday. Mitch Perry did a story on a press conference at the station held by the Straight Talk people, and he included part of a short interview with me.

In response to one of his questions, I mentioned that I was still waiting for a written response to a written grievance which I had filed with the station in November in response to my firing.

Mitch, being a fair minded reporter, asked station manager Vicki Santa to respond. Her response boiled down to an assertion that she had tried to schedule a meeting with me, because that’s the way she handles grievances.

Well, that may be the way she handles things, or she may just be making this shit up as she goes (much more likely, in my opinion), but the weakly worded WMNF grievance policy specifically says that a written grievance should be answered with a written response.

In other words, she is completely ignoring the very rules which she is using to fire Connie Burton and myself and perhaps others in the future.

See, when things are put in writing, misunderstandings are much less likely. Memories of meetings with verbal exchanges can and do vary, with different participants often recalling completely different meanings and nuances, or worse.

Still, many people have asked my why I didn’t meet with her and why I didn’t reapply to host my show. (The reappilication process occurs every two years. Every program host must reapply. This was happening about the same time I was fired.)

Vicki put severe restrictions on her proposed meeting time. I was unable to schedule a meeting with her and a volunteer rep who would act as a neutral observer - 2 volunteer committee members both said that they could not take time off work to meet at the times that Vicki indicated were available. I would have had to take time off to meet too, in order to accommodate her extremely limited availability.

I entertained and subsequently rejected the expensive notion of hiring a lawyer to accompany me, mostly due to financial considerations.

The grievance procedure calls for a written response from her - not a meeting. I was following the grievance procedure. She was attempting an end run. I did not trust her motives, and I remain highly suspicious of MNF staff today, especially with the current Straight Talk situation. I was not willing to meet with her without at least a neutral observer to document what was said.

Why should I have bothered to re-apply for my show? Program director Randy Wynne had already let it be publicly known that he had lost all confidence in me as a programmer, and he is the sole decision maker. He was certainly not about to put me back on the air. He is under no obligation to justify his whimsical programming decisions, and, indeed, he rarely, if ever, does bother to justify any of his programming related decisions. I am still suspended - an open ended suspension that has never been lifted. Does this punishment really fit my crime? I seriously doubt it, but I don’t know, since official charges were never indicated in writing.

Bottom line - Vicki wanted me out, so did Randy - I don’t have the time or resources or energy to fight paid staff over a volunteer position - it was obvious that my “career” at MNF was over - a meeting would have accomplished nothing.

Vicki knows all of this, and this is the way she handles problems - she delays to the point of frustration and hopes that the aggrieved parties will simply give up. (This is not the first time that Vicki handled a rather serious situation involving me by simply delaying until I gave up. The last incident involved a paid staff member destroying station property - property paid for through donations and volunteer labor.) Again, the longer she delays, the more it costs me, a volunteer, time and money, both of which are in rather short supply right now.

Why didn’t Vicki give me a written response when it became apparent that we would not be able to meet? Why was I left to glean whatever information I could from news reports rather than receive a written summary of charges from Randy? Why did Randy’s story keep changing as I brought up new points? (Perhaps the charges were never put in writing specifically so that Randy could continue to change his story?) At first, it was just one song, then it morphed into a problem with my entire show. At one point, he even mentioned “the n word” (listen to the linked newscast story from November) - what did that have to do with anything?

The ball was left in Vicki’s court. She is the one who did not follow up, and her lack of action speaks volumes: by not even providing me with the simple courtesy of a letter, she says that I am not important enough to bother with. If I had unlimited resources, I would still be fighting her on this, and I would eventually prevail, since my firing was obviously arbitrary and Randy’s enforcement of the FCC guidelines remains spotty at best, especially as concerns his own morning show. (Randy has aired expletives on at least 3 separate occasions in the past few weeks. Does Randy seek himself out and inform himself that he aired an obscenity and then decide whether or not to suspend himself?)

Reading Connie’s grievance, I was struck by the parallels in our cases. Both longtime programmers. Both doing the same kind of politically controversial show that we’ve always done. Both fired verbally for vague reasons. Neither of us was ever counseled ahead of time - no warnings or other indications that we were skating on thin ice. Connie has been butting heads with management for years. I have had a vague sense that Vicki has had a personal problem with me for at least a year - nothing concrete, just little indications that she doesn’t trust or like me.

So, we face a situation where the MNF staff enforces rules against programmers who they don’t like and ignores those same rules whenever it is convenient for them to do so. A lawyer would have a field day with this arbitrary and capricious use of power.

In the meantime, MorningWood is gone - another programmer was awarded that time slot, and I have essentially stopped pursuing my case due to the frustration of trying to wring a response out of Vicki as well as a realistic observation that even if I were to “win” this fight that I would remain a programmer without a show - a Pyrrhic victory at best.

More about my suspension from WMNF

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Dick Cheney, Dressing Down

At yesterday’s gathering of world leaders in southern Poland to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the United States was represented by Vice President Cheney. The ceremony at the Nazi death camp was outdoors, so those in attendance, such as French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin, were wearing dark, formal overcoats and dress shoes or boots. Because it was cold and snowing, they were also wearing gentlemen’s hats. In short, they were dressed for the inclement weather as well as the sobriety and dignity of the event.

The vice president, however, was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower.

Cheney stood out in a sea of black-coated world leaders because he was wearing an olive drab parka with a fur-trimmed hood. It is embroidered with his name. It reminded one of the way in which children’s clothes are inscribed with their names before they are sent away to camp. And indeed, the vice president looked like an awkward boy amid the well-dressed adults.

Like other attendees, the vice president was wearing a hat. But it was not a fedora or a Stetson or a fur hat or any kind of hat that one might wear to a memorial service as the representative of one’s country. Instead, it was a knit ski cap, embroidered with the words “Staff 2001.” It was the kind of hat a conventioneer might find in a goodie bag.

It is also worth mentioning that Cheney was wearing hiking boots — thick, brown, lace-up ones. Did he think he was going to have to hike the 44 miles from Krakow — where he had made remarks earlier in the day — to Auschwitz?

His wife, Lynne, was seated next to him. Her coat has a hood, too, and it is essentially a parka. But it is black and did not appear to be functioning as either a name tag or a billboard. One wonders if at some point the vice president turned to his wife, took in her attire and asked himself why they seemed to be dressed for two entirely different events.

Some might argue that Cheney was the only attendee with the smarts to dress for the cold and snowy weather. But sometimes, out of respect for the occasion, one must endure a little discomfort.

Just last week, in a frigid, snow-dusted Washington, Cheney sat outside through the entire inauguration without so much as a hat and without suffering frostbite. And clearly, Cheney owns a proper overcoat. The world saw it during his swearing-in as vice president. Cheney treated that ceremony with the dignity it deserved — not simply through his demeanor, but also through his attire. Would he have dared to take the oath of office with a ski cap on? People would have justifiably considered that an insult to the office, the day, the country.

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As regular BlogWood readers are well aware, in Florida, we continue to punish people after they’ve paid their debts to society by denying them basic civil rights. Jeb! and his GOP cronies strongly support this unfair practice, so it came as something of a shock to learn that some prominent Republican legislators are considering a referendum to do away with this racist practice.

Two powerful Republican lawmakers are urging Gov. Jeb Bush to restore civil rights to felons who have completed their sentences — and have vowed to support a voter referendum to end Florida’s 137-year-old ban altogether if the governor refuses.

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It seems that Jeb! lied about the costs associated with Florida’s class size amendment. Is he also planning to pull a high speed train maneuver and attempt to overturn the will of the voters? Florida Politics has the stories.

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A cartoon character visiting a farm is apparently too controversial for the corporate overseers at PBS. PBS won’t distribute kids’ show featuring lesbian couple

A number of local public television stations may run an episode of the animated series Postcards From Buster featuring a family headed by a lesbian couple, despite a decision by PBS not to distribute the program.

PBS said its unusual decision to drop the episode was made independently, not because of pressure from the U.S. Department of Education’s new secretary, Margaret Spellings.

Spellings on Tuesday wrote to PBS President Pat Mitchell asking the network to consider removing the department’s logo and returning the public money spent on the episode.

“Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in this episode,” she wrote.

PBS arrived at its decision not to distribute the episode the same day, but not because of the letter, said John Wilson, senior vice president of programming.

PBS member stations are autonomous and may choose which programs to air in their communities, but when PBS supplies a program, it appears in TV guides and schedules and many stations feel compelled to run it, Wilson said.

The series, designed for children ages 6 to 8, shows the animated bunny Buster visiting real children across the United States.

“This is a show about kids learning from other kids,” said Jeanne Hopkins of WGBH-TV in Boston, which produced the program. “We’ve visited kids who are Muslim, Mormon, Eastern Orthodox, Pentecostal, kids rurally, kids in cities, kids whose fathers and mothers are heterosexual, single parent, living with grandparents.”

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Florida is home to more retirees on Social Security than any other state. Our elected representatives are starting to feel some heat regarding their support of W’s plans to destroy the system in favor of privatized accounts. Oh, and they’re whining about it.

Gladys Van Otteren, a West Palm Beach Republican and mother of six, said she was outraged when she got the phone call Thursday and wondered why whoever is paying for the calls is hiding their identity.

“Somebody should do something about this,” she said. “This is going to freak out a lot of older people.”

According to a transcript provided by Shaw’s office, the automated message starts with “Hi” and continues: “I am calling to alert you that your congressman, Clay Shaw, supports privatizing Social Security. This plan would cost taxpayers $2 trillion. It would also decrease future benefits to retirees by 47 percent. The Social Security Trust Fund should be in a lock box, not a Wall Street slot machine. Tell Congressman Shaw that we want real Social Security reform, not a risky Wall Street gamble.”

Sounds about right to me.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall is the place to go for up to the minute updates on who is supporting the President’s plan to thrust the elderly into poverty.

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WMNF says it wants to be more inclusive. The station says it wants more minority voices on the air. Talk is cheap.

Straight Talk, the hour-long talk show hosted by outspoken African-American activist Connie Burton, has been taken off the air by the management at WMNF-FM 88.5, who said it no longer met the mission of the public station.

Station manager Vicki Santa said the show, which aired from 9 to 10 a.m. on Sundays, had aligned itself with the singular viewpoint of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, a St. Petersburg militant group that counts Burton as a member.

Burton, 48, the former president of the Robles Park Tenants’ Association, championed the rights of public housing residents, but became a bitter critic of the Tampa Housing Authority after she was evicted when a son was arrested on drug charges.

Burton’s run as Straight Talk host lasted nine years, ending at WMNF on Monday.

“Somewhere along the way, Connie became part of the Uhuru movement,” said Santa, “and the show became a voice for that movement and no other voices were being heard.”

WMNF’s mission statement on its Web site says it “celebrates local cultural diversity and is committed to equality, peace and social and economic justice.”

Santa said the action to drop Burton’s show also was taken because of a recent board decision barring organizations from controlling programs on WMNF.

“This was not a quick and arbitrary decision,” said WMNF board member Jeanne Holton. “I think these discussions have been going on four or five years.

“The role her show plays for the African-American community is an important one. But I think it is true that our mission was no longer being met.”

Burton said there was no justification for dropping the show. “They considered Straight Talk to be a thorn in their side. It’s been a point of contention with them, based on their core listening group.”

She said she believed her talk show dovetailed with WMNF’s mission. “That’s what our show is about - issues that concern poor, working class people.”

The Uhurus denounced the dropping of Straight Talk as “unjust” and called it an attempt “to stifle the African-American voice” in a press release. The Uhurus will have a press conference at the station on Friday at 10 a.m. and intend to picket WMNF on Monday, the release said.

Burton has seven days to appeal the decision to remove her as volunteer host, Santa said, and in the meantime station officials are considering how best to fill the Straight Talk spot.

Burton has lived for most of two decades in public housing at Robles Park.

In 1996, she was accused of shoving a Tampa police officer and trying to incite a riot after she co-hosted a party with a convicted drug dealer. As a result of pretrial intervention, the criminal charges were dropped when Burton agreed to work to ease tensions between public housing residents and police.

In 1999, the Housing Authority used the so-called “one-strike law” to begin eviction proceedings against Burton after a son was arrested for marijuana possession. A jury upheld an eviction order, but a judge threw the decision out, and a new trial is pending.

In recent years, Burton used the WMNF airwaves to fire back at police and government officials. She accused former Tampa police Chief Bennie Holder, an African-American, of being insensitive to the needs of blacks. She called Housing Authority boss Jerome Ryans, another African-American, a “thin-skinned parasite.”

On a recent Straight Talk program, one of Burton’s guests criticized police, saying, “The Africa n community needs to understand that the pigs are not their friends.” Burton issued a denunciation of those who “lick the boots of white power.”

That kind of talk brought mail to WMNF news director Rob Lorie, saying Burton’s show was dragging the station “down into the mud.”

But Santa said dropping Burton’s show doesn’t mean WMNF will no longer air the views of Burton or the Uhurus.

“It’s not about silencing,” she said. “It’s about finding a different way to bring together as many voices as possible.”

Yeah - it’s about finding some token Uncle Tom types who don’t make waves. It’s about staying within the comfort zone of the white folks who run the station, because despite all their lip service about being progressive and inclusive, all programming is filtered by two aging white males.

Connie has seven days to file an appeal. The appeal goes to Vicki and then the board - the very people who just fired her. She’ll be lucky if Vicki even bothers to answer. I’m still waiting for an answer to the written grievance which I filed in November. Management at WMNF is encouraged, but not required to answer such filings, which essentially makes the whole process worthless.

The aging white hippies who consider themselves the station base and who claim to have an open mind are hypocritical punks. They can’t stand uppity niggers and they get upset when rap or hip hop goes out over “their” airwaves.

The show that got me into trouble included lots of “urban” music (much of the show was a tribute to Ol’ Dirty Bastard, who had just died), and whenever I played a little rap, complaints from the conservative old farts would start rolling in.

Of course, Vicki will say that Connie’s situation has absolutely nothing to do with mine. Bullshit. Lets do a little compare and contrast.

Both Connie and I were long time station volunteers fired with no warning whatsoever for supposedly violating station policy. Neither of us was reprimanded or counseled ahead of time, nor were we given any but the very vaguest of guidelines for planning and producing a show. For some time, both of us had been producing, with no repercussions, the same kinds of shows that got us into trouble and then we were suddenly let go.

At WMNF, the rules are enforced arbitrarily. One need look no further than program director Randy Wynne’s own morning show (yes, Randy, the one man who decides who gets to host music shows, decided that he was the only programmer capable of doing the Wednesday morning show, despite a backlog of competent volunteer folkies who are just chomping at the bit to get on the air - but that conflict of interest is for another conversation.).

Anyway, Randy has been airing banned FCC words quite often lately. According to his own newly revised (after they fired me) policy, he should no longer be on the air, since his sloppy programming is quite obviously putting the station’s license at risk. Yet he remains, while other programmers are punished, or not, according to his whim.

The paid staff who manage the station are entrenched and powerful. They run roughshod over the volunteers who supposedly make up the heart of community radio. People like Connie and myself do not have the financial resources to hire a labor lawyer, and I don’t have the time or the energy to engage in a fight to regain a volunteer position.

But Connie’s a fighter, and she has Uhuru on her side, so she probably has a better chance of being reinstated than myself, but that will only happen if the station is shamed into doing the right thing. I’m not holding my breath.

In the meantime, talk has started anew about forming a union for volunteers. Not surprisingly, the hypocrites who are paid to run the station and who claim to be pro union and pro labor are adamantly opposed to a change that would result in volunteers being treated fairly.

A member of the WMNF community sent this via email yesterday:

To elaborate, from what I read and heard, Straight Talk was cancelled
because it violated the mission statement of WMNF and violated a
recently created policy that says something like “WMNF gives shows to
individuals not organizations or groups.”

We’ve held at least one meeting recently on the mission statement. I
was at that meeting from beginning to end. The message I took away from
that meeting is that it was to begin a conversation about whether we
needed to look at what the mission means and how we evaluate whether a
particular show meets that mission. Another message that came from the
meeting was whether we should change our mission to meet changing
community needs. WMNF management stated very clearly that this was the
beginning of a conversation and no conclusions would be reached. So,
when was the conclusion reached? What happened to community dialogue
and the creation of a process that we all feel that we can live with?

There is no clear evidence that I have seen or heard that Straight Talk
violated the mission of the station as I understand the mission. How
will I know as a programmer whether I might be in violation of the
mission statement unless I clearly understand what the standards of
evaluation are and the process by which it is evaluated?

Recently we had program changes. Based on whatever standards
established by the News and Public Affairs Director, Straight Talk was
re-issued its same one hour time slot to produce the show weekly by the
same producer. Did the application for Straight Talk say it was an
application for a group? Since this is a new standard, were they told
about this and given an opportunity to adjust their approach to the show
and re-issue an application?

Is this policy going to be strictly applied to all shows? Larry Lisk
and the Suncoast Blues Society, Greenwaves and the Sierra Club, Sunday
Forum and the Democratic Party, Mike Eisenstadt and his focus one
section of the Tampa Jewish community, Radio Nation and their alignment
with a narrow political wing of the Democratic Party, etc. Under this
new policy are collectives of any kind exempt from applying for shows
like one permutation of the women’s show used to be?

I am most concerned about procedures and policies being followed
randomly and disciplinary actions not being issued even handedly. If
over time, a programmer has been given due process about any violations,
given guidance on how to correct that problem, given an opportunity to
make changes, and they still don’t change, then they should lose their
show. However, haven’t we seen recently, over the word “fuck,” that
some programmers are given suspension, other infractions are ignored
unless reported by someone outside the community, and other programmers
are fired?

And, please let’s deal with the difficult topics of racism, sexism, and
classism at the station. It is easy to understand while looking forward
in preparation for a process that we are all well meaning people who see
things for their inherent value rather than what is on the surface.
But, let’s look backwards a minute to evaluate where we are today.
Where are the radical, let alone radical black voices that used to be on
the WMNF airwaves? Why must people of color continue to fight for the
same time slots late at night and on weekends? Isn’t the statement, “we
want more people like us” another way to institutionalize those isms?

WMNF has become a mainstream, wishy washy, non-controversial outlet for a narrow bunch of aging, financially secure and increasingly conservative types who like to consider themselves revolutionary, but whose philosophy and lifestyle is straight establishment.

For all their talk about community, they really don’t want to share “their” station with anyone who has the temerity to think and act for themselves, and by arbitrarily purging controversial programmers from the station, they further erode the eclectic spirit and energy that WMNF was founded with and claims to identify with even today.

It’s time for a change.

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