Karen Cyphers - page 14

SETTING THE TONE On the twelfth anniversary of the attacks on 9/11, the Atlantic Wire republished a letter written by Frank Culbertson, the “only American not on Earth on Sept. 11.”  Profoundly moving. Florida could see a budget surplus for the coming fiscal year to the tune of about $845 million. Member project feeding frenzy? Probably not, considering Gov. Scott has promised to return much of the surplus to taxpayers. Surplus or not, executive agencies will once again undergo budget…

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There’s a famous book titled “How to Lie with Statistics” — but according to a breaking study, lying is only half of it: partisans, it turns out (and particularly those who are good at math!) interpret numbers as they want them to be, not as they really are. An experiment conducted by researchers from Yale, Ohio State, Cornell, and Oregon, finds that people who are otherwise good at math are far more likely to lose their reasoning abilities when calculating…

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UM, UF and FSU weren’t the only Florida colleges to earn recognition by US News & World Report this week: New College of Florida, the 800-student honors college in Sarasota, was ranked as #5 in the nation among schools of its kind. This made New College of Florida the state’s most highly ranked college — albeit in a limited category — and the nation’s top public liberal arts college that is not affiliated with the military.   Preceding New College on…

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Here is a case where lawmakers got it right, and then, just as the measure is starting to work, a new law rips out its teeth.  Kinda, literally. Florida’s Prepaid Dental Health Plan (PDHP) became operational in Miami-Dade County in 2009, and since that time, scores for annual dental visits by low-income children improved each year. PDHP plans significantly outperformed fee-for-service plans for preventive dental services, and based on their successes, prepaid dental plans were expanded from the Miami-Dade pilot…

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Florida Trend, in a piece published today, highlighted Florida’s millionaire lawmakers, how they earned their bucks, and their change in net worth from 2011. In all, 49 lawmakers are worth greater than $1 million, representing about one out of every three in office.  Among them, 16 are in the Senate, and 33 are in the House. The top five millionaire lawmakers are Senate President Don Gaetz, worth $26.2 million, up 5.4% from 2011; Sen. Wilton Simpson, worth $15.6 million, up…

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You’re reading it here first: Joe Clements could well be Florida’s Nate Silver, a political data guru with the creativity to make it matter. While you may not know him by name, if you work in Florida campaigns you’ve probably been touched by his data — or certainly will be. Joe runs Decision Media Works, a data visualization group that asks (and receives) interesting questions and maps out answers in a way that few others seek to do. Like, what…

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On Thursday, Florida’s prestigious Gubernatorial Fellows Program welcomed ten students into its ninth class.  The program, established in 2004 by Governor Bush, places Fellows in front-line positions within the Executive Office of the Governor and executive agencies with the goal to cultivate future leaders through immersion in the political process. The non-partisan program is overseen by a Board of public and private sector leaders including Florida Chamber of Commerce EVP David Hart, former Secretary of State Glenda Hood, and former…

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