Today's Miami Herald includes a virtual perp walk: photos of Dade Medical College's Ernesto Perez, recently arrested and charged with illegal campaign contributions, with some of the region's most influential politicians who gladly took his money.
For years, Eye On Miami has angrily vented against the political feeding frenzy surrounding for-profit education; the concentration of wealth under the conservative call to privatize any public service that can't be nailed down.
Red state Florida has been a national model for privatization of jails, not just education, and government infrastructure. The results have been the same: abuse trailing a litany of warning signs like a bridal couple's car dangling tin cans attached by a string.
In other words, anyone with an ounce of common sense could see the corruption spewing from for-profit education a mile away; how fiefdoms created by "entrepreneurs" exploiting the public interest would become a protection racket for incumbent politicians.
We have them in spades in Miami-Dade County. Dade Medical College is the tip of an iceberg made of the charter school movement.
The right-wing surge for charter schools -- "education choices" -- has been stimulated by the Tea Party although in Florida it has never been actually established who the Tea Party is beyond a disaffected fringe given legitimacy by the conservative message machine.
Moreover, although dreaded "unions" have been used as organizing tools for conservatives, what failures like Dade Medical College really reveal is the political use of privatization as a funnel or spigot for campaign contributions. Period.
Voters should push back against elected officials who are supported by scam artists proliferating around the privatization of government services. Unions should answer the call, too, for reform of rules that protect bad teachers. This is a signal weakness of Democrats.
Scam artists should not have the final say in South Florida, viewed by federal law enforcement officials as the fraud capital of the United States. They have been empowered by radical extremists within the GOP.
It is time for voters to take back our region and take back our state.
For years, Eye On Miami has angrily vented against the political feeding frenzy surrounding for-profit education; the concentration of wealth under the conservative call to privatize any public service that can't be nailed down.
Red state Florida has been a national model for privatization of jails, not just education, and government infrastructure. The results have been the same: abuse trailing a litany of warning signs like a bridal couple's car dangling tin cans attached by a string.
In other words, anyone with an ounce of common sense could see the corruption spewing from for-profit education a mile away; how fiefdoms created by "entrepreneurs" exploiting the public interest would become a protection racket for incumbent politicians.
We have them in spades in Miami-Dade County. Dade Medical College is the tip of an iceberg made of the charter school movement.
The right-wing surge for charter schools -- "education choices" -- has been stimulated by the Tea Party although in Florida it has never been actually established who the Tea Party is beyond a disaffected fringe given legitimacy by the conservative message machine.
Moreover, although dreaded "unions" have been used as organizing tools for conservatives, what failures like Dade Medical College really reveal is the political use of privatization as a funnel or spigot for campaign contributions. Period.
Voters should push back against elected officials who are supported by scam artists proliferating around the privatization of government services. Unions should answer the call, too, for reform of rules that protect bad teachers. This is a signal weakness of Democrats.
Scam artists should not have the final say in South Florida, viewed by federal law enforcement officials as the fraud capital of the United States. They have been empowered by radical extremists within the GOP.
It is time for voters to take back our region and take back our state.
10 comments:
Perez gave to Democrats on the national level 2010-2014. The one interesting Republican he gave to nationally was Eric Cantor which speaks to killing any Democratic reforms that were to come up in the House. He did give to Republicans on the state level 2010-2014. So clearly it was the party in power and the party that could stop the gravy train.
The FBI has got to get involved in this or we have lost all responsibility of bringing justice to taxpayers and "students" who were used as "patients" similar to the many Medicare scams run in South Florida.
The RICO Act should be applied to these corrupt organizations. They create a perceived problem and then they corruptly try to fix the problem. That is the definition.
Valuable tax dollars were taken from not for profit schools and given to the for profits and now it's blowing up. The feds have to get involved everyone in Florida was getting paid by all of these other fake schools calling themselves colleges and universities.
This is what you get when Government is "run like a business". The failure of "higher authority" to investigate is also a result of "run like a business".
Anybody think after the proliferation of surveillance related agency's post 9/11, that there is time to worry about good governance by these same agencies, well that ship does not need to sail, because it never docked.
Because if good governance was a issue, the national conversation would have been a loot different the last two decades.
The conclusion is pay state and local officials to play.
For example: Jonathan Hage sat on Gov. Rick Scott's education transition team. He and his company, Charter Schools USA, have given more than $100,000 to Scott's Let's Get To Work fund and the state Republican Party.
Public funding of independent, for profit and charter schools was pushed on the tax payer by GOP to aid right wing ideologues increase influence over a religious constituency. They wanted to brainwash a new generation of voters similar to the one that voted George W Bush in office twice.
There are thousands of scams of similar magnitude going on in Miami right now. The town has been overtaken openly and proudly by sociopaths.
On the original nursing school licensing application in 2009 there may have been a clue when they said the would be affiliated with Palm Garden Manner in Hialeah.
I suppose just because Manner sounds like Manor they got a pass. Do any pharmaceuticals sound alike?
Page 19 and 191.
ftp://ftppub.doh.state.fl.us/pub/bon/1704/70452/ORIGINAL%20APPLICATION.pdf
I still think we ought to be concerned about the students...
We, as taxpayers get screwed, BUT in end the people who got hurt the most were the students who thought they were doing okay. They are soooooo damaged by this scandal. They will be in debt, gave up valuable energy and time, and will be totally unready for a career or even further training. They are not gonna be offered additional educational loans with previous student loans already spent and not paid off. I bet many of the students defaulting as we mumble about it.
Who is going to help them?
The greater tragedy than the sleaze and corruption of such a low class character as Mr. Perez, is that the absence of education and position
are not the prerequisite criteria for dishonesty. Liars and thieves abound in our democratic system, which is the price we pay for openness. Notable recent purveyors: Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, Ms. Fiorina. But more states need the likes of New York's Attorney General Schneiderman, or the US Attorney for the Southern District, Cyrus Vance, who take on dishonesty, whether in the hallowed halls of government, or in the self-serving corporate board rooms of America.
The intentional theft and fraud perpetrated by Perez and his ilk, through "for profit" schools, milks Federal funds available to those seeking a higher education and a better life for themselves and their families. The fact that the nursing program at Dade Medical College was placed on "probation" by the State of Florida due to the high fail rate of its Nursing graduates on licensing exams, speaks volumes about the incompetence and hollow value of far too many degrees issued by "for profit" institutions. LET THE INVESTIGATIIONS BEGIN!
Ted Baker
Miami
We haven't heard enough from Miami Dade County Sup . What part did the public school system play in farming out clueless students to the For Profit colleges. They often dangle "scholarships" to CAP advisors. Do the CAP advisors know about this? I suspect some do and some have no idea.
Post a Comment