DeathSantis be not proud

By BRUCE LOWITT

With a ballooning state budget, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he expects the cost of educating the state’s schoolchildren “to drop by at least fifty percent in the coming years, saving millions of dollars, maybe even billions, once our ‘No Needles’ plan takes effect.”

Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the state’s surgeon general, announced at a news conference Wednesday that Florida will become the first state to end all vaccine mandates, including for schoolchildren. “Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?” he asked, rhetorically. “Your body is a gift from God and it is my intention to deliver that body back to God as quickly as possible.”

Among the governor’s plans for the potentially available millions or billions in savings are: the reopening and expanding of Alligator Alcatraz, the paving over of the rest of the Everglades to make room for the creation of more Republican-centric communities like The Villages, the conversion of abandoned airfields throughout the state into migrant detention centers, and the establishment of DeSantis College at Mar-a-Lago to issue degrees in custodial and stoop labor, and housekeeping.

According to the Florida Department of Education, there now are 2.9-million children enrolled in public school grades pre-K through 12, plus an additional 400,000 in private and religious schools. Based on studies conducted by former Rep. Matt Gaetz and DeSantis’ wife, Casey, “thirty percent of the kids in kindergarten today won’t be around by the time they’re due to start fourth grade,” the governor said, “and another forty percent will never make it to high school.”

“I’m not saying they’ll all be, um … uh … demised,” DeSantis continued, struggling for a less macabre synonym. “I mean, a lot them won’t be in our school system because they’ll be in – what do they call it? – hospice. And from what I’m hearing, fewer people with schoolchildren will want to stay here or move here, which is fine with me. They probably want to come here now because the there’s no state income tax, but that’s about to go bye-bye when the legislature passes my ‘Make-a-Buck, Pay-a-Buck’ bill.”

The state’s Health Department website currently mandates vaccinations for measles-mumps-rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis B, Diphtheria, tetanus, polio, and other diseases. “Those mandates,” Ladapo said, “are immoral and amount to slavery. We’re eliminating anything referring to slavery in our libraries and history books. We must eliminate it in our schools and hospitals and doctors’ offices and everywhere else, too.”

Meanwhile, governors Gavin Newsom (California), Tina Kotek (Oregon), and Bob Ferguson (Washington) said they have created an alliance to safeguard health policies from politics – and in response to the statements by DeSantis and Ladapo, the three governors have mandated that “anyone under the age of 19 coming to our states from Florida will be vaccinated at our borders to save them from the scourge of Sunshine State Stupidity, and immediately deported to CECOT.”