I have always hated commercials on TV. Why you ask? Well, for one reason is that they are not honest. Does that Subway sandwich you buy really look like the one you see on TV? Does that Big Mac or Quarter Pounder resemble anything you see in the commercial? If you are looking for the truth a TV commercial is not going to be the place to find it. Now that the campaign season is upon us we get to see more lies. This time of year is the time to watch a lot of the Disney Channel or Netflix.

I do not watch a lot of Network Television because of the quality of the programs and because of the commercials. During an election the commercials get even worse. The other night my wife wanted to watch Jeopardy so we turned to that channel and the first two things I see back to back is a commercial of a bunch of actors claiming to be Teachers, Firefighters and Business owners thanking DeSantis for all he has done. Then the very next commercial was one paid for by some concerned citizens group just trying to destroy Charlie Crist who is DeSantis’s opponent. Neither was anywhere near the truth just like that Subway commercial. I will admit that I don’t watch Crist’s voting record as closely as I should but I have watched DeSantis very closely because he makes sure that he dominates the news and the airways.

In DeSantis’s commercial we see all these paid actors acting like workers thanking DeSantis for all the great work that he has done. I live in Florida so I have witnessed what DeSantis has done first hand. My wife was a teacher in Florida until last year so I have witnessed the impact that DeSantis has had an education. I really do not think that there are many teachers that are actually thanking DeSantis for the job that he has done. Just a couple of weeks ago I wrote why in hell would a person want to be a teacher in Florida? I did not receive a single positive comment back on how good the education system was here. Not one. The teachers are underpaid and to say underappreciated would be an understatement. At times they are downright demonized. Here is one of the most important jobs for the future of our country and it is being decimated by political racism and bigotry. I swear that DeSantis only wants children to believe what he wants them to believe. That is not education. That is not encouraging children to think and that is not encouraging children to search for the truth. Some may actually call it indoctrination.

In the DeSantis commercial I saw an actor playing a nurse thanking him for all the work he has done. I guess there are probably some nurses that support him but I will tell you from my experience the lack of leadership he showed during covid has been what I would call dereliction of duty. During the middle of the covid peak I thought I was having a heart attack. My wife drove me to the hospital that is only a couple of miles away but the hospital was so busy I sat for three hour in the waiting room with chest pains. Because of Covid she could not sit with me she had to wait outside. After three hours I was finally put on a gurney and I then laid on that gurney in the hallway for another three hours because they didn’t have an exam room in the ER because they were all full. All they did for me at that point was put a nitro pill under my tongue. I finally was put in an exam room and they started checking me out and thought I should be admitted but there were not rooms available at the hospital so there I sat until a room opened up. I wasn’t having a heart attack but because the hospital was so busy and it was so hard to get tests done it took them 5 days to figure out what was wrong with me and when they did they did surgery right away. I had a perforated gallbladder that was gang green by the time they actually figured out what was wrong. You can never tell me that covid was not bad in Florida. I am sure more people died from covid than has been reported but I am also sure that people died from other ailments because the hospitals were stretched beyond their limits. I could have died. By the way, doctor offices still require mask because Covid is not over yet.

DeSantis brags that he kept schools open. I am sorry to tell you this but the schools in the beginning got very little guidance or help from our Governor. Lee Country, where my wife taught, took the bull by the horns and set up virtual classrooms and distributed Chrome books for children that needed them. We set up an office here at home so my wife had a working area to teach. I was amazed at the speed that the Lee County School district did that. They had it all up and running in one week and they finished out the school year that way. That fall, of course our governor wanted to win conservative points, ordered the schools to reopen. Here again the Lee County Schools stepped up to the plate and came up with an excellent strategy giving the parents the choice to 4 different options. Brick and mortar classrooms, Virtual, Self Study and of course Home School that has always been there. They had one-way halls and staggered dismissal to ease hall congestion. Of course masks. This was all very successful but of course that is not what DeSantis wanted so the following year DeSantis steps in and demands that the schools go back to all brick and mortar and do away with masks. Many school districts rebelled but DeSantis threatened to take away their funding. In Florida, children died that didn’t have to die and teachers died that didn’t have to die. When it came to the schools he didn’t show real leadership at all. All he did was pander for conservative votes at the expense of our children and teachers.   

When covid started the local communities saw no guidance from the State in the beginning. Entire countries around the world were shutting down. Our hospitals were filling up and local communities had to fend for themselves. Miami was one of the first to shut down. Of course then the people from Miami just drove over to Naples so now Naples had a problem. How covid was handled was mostly by the local municipalities and they made it up as they went along. Sanibel closed it beaches earlier than most and before that rest of Lee County. Florida was like a State with no real direction. It wasn’t until Florida got all that bad publicity nationally from the Spring Breakers on Ft Myers beach did the rest of the State join the rest on the country and tried to take Covid seriously. I will admit that when it came to reopening the State and how he did it in stages at least that was a little thought out, but his anti mask statements cost peoples lives in my opinion. In fact, I am a believer that many businesses could have stayed open during this whole thing if people would have just worn masks. I saw the Federal government, in both Congress and the Trump Administration, with PPP loans and things like that to try to help small businesses. I saw local communities try and help small businesses by easing rules. I didn’t see ideas coming from the State. Maybe there were but I just didn’t notice. What I did notice was a lack of leadership from a Governor that even tried to manipulate the numbers to make himself look good. Florida has one of the worst covid death counts in the country and to be honest with you I really don’t think they know the total number which I am sure is much worse. DeSantis lack of leadership did cost lives and he put money in front of those lives. Many have died that did not have to.

Truth and honesty do not seem to be American values. I live in a State where there is almost a church on every corner so you would think that honesty would be very important but it is not. Yes, this time of year is when I do a lot of binge watching on Netflix.