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Category: Opinion
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Health Care

DeSantis risks lives with bad COVID advice

What possible explanation can Gov. Ron DeSantis and Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo have for suggesting that Floridians under 65 should not receive the latest COVID-19 booster? COVID-19 boosters have proven to save lives. According to NPR, researchers from Yale University who studied the pandemic’s effects on Florida and Ohio say that from the start, in

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Housing

Some seniors are hit hard by our housing crisis

The following editorial was published in The Daily Sun on Sept 18, 2023. OUR POSITION: Retirees who aren’t fortunate to have comfortable retirement income and who live on fixed incomes are as much in need of affordable housing as those in our state’s workforce. Florida is a top landing spot for retirees. More than one out

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Opinion

Cooper Street Rec Center needs love

The following editorial was published in The Daily Sun on Sept 5, 2023. OUR POSITION: A recent back-and-forth at a Punta Gorda City Council meeting made it clear to us that council members might benefit from spending more time at the center. We were surprised when, at a recent Punta Gorda City Council meeting, some members

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Labor issues

Labor Day: Unions and groups are galvanized by attacks, politics and extreme policies forced down upon us

By ROXEY NELSON, Florida Phoenix, Sept 4, 2023. All elections have consequences, but some trigger an even more powerful backlash. That’s what is happening in Florida today in response to the state legislature and governor’s office bulldozing their way over so many basic rights while ignoring the essential needs of everyday Floridians. These hyper-partisan Tallahassee

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Opinion

DeSantis should have expected the boos

The following Letter to the Editor was published in The Daily Sun on Sept 2, 2023. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was booed recently while attending a vigil for the three Black people gunned down by a white man at a Jacksonville store. The governor’s presence at this solemn gathering was clearly aimed at promoting his presidential

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Opinion

Young voters should see Democrat’s values

The following Letter to the Editor was published in The Daily Sun on Sept 2, 2023. I write these letters because as a lifelong Democrat I’m trying to do my part to encourage folks to get engaged and to care enough about our country’s political discourse, so they don’t waste their vote. Voting is the

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Opinion

Why do Republicans demonize teachers?

The following Letter to the Editor was published in The Daily Sun on Sept 1, 2023. As I watched the Republican Presidential Primary Debate last week, I was appalled that teachers and teachers’ unions were demonized. Teachers were charged with indoctrinating students, going against the concerns of parents, and ignoring the need for student achievement.

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Insurance

Insurance woes just getting worse

The following editorial was published in The Daily Sun on August 26, 2023. OUR POSITION: Homeowners are getting squeezed by higher insurance bills with no end or relief in sight. Hurricane Ian’s category 4 winds and hours-long deluge of rain did even more damage than the eye could see. The storm was, by most accounts, the

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Opinion

Steube’s loyalties are in the wrong place

The following Letter to the Editor was published in The Daily Sun on August 25, 2023. Donald Trump is a national embarrassment. His continued prominence in our politics despite multiple criminal indictments — not to mention his culpability for fraud, rape, and more — brings shame on us all, and poses a grave threat to

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Environment

DeSantis is lying to our kids

The following Letter to the Editor was published in The Daily Sun on Aug 21, 2023. As the citizens of Hawaii tragically die in unprecedented wildfires and we on the mainland face record-breaking heat with ocean temperatures above 100 F, the DeSantis administration is now peddling climate lies to our kids. The conservative Prager University

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Opinion

Republicans know Trump is not best choice

The following Letter to the Editor was published in The Daily Sun on Aug 1, 2023. Every single one of them knows better. There isn’t one Republican voter or one Republican politician who doesn’t know deep down in his soul that Donald Trump is not qualified to be the president of our country. Perhaps in

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Opinion

Can DeSantis keep secrets from us?

The following editorial was published in The Daily Sun on July 27, 2023. OUR POSITION: Gov. Ron DeSantis is going too far by hiding information from the public that should be available through Florida’s Sunshine Laws. One of our biggest beefs with Gov. Ron DeSantis is how he has never warmed up to the idea the

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Old sepia picture of two African-American boys poorly dressed with sad expressions
Opinion

Florida’s silver linings guide to slavery

By Renée Graham, Globe Columnist, Boston Globe, July 26,2023. Nearly 190 years before Florida education officials announced that schoolchildren would be taught that slavery was akin to a job training program for Black people, John C. Calhoun, a virulently racist, slaveholding former vice president and US senator from South Carolina, extolled what he claimed were

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Florida Legislation

DeSantis, Republicans helped insurance firms

The following Letter to the Editor was published in The Daily Sun on July 23, 2023. Recent data from the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation showed 521,819 Ian residential property claims have been opened with 23,818 still open without payment, 152,877 closed without payment, and who knows if adequate payments were made on the 287,021

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Opinion

Rocky Hanna: With 460,000 school library books, parents will determine kids’ access

Recently there have been new laws and regulations placed on schools by the governor and the Florida Legislature focused on determining whether books and educational material are deemed obscene or age appropriate. In the past, media specialists and librarians could use something called The Miller Test to determine whether a book was appropriate for school aged children.

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Opinion

Building a legal wall around Donald Trump

The New York Times, David French, July 20, 2023. The American legal system is on the cusp of a remarkable historical achievement. In real time and under immense pressure, it has responded to an American insurrection in a manner that is both meting out justice to the participants and establishing a series of legal precedents

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Opinion

Casey DeSantis is the smiling face of anti-LGBTQ activism

By Eleanor Clift, The Daily Beast, July 13, 2023  If anybody wondered whether Casey DeSantis shared her husband’s distaste for anything deemed “woke,” there’s no more wondering. The first lady of Florida delivered a hard-right video attacking LGBTQ and trans rights, presenting herself as the lead Mama of “Mamas for DeSantis,” an arm of the campaign, on a mission to protect

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Analysis

Make America Great Again? Really?

By Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, Jul 8, 2023. On July 9, 1868, Americans changed the U.S. Constitution for the fourteenth time, adapting our foundational document to construct a new nation without systematic Black enslavement. In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution had prohibited enslavement on the basis of race, but it

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Opinion

How the right’s phony patriotism is destroying America

By RUTH CONNIFF, The Wisconsin Examiner, July 4, 2023. In his book “Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America,” best-selling author Kurt Andersen connects the marketing of nostalgia for an idealized American past to the organized campaign led by big business over the last four decades to destroy unions, public schools, progressive taxation and the middle

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