Dems united against a right-wing onslaught

Much of the action surrounding this year’s legislative session concerned deeply upsetting and completely unnecessary GOP-driven culture wars that sought to divide rather the unite us or make our state a better place to live.

Despite being outnumbered and outgunned, the Democratic lawmakers of the Florida Legislature nonetheless mounted a brave and aggressive fight in defense of women’s rights, the LGBTQ community, free speech and more. The united Democratic caucuses in both chambers not only stood firm in our opposition to the offensive attacks on children, teachers, voters and the less fortunate among us, our unified Democrats found opportunities to stop or mitigate bad ideas from becoming law while notching a few victories in the process.

For starters, the attack on our state’s charter document, the Florida Constitution, was stymied by this united front. Some Republican lawmakers wanted to put on the November ballot an item that, if passed, would have forever closed the opportunity for citizens to amend their own document, our Constitution. It would have taken a supermajority vote to put it on the ballot, but the Democratic Caucus did not blink. Instead, Democrats held firm and remained unified in the belief that (as stated in that very document) “all political power resides with the people” (Article 1, section 1).

We also held off further attempts to take even more public dollars and redirect them to private, for-profit schools — and instead of even more tax cuts for wealthy, out-of-state corporations, we were able to pass one of my longstanding priories: the removal of the sales tax on diapers. While this will truly help families across the state, the powers that be limited us in only providing this relief for infant diapers, for one year. You can bet I will continue to advocate for a permanent exemption on all diapers, including adult incontinence products, next session.

And as hard as it is to believe, many of the anti-freedom measures being pushed by the extreme right wing of the Republican party were also watered down by a unified Senate Democratic Caucus. While Republican extremists succeeded in passing bad laws to allow for the removal of books in schools, as hard as it is to believe, they wanted even stronger means of banning books, legalizing frivolous, taxpayer-funded lawsuits, and to put even more restrictions on voting. We stood firm and we stopped these extreme positions.

It was not easy and it was often ugly, but on these matters, freedom won the day as a direct result of a strong and unified front of Democratic lawmakers. Further, we were then able to reach and work across the aisle for the benefit of our communities, securing more funding for our teachers and professional education staff, expanding funding for mental health, and raising pay for our hard-working state employees.

But there were defeats — and make no mistake, these will hurt Floridians, take away their personal freedoms and punish those who stray from a strict, state-sponsored ideology. I am, of course, talking about the unconstitutional attack on a woman’s right to choose — even, unbelievably, in cases involving rape, incest and human trafficking — and other items as well. We lost the fight to restrict the state from imposing a punitive (and antifree speech) restriction on discussing LGBTQ+ issues in the classroom. To be clear, this was not about the state-approved curriculum or even sex education; this was (as admitted by the bill sponsor) an attempt to stop any discussions about any LGBTQ+ issues out of fears of “social engineering.” Finally, and perhaps equally shocking, was the new “anti-woke” law that will essentially ban diversity training while also encouraging the erasure of history in our schools. Instead of our professionally trained teachers being able to teach both the good and bad of our nation’s founding, they are now to be treated like characters straight out of George Orwell’s “1984,” with the thought police lurking around every corner.

On each one of these vital issues, every Democrat — every single one — stood firm against attacks on our personal freedoms and severe restrictions on the individual rights of average everyday Floridians.

As we head into election season, I only hope voters will remember which party led the charge to remove these freedoms and which party stood unified and fought as one to protect them.

State Sen. Lauren Book, D-Plantation, is the Florida Senate Minority Leader.

To ‘harvest’ alligators is cruel, inhumane

The 1987 Florida Legislature chose the American alligator as the official state reptile.

This awesome creature has been around since the age of the dinosaurs, as have iguanas. But under the DeSantis regime, it has been declared that it is okay to harvest or kill alligators, even if they are not threatening anyone. It seems that any creature deemed a nuisance, even the gentle iguana who only wants to graze in the sun, is now considered fair game by the state of Florida.

Big deal — they eat foliage and grass.

They are not vicious and don’t attack people. I don’t think alligators attack unless provoked. Alligators are a symbol of Florida and have been here a lot longer than most Floridians.

Hunting them is a disgusting sport and I believe only pythons which eat and attack other wildlife should be allowed to be hunted. The real dangers are the killers speeding in their cars on the highways. Leave our wildlife alone. Go after speeders and do something more constructive with our tax money.”

Boca Raton

Keep daylight saving time

Re: Chasing daylight, Rubio descends into darkness | Editorial

I read the editorial that said we should do away with changing clocks and suggested we not use daylight savings time. I could not disagree more.

Using the somewhat fictional theory of circadian rhythm is a stretch. Those of us who have to be to work at 6 or 7 in the morning like having the ability to come home and still have plenty of light to get work done at our house.

Light at 5 a.m. is of no value. It’s dark by 5 p.m. Once people are home from work they can’t go out in the garden and work, mow the lawn, trim hedges or paint the house. They wouldn’t be able to go fishing with their kids after work or play Frisbee in the yard or give the dog a bath. It is far more beneficial to society to have daylight later in the day.

As for kids waiting in the dark at bus stops, that’s an easy fix. Move every bus stop off major roads, put stop signs on residential streets where traffic isn’t going 50 mph and illuminate bus stops. Just don’t take away Daylight Saving Time.

Tamarac

A chilling effect

I think it’s great that Gov. Ron DeSantis is taking action to fulfill a campaign promise to raise teacher pay. In light of the poorly conceived and recently passed “Don’t Say Gay” bill, those extra dollars will come in handy when teachers have to defend themselves against lawsuits filed by aggrieved parents.

I can see it now. A teacher will admonish some student in her class who teases Little Susie because she drew a family picture with two daddies, and a parent of one of the admonished students will interpret this as “indoctrinating” students to accept the “gay agenda.”

This ill-advised legislation (HB 1557) is going to tie up more court time with ridiculous lawsuits and have a further chilling effect on those who are already teachers — or are considering becoming teachers.

North Lauderdale

A little comic relief

I suggest that as a public service to your shrinking readership, you consider turning over your editorial pages to Marvel Comics.

Since your editorials are comical anyway and the letters you print are mostly humorous since they make little sense, this would be a perfect match. In the alternative, may I suggest you realize that your constant drumbeat against Gov. DeSantis, former President Trump and generally all things Republican isn’t winning you any new readers.

While Broward County may still be deep blue, Palm Beach County is no longer reliably so. Your editorial staff may want to keep that in mind.

Boynton Beach