Letters to the Editor: March 5, 2022

Florida Legislature wants to render local government useless

Two visits to Tallahassee this session leads to uncomfortable conclusions.

First, by the abundance of preemptive bills, Tallahassee wants to render local government useless except as a bench for grooming politicians. SB 280 (Hutson)/HB 403 (Giallombardo) are examples. These are packages in each chamber that work in tandem to enable individual businesses to easily quash a broad swath of municipal ordinances through litigation.

These bills would alter the local legislative process and deputize motivated business owners to invalidate local lawmaking. Together these bills give new powers to individual entrepreneurs to block any local ordinance they don't like by simply filing suit. Without defining “arbitrary or unreasonable” the bills tip the scales in favor of a minority of individuals who are unhappy with a local ordinance. Two of the sponsors testified “this would negate the need for any more individual preemptive bills.”

Second, lawmakers prefer to avoid solving real problems and choose instead to create solutions to non-existent ones. Consider that the real crisis in education is the shortage of educational staff. Rather than incentivize teachers to remain, the legislature adds to the 20-plus laws already governing teacher salaries. They continue to micromanage classrooms, empower fringe extremists to attack educators and school boards acting in good faith. Lawmakers are even finding creative ways to circumvent the state constitution governing school boards and to silence opposition. Teachers continue to leave in record numbers; the 4,500 shortage this year will double next year.

Voter suppression bills are another example. After proclaiming in 2020 Florida was the model of free and fair elections that America should follow, the Legislature decided to pass a series of bills making it harder to vote in the name of “voter integrity.” All 67 Supervisors of Elections asked them not to pass the bills.

Felicia Bruce, Fort Pierce

Tell Sen. Mayfield ‘no’ on bill that benefits Big Sugar at our waterways’ expense

Senate Bill 2508 is a bill that was rammed through the legislature to promote the interests of Big Sugar at the expense of harm to our waterways.

Last week I received a postcard from state Sen. Debbie Mayfield urging me, her constituent, to say "yes" to what she is passing off as "common sense water protections.” According to the misinformation supplied by our senator, SB 2508 "protects water quality of all Floridians.” And, it "keeps our Everglades protected.” The bill does just the opposite. I am so tired of being misled and lied to by my representatives.

My concern is that the people who receive this misinformation in the mail will believe it is true and reply yes to SB 2508. For those of you who have been following this issue and are not fooled by Mayfield's misinformation, please reply “no” to this nonsense. The number she provided is 850-487-5017. At the very least, it will let her know that we are paying attention to who she is really representing. Big Sugar — not the voters.

Margaret Goodknight, Vero Beach

A tale of two legislatures

The definition of contrast: While facing 200,000 troops, tanks, air strikes, and the threat of nuclear war, Ukraine legislators are taking up arms and vowing to fight to the death to defend their country's democracy.

Contrast: While facing a few hundred protesters who had broken some windows and doors with flagpoles and a fire extinguisher, American legislators scurried on down to the Capitol basement, cowardly tweeting our democracy was being lost.

Anthony Napolitano, Jensen Beach

Just imagine Putin in exile at Mar-a-Lago

In A.D. 41 Emperor Caligula was assassinated by his security guards when wise men decided that the actions of this deranged leader were too detrimental to the empire.

Here in 2022, Russian oligarchs are experiencing losses of millions of rubles due to the sanctions imposed by President Biden and are frantically moving their yachts from Caribbean islands and their monies from Swiss and other bank accounts due to punishing sanctions.

Vladimir Putin is not stupid, as Donald Trump has told us many times, and it must have occurred to him that he, the murderer, could be murdered.

A likely option would be for Putin to spend the rest of his life in exile at Mar-A-Lago as the guest of his ardent admirer, Mr. Trump who since 2016 has frequently complimented Mr. Putin: "A great and strong leader, unlike what we have here”; "I always knew Putin is very much a strong leader”; and "Putin has an 82% approval rating, that should tell you something." On Feb. 24 Trump evaluated Putin's intentions toward Ukraine as "savvy, pretty smart.”

Once ensconced at Mar-a-Lago Putin and Trump would enjoy rounds of golf and with other Putin admirers such as Mike Pompeo, who said Putin is "talented, very savvy, I have enormous respect for Vladimir Putin.”

Tucker Carlson would surely be welcomed: "Why should I dislike Putin, he never called me a racist or outsourced jobs to Russia or tried to get me fired, canceled?” There was more and Carlson's monologue was played ad nauseam on Russian state TV to help sell Putin's invasion,

Just imagine the four of them ruminating over how much better they could rule the world.

Bill Wink, S. Hutchinson Island

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Letters to the Editor: March 5, 2022