Martin County budget busted; porn in schools? Debt detox; GOP to shut government | Letters

Treasure Coast Newspapers
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Martin County government lacks accountability when it comes to taxes

"Thank you, we have enough" are words a government agency has never spoken.

You have yet to hear of a firehouse that is the right size, enough in the budget to cover next year's expenses or that salaries are in line to be competitive.

The raising of taxes is an issue facing Martin County residents today. Taxes are a percentage; therefore, higher values and rising inflation should not affect a budget. How is it that the county requires a larger portion of our paychecks? We are in a tug-of-war with county commissioners over our wallets.

Today, when we maximize debt, we raise the ceiling. And someone must pay for it. The problem is the deterioration of our self-governance standard. We have familiarized ourselves with falsehoods. We are accustomed to stretching the truth and accepting weak analysis to support spending habits. We entrust lesser arguments to convince us that all spending is for the greater good.

When Oliver Twist asks for more gruel in the workhouse, the headmaster hits him on the head with a ladle. What if we were met with such a response? What if a department encountered that degree of resistance? A metaphoric hit on the head when it asked for more.

Government officials argue that shortfalls in their budgets are not due to overspending, but instead not having enough to work with. Accountability is a foreign concept today. It is rejected as if it were the plague of our time. But we have no headmaster to keep us in check. Everyone seems just to want their slice of the pie.

We should be obligated to live within our means, stay within a budget and conserve our resources for future generations. We need something to hit us over the head, a reminder that responsibility still exists.

Nick Gulotta, Stuart

Easier for students to find smut online than in school?

Before I begin, let me introduce myself. I am a proud parent, a past Boy Scout leader, civic volunteer and am more likely to have a hammer in my hand than a glass of wine.

Now to my point. I peeked under the covers of one of the 34 books the Indian River County School Board recently ended up pulling from library book shelves, at the urging of the Moms for Liberty and their followers. I chose “Drama” by Raina Telgemeier, because it had been checked out the most: 80 times since it was acquired in 2013.

I purchased a copy in town and didn’t find one word or illustration of graphic sex. The nationally popular story is about middle school students struggling to stage a play entitled “Moon over Mississippi.” The book has on- and off-stage drama: young teenagers expressing their identities, including attractions and disagreements among each other.

Maybe I missed something. Please correct me if there was one bad word as defined by Florida House Bill 1069. The new law allows parents to get books banned if they go to school board meetings and read aloud any sexually explicit language in them.

Let me finish by quoting some local school district statistics. Twenty of the 34 now banned books were never checked out during the 2021 to 2023 school years. Eleven of the 35 books were checked out less than five times by students. Nine books were in storage, according to the school district.

Maybe the conclusion of all this is that it is more convenient for students to go online to find smut. Maybe that isn’t a politically convenient thing for me to say, but it needs to be said, loud and often. Now back to my saw and hammer.

Elliott Jones, Vero Beach, is married to Peggy Jones, who chairs the Indian River County School Board. He is a retired TCPalm reporter.

"In response to the book banning throughout our country and Martin County, I have created this quilt to remind all of us that these few of so many more more books that are banned or targeted, need to be proudly displayed and protected," said Grace Linn, 100, of Jensen Beach, while addressing the Martin County School Board during public comment, Tuesday, March 21, 2023, at 1939 SE Federal Highway in Stuart. Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison and best-selling young-adult novelist Jodi Picoult are some of the writers whose works were removed from the Martin County School District's middle and high schools last month.

As columnist says, national debt a looming problem

Les Rubin's recent column in this publication predicted that the United States will eventually default on its debt ”unless our government stops spending extraordinarily large sums of money that we do not have.”

Democrats and Republicans are both responsible, but the current administration has added a new twist.  It has adopted policies that hinder economic growth. To pay off the massive debt, we have to reduce spending while growing the economy.  Eventually, the increased growth (and the revenue that it produces) will lead to surpluses.

To reduce spending, we must stop the non-productive growth of government, and curtail federal giveaways.  Government should not undertake activities better conducted by the private sector. For example, the federal government should get out of the student loan business by outsourcing the collection of existing loans and cease making new ones.  It will take a few years to transition, but the banks and colleges will figure this out on their own.

Our government should encourage the production of wealth by using existing natural resources. For example, rather than importing dirty oil from Venezuela and Iran, let’s become energy independent again and export our surplus.  Our oil and gas is clean and extracted in an environmentally sensitive manner. Theirs isn’t.

We should lower taxes and simplify the tax system so returns are easier to prepare and audit. The current system is awkward, expensive, encourages cheating and creates delays and over-staffing at the IRS.

Smaller government, less spending, lower taxes, more economic growth — this is the formula to address the national debt.

Tom Miller, Vero Beach

U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-California, speaks in the Rayburn Room following the House vote on Fiscal Responsibility Act at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on May 31, 2023. The U.S. House of Representatives voted May 31, 2023 to raise the federal debt limit, moving the country a step closer to eliminating the threat of a calamitous credit default -- just five days ahead of the deadline set by the Treasury.

Impeachment side show so Republicans can shut down government?

I think Republicans are hoping to shut down the U.S. government on Sept. 30. This could delay Social Security payments to millions of seniors and those on disability.

Where's the outrage? Are we asleep to this catastrophe? This could cause people to miss or be late on mortgage payments, credit card and auto payments with dire consequences for their credit.

And, just like the last GOP shutdown in 2019, this will mean further reduction in the credit rating of our government, causing interest rates on U.S. government debt to increase by billions of dollars.

Please call U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, Sens Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, to demand they stop this GOP insanity. Posing as "caring about government spending" and "abortions," the GOP is destroying vital functions of our government, yet again.

Other than rigging the Supreme Court, Donald Trump's only "accomplishment" was a massive tax cut for millionaires and big corporations. This dirty deed cost billions of dollars in tax revenue and threw our nation into much more debt.

Now, as distraction for this craziness, the GOP wants a phony "impeachment" of President Joe Biden, with no evidence. Shame on them!

Robert A. Gibbons, Stuart

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Tax hike in Martin County; book porn really in schools? More | Letters