A new list shows dozens and dozens of books have been removed from library shelves in the Martin County School District. This comes as the state puts in new requirements for school librarians to review reading material, and districts must have a process allowing community members to challenge books.
Books by well known authors like James Patterson, Toni Morrison, and Jodi Picoult are now off the shelves in Martin County schools.
“99% of the books we have filed challenges on are highly sexually explicit books,” said Julie Marshall, who leads Moms For Liberty in Martin County and filed many of the objections. Jennifer Pippin, a fellow Moms For Liberty activist in Indian River County, said they share lists and work together.
The removal list includes Picoult’s novel “The Storyteller” about the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor who meets an elderly former SS officer. It contains some violent scenes told in flashbacks from World War II and an assisted suicide.
“Banning ‘The Storyteller’ is shocking, as it is about the Holocaust and has never been banned before,” Picoult told us in an email.
“Martin County is the first to ban twenty of my books at once,” Picoult said, slamming such bans as “a shocking breach of freedom of speech and freedom of information.” Picoult said she’s puzzled by the ban, because she does not “write adult romance,” as objections filed against her books claimed.
Insane: Under Ron DeSantis's book crackdown, 20 books by Jodi Picoult just got banned at one county's schools.
One of them is "The Storyteller," about the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor.
Virtually all the objections that resulted in dozens of books getting removed were filed by one person, according to documents supplied to @FLFreedomRead and to us.
The vagueness of DeSantis's directives appears deliberately designed to create a climate of fear and rampant snitching. It encourages teachers to censor themselves and invites parents/activists to become despotic little commissars of local book purging:https://t.co/y0tKdxz6Wspic.twitter.com/RqKtJYW9ub
We have updated the piece with a response from the local Moms For Liberty leader. As we reported, this one person was the primary objector to dozens and dozens of books, leading to their removal:https://t.co/y0tKdxz6Wspic.twitter.com/hWieaL0fAW
This is the point I always make. You ask these people to show you the “pornographic” books and whoopsy-poopsy it’s a bunch of books about the Holocaust, slavery, Jim Crow America, on and on and on….
I would be really happy if one of them were to ever hold up a copy of a “pornographic” book at one of their rant rallies, because it means I would get to alert the cops to a crazy person displaying / distributing pornography to the public.
Why are only right wing wackos challenging books? A gutsy liberal could challenge the bible. Of course they’d need 24/7 security, bulletproof windows and and armored vehicle to travel in because Florida is filled with dangerous raging cultists.
Let’s hope you’re right! Right now he seems to be steamrolling right along in creating not a bastion of “liberty” for moms and kids and dads and other adults, but a SLAVE STATE.
a fellow Moms For Liberty activist in Indian River County, said they share lists and work together.
So none of them have a goddamn clue what is even in the books they find so offensive, and if pressed on why they want to ban any particular book they would be unable to really explain it.
At what point do majority of the Americans and the rest of the world realize we are repeating history again? Until millions of people shove into the oven? Or until it get so uncontrollable that nations need to set off multiple nuclear bombs in the US to make blowing up Hiroshima looks like popping a balloon?
This is the world the wealthy and republican idolize. This is the world they want back and are fighting to recreate. A world where profit for the wealthy is the most important thing, where corporations rule, and human lives mean nothing. The want back a world where life was nothing but servitude, working from childhood to death to make large profits for a wealthy person. No quality of life. No luxury for in that time as it is getting to now simply being able to eat and have shelter is a luxury many cannot afford. Go to work as young as possible, be used and when too broken to serve any use then to die. Is that the way we think life should be? Is that living? Why bother if simply to survive is a struggle of the masses for the unending greed of those who are wealthy. It doesn’t have to be this way! It is not this way in most developed nations. Look at the pictures, there are kids working in the mines and Arkansas just removed child labor laws. We are racing to a past that we were barely able to escape once. Hugs
I read the linked article and I suggest you do also. What this makes clear is that DeSantis wants is his own storm troopers, his own terror troops answerable only to him. The national guard is under the auspices of the US government and follows the polices of the Department of defense. The National Guard is part of the U.S. military but is unusual because it is controlled by both state and federal leaders. Most of the time, state National Guards are commanded by governors. However, presidents have the authority to call them into service to respond to hurricanes, bolster border security, and assist in overseas military operations.
Who will be the Commander in Chief of the Florida State Guard? Yes the ruler DerSantis himself. Total control total power. The white supremacist gang thugs Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and the other far right gangs were the unofficial enforcement arm of the republican party. Now they will be wearing uniforms. Think of it!
The scary part is what DerSantis claimed about his new personal army. “The Florida State Guard will be comprised of Floridians, and it will be assigned to assist and help only Floridians,” DeSantis said in a news conference last June. “It will not be subject to be mobilized by the federal government, and the federal government cannot impose policies or penalties on the Florida State Guard.”
In other words, just the right kind of people will be allowed to join. Will that mean just white people? Will it mean only Christians? Clearly no gays, lesbians, or trans people will be allowed. Also you know those annoying rules that the Federal government has for fairness, use of force, medical readiness, and the things the force can be used for all are gone, now ruled by people who claim vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they help prevent, that claims adamantly that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen somehow but have no evidence of it, that claim that drag queens readding to kids is sexual abuse, that not enforcing stereotypical gender roles from the 1950s is sexualizing kids, and that teachers are groomers while ignoring the many religious leaders charged with sexual crimes against kids. And so much more.
The ruler of Florida will now have his own goon squad fake white supremacists Christian nationalist to intimidate the governors enemies and it enforce his decrees in the state. And he wants to be kind of the entire country not just Florida. Will these troops be assigned to minority area voter places under some fake guise of “keeping the peace”? Will they show up at school board meetings in progressive areas to express the displeasure of the governor? Will they have the authority to make the arrests demanded by the king of Florida that is not quite legal for the police to do? Just how far into fascism do we have to before people see the danger. trump just started the ball rolling in to the 1930s Germany, DerSantis wants to finish recreating that time here. Seriously this needs to be fought with all we have. Hugs
As lawmakers in Tallahassee consider Gov. Ron DeSantis’ budget proposal this session, they will be also be deciding whether to approve a steep funding increase establishing Florida’s own branch of the military. The state guard was dismantled at the end of World War II.
“The Florida State Guard will be comprised of Floridians, and it will be assigned to assist and help only Floridians,” DeSantis said in a news conference last June. “It will not be subject to be mobilized by the federal government, and the federal government cannot impose policies or penalties on the Florida State Guard.”
In its first year, the legislature approved $10 million to restart the Florida State Guard. DeSantis now wants to increase that to $98 million this year.
“The Florida State Guard will be comprised of Floridians, and it will be assigned to assist and help only Floridians,”***
***Unless those Floridians are gay, trans, in a same-sex marriage, vote Democratic, are Black, ex-convicts, undocumented, straight, but want their kids taught accurate history or enjoy drag shows.
Well, first of all there’s us. First the drag queens, then the rest of the gays, then anyone Republicans don’t like…except for the Jews. They still need them to bring on the rapture.
So if he gets his own army, that helps only Florida, then there will be no need for any assistance from the National Guard in case of a hurricane or any other emergency. He’ll spend all his money on his hate, but he’ll have his hand out in an instant if anything goes wrong.
The building of his own SS troops before the Fascism take over the country. Who needs to go to Argentina to hunt for the good old Nazis when Florida is just right there.
At this point, we need Governor Newsom, Governor Hochul, and Governor Pritzker to form a pact to each do everything Florida does. DeSantis targets Disney? Newsom, Hochul, and Pritzker go after Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A. DeSantis tells the College Board they have to bow to his “anti-woke” bullshit or be kicked out of Florida? Newsom and Hochul tell the College Board that if they do, they’re banned from California, New York, and Illinois. DeSantis wants a private army in Florida? Looks like California, New York, and Illinois need private armies, too. Make sure the Republicans in the federal government know that if they allow this shit, they’re signing off on blue states doing it too. DeSantis is engaging in the social equivalent of unilateral nuclear proliferation. It’s time for Democratic elected officials to get M.A.D.
the federal government cannot impose policies or penalties on the Florida State Guard
What BS, there will be all kinds of employment regs you have to follow. And it is just another state police force (militia) that has to follow the Constitution.
This is the first concrete step to his ultimate plan for Florida to secede. His plan goes far beyond running for president. 162 years ago — “On January 10, 1861, Florida delegates who were meeting in the state capital, Tallahassee, voted to secede from the U.S. Florida became one of the six original Southern states to form the Confederate States of America.”
As the complete Article states, the Florida National Guard is “insufficient”, because it’s under Federal control. This is once again posturing by a short heavy wannabe Presidential hopeful. Who thank dog is term limited as Governor , after we send him packing should he gain the nomination for President
And now he’s forming his own army, probably to fend off the next war of northern aggression. I’m reminded of this scene in The Great Dictator: https://www.google.com/sear…
Tut, tut. Those are subject to mobilisation from the Federal Government, and can be sent to other states by the Feds. This would be Sandtits’ personal army.
Anything they can do to force a regressive return to a time before progressive civil rights and a progressive society that valued people for who they were including women, minorities, ethnic groups, and the LGBTQ+. Look all those groups / people have been around and part of us since the dawn of man, but the ability of those people to live openly in equality as they are, to live normal lives in society is something new in the last 80 years. That is something the wealthy barons, the religious fundamentalists, and those unable to accept the changes in society are desperate to deny and reverse.
I am sorry, I wish I could do more to promote this story. I simply am not up to it. Don’t just stop at the article I post, go to the story. Things are changing fast and badly in Florida. This is vitally important to what is happening in Florida due to the republicans under the direction of DerSantis. It is a story of not allowing the majority to prevent the minority from forcing an ideology, a ridged ideological regressive conservative rule on a public that doesn’t want it. This a group of ideologs that got a little authority and gerrymandered / voter suppressed it into a majority party win, and each time they gained more power they did everything they could even as their party shrank to increase their lock on power. This is about big corporation money to force a government into office that will allow them to disregard human life while increasing profit. Profit is king and greed is good. But having ideas that support the importance of people or the government using its power to assist or support the public interferes with profit. That cannot be allowed. So in Florida they managed to get a few republican state legislature wind even using illegal means that still let the illegally elected person stay in office, then trump managed to get a failing far behind candidate for governor elected and the minority part who did not have a majority of the state’s votes changed everything to give themselves great advantages meaning large wins. The situation in Florida is the public is 50/50 or even leaning blue but the republicans have made it almost impossible for a democrat to win in a lot of places and even if a democrat looks to win in at least three documented elections republicans violated laws to make sure the democrats cannot win. Republicans want a one party rule which equals a dictatorship, just look at the governments around the world they support. So to stop any free thought or kids getting the idea that there is any other way than republican ideology they make it illegal to teach it, to mention it, to disagree with the grand republican party and its minority rule will not be tolerated in the schools, in higher education facilities and now not even in the press or media. Is this what the US wants? Don’t you see examples of this in history? Sorry I must go lay down. Hugs
Comments are disabled as most posts going forward will be. Due to health reasons. Hugs. Scottie
This is the republican view of governance, using the powers of the government to enforce their minority views on the public who disagrees with the party and to enrich themselves off the public treasury / legal bribery called lobbying. Hugs
Matt Gaetz: “We either get this government back on our side, or we defund and get rid of, abolish the FBI, CDC, ATF, DOJ, every last one of ’em if they do not come to heel.” pic.twitter.com/es25HODy0E
— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) March 3, 2023
BREAKING: Matt Gatez just threatened to abolish the DOJ, FBI, CDC, DHS and ATF, with dangerous rhetoric, before he goes on to claim that Republicans have FBI whistleblowers who are testifying.
Jon Stewart easily lures a pro-gun/anti-drag queen Republican into a trap…and then blasts him over his blatant, shameless hypocrisy.pic.twitter.com/xbdzbGqf1f
— TrumpsTaxes (@TrumpsTaxes on Post and Mast*don) (@TrumpsTaxes) March 3, 2023
This last one is to counteract all the crazy cruel crap and republican shit above. Enjoy with amazement at the skill of both of these two performers. Hugs
Randy sent me this. I love the message although I doubt that some people can ever change. But the hate that Arnold is talking about includes that hate against race, gays, trans, and how you treat all of those different than you. It is an amazing video. Thank you Randy.
Comments are off as they will be on all future posts for awhile. Scottie
I tried to group these articles in some sort of order. But you can see the goals of the right just from the titles. The eradication of transpeople at any age from society. The removal of any gay rights with the goal of eradicating gay people from society. The enforcement of stereotypical gender roles and the returning to the days when women were dependent on men, and few had authority or independence on their own. They want tyranny and dictatorship of one party rule with no restraint on their activities even to the point of attempting the overthrow of the US constitution / government and the celebration of those that committed the illegal acts in the coup attempt. Republicans want to rule not govern, they want to have the people afraid to disagree with them or dare to speak against their rule. Just like the countries of China, North Korea, and their beloved Russia. Please notice the attempt is to return the US to the regressive oppressive times before the New Deal that empowered the public. They want 1910 to 1920. We had better join together to stop them or we won’t be able to. DerSantis is shopping the campaign slogan “Make America Florida”. Is that not enough of a threat to the country? Has the trump years not shown how quickly the right can move if given power to destroy all norms and rights to enforce their minority rule. McConnell even said that while republicans will lose elections the democrats couldn’t stop a republican stacked court system from enforcing republican goals for decades. He was correct. Mitch McConnell said, “My goal is to do everything we can for as long as we can to transform the federal judiciary, because everything else we do is transitory.” Hugs
Read the comments on this to see how things used to be for families and kids before labor laws and government assistance were created.Kids younger than five working a full day in the farm fields. Is this the grand vision of the future the country needs or wants? Think of every movie of the future that has a great working society and they are progressive but the ones with dystopian unfair or dangerous future and it is regressive oppressive hellish places were greed is king with businesses in charge killing any regulation that prevents profit. Hugs
Again these bills are a way Christians can force their moral views on everyone, a way they get to rule on how every person gets to live their lives. It gives these rabid fundamentalists Christian republican groups the right to tell everyone else what they can do, regulating what everyone can watch / read in order to conform to a strict religious view of morality written 2,500 years ago. It ignores all medical, scientific, and social advances done in the years since their holy books were written and mistranslated. Society has advanced as human understandings have, yet these oppressive regressive people want to ignore all that. Would they also like to go back to the medical understandings in the 1600s, 1700s, or even what was known medically in 1900. That was 28 years before penicillin was discovered. 21 years before insulin was discovered. Tell me if their holy book written knew everything about morals why did it support slavery? Do we return to that also to please Christian fascists? This is an attempt to enshrine a religious morality over everyone regardless of if you belong to that or any religion. Again it is not about these people being able to live and act as they wish, it is about forcing everyone else to live by their church rules / doctrines. Hugs
Bills are part of religious right’s post-Roe strategy, with most prevalent ones relating to age verification of sex-related websites
A wave of proposed legislation pushed by Republicans across the US at the state level is aimed at outlawing aspects of sexuality that could have a huge impact on Americans’ private lives and businesses.
Opponents to the laws before legislatures in various states say the planned new legislation could spawn prosecution of breast-pump companies in Texas for nipples on advertising, or a bookstore might be banned from selling romance novels in West Virginia, or South Carolina could imprison standup comics if a risqué joke is heard by a young person.
The bills are part of a post-Roe nationwide strategy by the religious wing of the Republican party, now that federal abortion rights have fallen. They range from banning all businesses that sell sex-related goods to anti-drag queen bills. Tyler Dees, an Arkansas state senator who wrote an anti-porn bill said: “I would love to outlaw it all,” referring to porn.
The most prevalent bills relate to age verification of sex-related websites. Seventeen states drafted porn age-verification bills, many inspired by Louisiana’s law that went into effect in January. Louisiana’s law requires websites featuring 33.33% or more pornographic content to check government-issued ID to verify users are 18 and older. Websites that don’t comply face civil penalties. Parents can sue the site if kids access it.
In Texas, a new bill requiring age verification on websites with pornographic content defines images of the female breast “below the top of the areola” as porn, potentially hitting at business advertisements. In West Virginia, a bill outlawing all sexually oriented businesses is on the docket, with a definition that includes art studios with nude models and wrestling arenas. In South Carolina a bill would criminalize using “profane language” related to “sexual or excretory organs or activities” in front of minors during performances. The punishment? Up to a decade in prison.
Some bills define porn so broadly that anatomy textbooks or sex education websites would meet them.
“I don’t think such laws for the internet are constitutional,” said Eugene Volokh, a professor of Law at UCLA.
Laurie Schlegel, a Republican state senator who drafted the Louisiana law, is a sex-addiction therapist educated at Baptist seminary, who opposed transgender students from being on sports teams that align with their gender. Schlegel’s anti-LGBTQ+ views fit with the broader goal of the laws, according to Carolyn Bronstein, a professor of media studies at DePaul University.
“These laws are really not about controlling minors’ access to violent pornography … In the conservative world view, pornography is information about LGBTQ identity, abortion, gay marriage,” said Bronstein.
Eight states have justified their actions by saying that porn is “creating a public health crisis”. Louisiana’s bill claims that pornography “may lead to low self-esteem, body image disorders, an increase in problematic sexual activity at younger ages … impact brain development … shape deviant sexual arousal, and lead to difficulty in forming or maintaining positive, intimate relationships, as well as promoting problematic or harmful sexual behaviors and addiction.”
Historian Whitney Strub, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University, doesn’t think these ideas are well-founded. “Framing pornography as a public health crisis is not driven by serious engagement with the social scientific literature,” he said. “They’ve even got fake peer-reviewed journals that give the imprimatur of scholarship … It’s been a very smart rebranding of evangelical Christian conservatism.”
Why are all these bills being proposed now? Strub thinks it’s partly because of the overturning of Roe v Wade. “Abortion gave a certain coherence to conservative politics in the United States. And it certainly still does … but they’re in the position of Ahab if he slayed the white whale … I mean, there’s no more Moby-Dick.”
There is hypocrisy on display also.
In many of the states where the anti-porn bills are being put forth, minors can legally have sex and get married. “In Louisiana, you can have sex when you’re 17 with a person in their 30s, but you can’t watch porn,” said Jason Kelley, associate director of digital strategy for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana, the age of consent is 16. With parental permission, Mississippi allows 15-year-olds to marry, Louisiana 16-year-olds, Arkansas 17-year-olds, and West Virginia kids of any age.
Dees, who wrote Arkansas’s age verification bill, a copycat of Louisiana’s, said porn causes depression and anxiety, divorce and “permissive sexual attitudes” and infidelity. “When I think about the children … I want to protect their innocence,” Dees said.
Strub said this is an old trope: “The political figure of the innocent and imperiled child just has a never-ending purchase on American politics … [it] essentially shuts down debate because it immediately creates a binary in which anybody who disagrees with you is [a] perverted groomer.”
Dees is also the co-author of anti-drag queen legislation in Arkansas, that classifies drag performances as the same category as pornography. “It’s not really a meaningful distinction to [conservatives]. They’re both sexual degeneracy in its different guises,” Strub said.
Dees claimed that his porn verification law “doesn’t have anything to do with any political messaging. It has to do with exposure to material that is harmful, period … There’s a clear enemy in the smut-peddling garbage that’s online.”
But measures already exist to prevent children accessing porn. “There’s a really easy way to keep kids from accessing adult content. And that’s a device-level filter” on mobile phones that block adult websites that are registered as Restricted to Adults, said Mike Stabile of the Free Speech Coalition, which advocates for the rights of sex workers.
These laws, according to Stabile, aren’t going to stop kids from looking at porn. “Even if they were to block all sites, you’re still going to have adult content on Twitter and Reddit … kids will get VPNs,” he said.
Stabile thinks we’ll see up to two dozen age-verification bills introduced by the end of the year.
Dees hopes he is right and has eyes beyond the state level eventually. “My prayer is that enough states continue to push for this measure, and that we send a loud enough message where federal law can be put into place,” he said.
Enlarge/ A woman watches white flags on the National Mall on September 18, 2021, in Washington, DC. Over 660,000 white flags were installed here to honor Americans who have lost their lives to COVID-19.
Americans spend an exorbitant amount of money on health care and have for years. As a country, the US spends more on health care than any other high-income country in the world—on the basis of both per-person costs and a share of gross domestic product. Yet, you wouldn’t know it from looking at major health metrics in years past; the US has relatively abysmal health. And, if anything, the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the US health care system’s failures relative to its peers, according to a new analysis by the Commonwealth Fund.
Enlarge/ Health care spending of high income-countries by share of GDP.
Compared with other high-income peers, the US has the shortest life expectancy at birth, the highest rate of avoidable deaths, the highest rate of newborn deaths, the highest rate of maternal deaths, the highest rate of adults with multiple chronic conditions, and the highest rate of obesity, the new analysis found.
“Americans are living shorter, less healthy lives because our health system is not working as well as it could be,” Munira Gunja, lead author of the analysis and a senior researcher for The Commonwealth Fund’s International Program in Health Policy and Practice Innovation, said in a press statement. “To catch up with other high-income countries, the administration and Congress would have to expand access to health care, act aggressively to control costs, and invest in health equity and social services we know can lead to a healthier population.”
Dying young
Overall, the analysis paints a grim picture of how much catching up the US has to do. In terms of life expectancy, the US has trailed its peers for years but took a nosedive during the pandemic, while other countries fared better. In 2020, the average life expectancy at birth in the US was 77 years, three years lower than the average for high-income countries. The next lowest life expectancy among high-income countries was from the UK, which had a 2020 life expectancy at birth of 80.4 years.
Provisional data for 2021 suggests US life expectancy fell nearly a full year further, from 77.0 years to 76.1 years. Relatedly, the US had the highest rate of deaths from COVID-19 in 2020 compared with its high-income peers and was among the lowest of its peers in rates of COVID-19 vaccination.
In a particularly shameful set of statistics, the US continues to have the highest infant and maternal mortality rates of any other high-income country. In 2020, there were 5.4 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in the US, while the average among high-income countries was 4.1 infant deaths. In Norway, there were 1.6 deaths per 1,000 live births. The health care system is also failing mothers. In 2020, there were 24 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, about 2.5 times higher than the average for high-income countries. The country with the next highest maternal mortality rate was New Zealand with 13.6 per 100,000 live births.
Enlarge/ Rates of infant and maternal mortality among high-income countries.
With many US states now rapidly turning back the clock on reproductive rights and maternity care, the US’s appallingly high rates of infant and maternal deaths are expected to worsen.
Beyond pregnancy, Americans are dying from other conditions that are treatable or preventable at a rate far higher than those seen in all other high-income countries. In 2020, 336 US deaths per 100,000 people were avoidable, while the average among high-income countries was just 225 deaths per 100,000. The rate of avoidable deaths has been rising in the US since 2015, the analysis notes.
Sicker
That tracks with the finding that Americans are more likely than their high-income-country peers to have multiple chronic conditions. In 2020, 30.4 percent of US adults said that they had previously been diagnosed with two or more chronic conditions in their life. Among other high-income countries, no more than a quarter of adults reported having two or more chronic conditions. America’s high obesity rate may play into that discrepancy. The US has a higher obesity rate than any other high-income country. In fact, it’s nearly two times higher than the average of its peers.
While Americans are dying young from avoidable conditions, they’re also spending an exorbitant amount on health care. The US spent 17.8 percent of its GDP on health care in 2020, nearly twice as much as the average of 9.6 percent among high-income countries. On a per-person basis, it outspent its peers, paying nearly $12,000 per person via government insurance programs, private insurance coverage, and out-of-pocket costs. The country that came the closest to US spending was Germany, with a little over $7,000 per-person spending.
The data hints that these high prices are discouraging Americans from getting the care they need, potentially feeding into the country’s high rates of chronic conditions and avoidable deaths. In the analysis, the US had among the lowest rate of doctor visits, with just four per year. The average was 5.7. The US also has one of the lowest rates of practicing physicians per 1,000 people—2.6 per 1,000, while the average is 3.7.
The US was the only high-income country in the analysis that does not guarantee health coverage. People in most other high-income countries have guaranteed health coverage with the option of buying supplemental private coverage.
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