Purple Going On To Red

They're driving all the "Blues" out and also the "Purple" moderates which makes me a little nervous.

Proud purple to angry red: These Florida residents feel unwelcome in 'new' Florida
USA TODAY NETWORK
By Tom McLaughlin
August 21, 2023

Jean Siebenaler moved to Florida following her retirement to bask in the warmth of the Sunshine State.

"I finally thought I'd be sitting on the water with an umbrella drink in my hand," she said.

The Milton resident, a military veteran and retired physician, now says she wonders if Florida was where she needed to relocate after all. Having been politically active in her home state of Ohio, she finds beach time consumed by "steaming and stewing" over the state of the state and local politics.

"It's very upsetting, the direction we see Florida heading," she said. "Every day I wonder why I am living here."

For many, Florida has changed. What was once a proudly purple state has turned an angry red, they say. Gov. Ron DeSantis, with the dedicated backing of a Republican supermajority in the state legislature, is waging war on what he calls "wokeism" — a term he has loosely defined as "a form of cultural Marxism." But many — people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, non-Christians, teachers, union members, students — feel it is a war against themselves, as they face ridicule, discrimination, and, potentially, violence.

[…]

"Under the leadership of Gov. DeSantis, the state has become hostile to Black Americans and in direct conflict with the Democratic ideals that our union was founded upon," the advisory states.

I know a lot trans people in Florida and I am concerned on how they are doing, I know that one person fled the state but the others are sticking it out.

This is some of the rhetoric that the Republicans are spewing,

Siebenaler, who has stepped into the position of legislative chair for the Democratic Women's Club of Florida, attended an early June meeting of the Santa Rosa County Commission to call out Commissioner James Calkins for labeling the Democratic Party as evil.

"I took an oath to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic," she told the governing board. "And I must speak out against the hate speech that is emanating from the Santa Rosa County Commission dais."

Calkins has been admonished on several occasions by the public and his peers for his incendiary rhetoric and disruptive behavior. But Siebenaler is not one to typically show up at county board meetings.

It is a broad based flight to leave the state.

Similarly, according to Lisa Masserio, the president of the teacher's union in Hernando County, a minority segment of that county's school board attached to Moms For Liberty is creating chaos in that area.

The school district typically provides at its May 30 meeting an accounting of how many teachers will be leaving the school district that year. This year it was announced that of the 49 people not returning to Hernando County schools next year, 33 had voluntarily tendered their resignations.

Masserio estimated the number of resignations had approximately doubled those of the year before and would create "the highest number of vacancies we've had in a long time."

[…]

Eighty-three percent of the Hernando County teachers with three years or less experience were among those who resigned, said Dan Scott, a former World History teacher at Springstead High School.

[…]

"Not everyone left for the same reasons I did. For me, I didn't want to teach if I couldn't teach the truth and if I couldn't represent students the way I thought I should," he said. "I let every student be exactly who they wanted to be, whatever religion, whatever they identify as. I tried to give everybody their space. Whenever I couldn't do that any more I realized I didn't need to be in this career."

Hey, we don’t need teachers! All we need to teach our is someone who know reading, riting and rithmetic.

They are also going after Blacks making it harder for them to vote! Puting all types of barriers in front of them, the article says “A third of Black men in the United States have felony convictions...”

Lucas is also bothered by recent changes in Florida laws that could make it more difficult for some people to vote.

"Voting is most important because that's how things are changed," he said. "That's how jobs are created and taken away, laws are created and taken away. If you don't have the strength of voting, then you're basically fighting with one hand tied behind your back."

[…]

“We seem to have Jim Crow 2.0 now, because the attack on voting rights is very frightening,” he said, “The restrictions that Florida has put on people who just want to register people to vote is outrageous.”
Medical?

The Florida Medical Association reports,

Florida’s physician shortage: It’s not just primary care and rural areas
By Jarrod Fowler, MHA FMA Director of Health Care Policy and Innovation
April 21, 2022
 

As noted previously in FMA News, a report from IHS Markit commissioned by the Florida Safety Net Hospital Alliance and the Florida Hospital Association projects a shortfall of 17,924 physicians in the Sunshine State by the year 2035. This analysis is based on projected supply and demand, accounting for Florida’s population growth and its aging population requiring greater levels of care.

IHS projects that, by 2035, Florida will have a shortage of 5,974 “traditional primary care” specialists, which the report identifies as family medicine, general internal medicine, pediatric medicine, and geriatric medicine physicians. However, this shortage is not limited only to primary care: Around 12,000 additional specialists will be needed as well.

For instance, Florida is projected to have a shortfall of 1,519 emergency room physicians, 497 OB/GYNs, 654 anesthesiologists, 632 cardiologists, 437 hematologists and oncologists, 1,434 hospitalists, 209 orthopedic surgeons, 1,230 psychiatrists, 648 pulmonologists and critical care specialists, 737 infectious disease specialists, 514 nephrologists, 459 urologists, and thousands of other specialists as listed in Exhibit 22 of the report.

In addition to the raw numbers, the report goes on to project the percentage by which the projected supply of physicians will fall short relative to demand. According to the report, Florida will need 57% more vascular surgeons, 43% more colorectal surgeons, 55% more emergency medicine physicians, and 40% more radiation oncologists than projected to be available by the year 2035.

 Note, the article doesn't say the cause of the shortages, but still when you need a doctor they are going to be hard to get an appointment.

 

Then there is us, the trans community, the USA Today article goes on to say,

Alexander Vargas is a 19-year-old college student. His biggest worries should revolve around getting good grades, figuring out what kind of a career he wants after college, and deciding what he wants to do for fun every weekend.

Instead the Stetson University psychology major is always reminding himself to steer clear of public men's restrooms so he won't get fined for using bathrooms that align with his gender identity, but not the gender he was assigned at birth. Stetson officials have set him up with a one-person restroom he can use on campus, but once he leaves school property, bathroom access becomes a problem again.

I know many from town who moved to live in Florida, mainly to be near the Red Socks winter camp, like most people they couldn't care less about us, the Blacks or other minorities. It doesn’t affect them so they are not even cognizant of what is happening around them.

I don’t blame people that are fleeing the state, they have to make their personal choice and nobody can criticize them for it.

*****

Just to contrast Florida to Connecticut.

On Friday I attended an in-person meeting of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Hate Crime (Yes, the governor formed a group to advise him on bias crimes here in Connecticut, do you think that DeSantis has a group to advise him?) and we had a guest speaker a Holocaust survior talk about his ordeal to escape the Nazis, how he watched his older brother be killed right in front of him. How he watched a mother with a baby sucking her breast both be bayoneted. (Do you think DeSantis would sponsor a lecture like that?). But what made a lasting impression on me was,

He begged mothers to tell the Nazis that he was her child because they were killing all the children without parents. One mother did. He lived with them in a ghetto for a while until they were taken to a labor camp and he worked to fill in bomb damage at a German airfield.

After the war he did what his mother’s last wish to him to do which was become a Rabbi. Over the years, he found some surviving members of his family and he even found the woman who took him in and her son.

But that isn’t what stuck with me from his talk. It was… the Nazis came to his village they rounded up everyone and divided them up… those with a collage education over there. Then they machine gunned them down and threw them in ditch. Educated people can think.

And as he was saying that my mind wandered. The conservatives are banning books… we don’t want the kids learning about that. They are banning what the teachers can say in class… it might give them ideas.