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The Sunshine State is starting to look quite gloomy these days.  Some people are not happy here like they were ten years ago, and it is very understandable.  In 2022 in the state of Florida, you are guilty before being proven innocent.  If you want to disagree with someone in power, they will take everything they possibly can from you.  If you are a woman, you have lost the rights to your own body and reproductive system.  No one agrees on COVID-19 restrictions either and we have been dealing with this for over two years now.  Governor Ron DeSantis is the one thing that all of these issues have in common.  He is even sticking his nose and politics in where it does not belong.  In our school board!  The entire state of Florida is scrambling to get enough teachers to fill all of the vacancies that occurred due to his “ideas” to make teaching our kids better.  So how is that working out so far, Governor DeSantis?  He needs to be stopped.  He cannot be reelected this year.  Florida will not survive much more of this governor.

Andrew Warren was the state attorney in Hillsborough County.  In a classic DeSantis move, Andrew Warren was suspended from his job because he decided to go against Governor DeSantis.  Mr. Warren previously stated that he was not going to punish people for having an abortion, doctors who were giving an abortion, youth receiving gender transition medical care, and doctors who were giving out gender transition medical care.  He previously signed a pledge, along with many other prosecutors around the country, stating that he would not use the criminal legal system resources to criminalize personal medical decisions.  He also signed a pledge back in 2021 with other prosecutors stating that healthcare decisions should be a private matter and that they would not use their positions of power to promote the criminalization of gender transition healthcare.  He simply stated that he was not going to punish these people for simply trying to do what they deem appropriate for their body, their lives, and their mental health.  There is no actual damning evidence against Andrew Warren that he committed any crime by not pursuing charges against any “criminal” that was arrested.  He simply made a statement about his personal opinion in regard to his job which he is allowed to do.  Not every criminal charge will be pursued by the state attorney.  That is true of any attorney.  They can refuse to prosecute any case if they feel they will not get satisfactory results.  Governor DeSantis did not like that answer from Andrew Warren, so he decided to remove him from the state attorney position he was elected to not once, but twice with more than 53% of voters choosing him for the job!  Governor DeSantis is basically throwing his little temper tantrums like a two-year-old that cannot have candy for breakfast.  You see, the governor is overreaching his limitations of power as governor.  The Florida Constitution that all must abide by states in Article IV, Section 7 that an elected official can be removed from the position if the elected official is truly incompetent at their job, they are unable to do the work they were hired to do, or if they have violated their legal obligations of the job they were elected to do.  Andrew Warren is being reprimanded for simply making a statement.  He has not actually committed any offenses against any known laws in Florida.  His chief communications officer, Melanie Snow-Waxler, even lost her job as well.  She was told to either resign and get paid for the rest of August or she could be fired on the spot.  She was terminated on August 12, 2022.  Even her attorney, Ryan Barack, sees that Governor DeSantis has a pattern of retaliation toward people that do not agree with him. So, by removing Andrew Warren from his position as state attorney, Governor DeSantis is basically making it seem like the voter’s opinion does not matter to him and that he is going to do what he wants no matter what even if what he is doing is criminal.  It sounds like the governor needs to be removed from his elected position instead of Andrew Warren and Melanie Snow-Waxler.  To further add to this circus, our governor appointed a puppet, Susan Lopez, who will do whatever he tells her to do.  How is this democracy?  How is this the United States of America?

We all know that Roe v. Wade was overturned earlier this year and officially set women’s rights back about fifty years or so.  It is now up to each state to tell a woman when she can have a baby and if she should be able to have access to birth control that suits her own lifestyle and aligns with her individual beliefs.  Our governor has changed the abortion time limit to 15 weeks with only fetal or maternal death as exceptions to go beyond 15 weeks gestation.  It does not matter to Governor DeSantis how women get pregnant whether it be by molestation, incest, or rape either by a stranger or someone a woman may know.  Governor DeSantis has absolutely no moral ground to stand on when it comes to reproduction.  He wants to indoctrinate the entire state of Florida to believe only his beliefs and that anything else is wrong and will not be tolerated.  Women should not have to fight for their right to reproduce or not.  If a woman gets pregnant and is unable to take care of that child properly, she should be able to make that decision on her own.  No one should be forced to have a baby, especially a teenager or even worse, a pre-teen.  A 16-year-old girl is pregnant now and is being denied an abortion.  The argument is that she is not mature enough to decide to have an abortion.  How in the hell is she mature enough to raise a baby for the next 18 to 21 years? She will most likely have to rely on her family as well as the state of Florida to make sure that the baby has everything it will need.  Kids are expensive and the world is overpopulated as it is now.  Pregnancy is a very emotional time in a woman’s life.  Without the right support team in place, it can be very traumatizing as well.  Hormones fluctuate before, during, and after the pregnancy.  Your body goes through numerous changes from gaining weight, new aches, and pains as well as leaking breast milk for what seems like an eternity!  Getting pregnant is a choice that some women may never know.  Yes, we know an adoption is an option.  You have to think about the birth mother though.  That is going to always be on her mind.  Her child, the one she chose to give up, will always be out there without her.  What if the adoption did not work out and the child ends up living an awful life?  How would that mother feel then?  In the end, the government needs to get out of all women’s reproductive systems.  We should be the only ones that have a say in what happens to OUR bodies.

COVID-19 has been here since 2019 even though we were just told about it in March of 2020.  All of those people that had the flu in December 2019, it was probably COVID-19.  We all know that some people were sicker than others from this disease.  Some people died from it while others just stayed at home in bed for a week.  Weaker strains have since popped up all over the world since the initial outbreak.  One thing agreed on was that people should stay home and away from other people if they tested positive for the virus.  That is a great idea since this virus was contagious!  Staying six feet away from people was a promising idea so you had at least some kind of chance to dodge that illness.  Masks were an even greater idea, so you did not have to share your neighbor’s oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange.  We all were tired of wearing the masks, but they kept us safe when we wore them properly.  Properly worn masks helped keep the spread of COVID-19 down.  Fast forward about a year and a half and everyone hates masks and no longer wants to wear them.  For some reason, Governor DeSantis decides that they are no longer necessary and that everything needs to open back up because our economy was suffering.  It is true that the economy everywhere was suffering somewhat because more people stayed home out of fear of getting sick.  People worked from home.  People actually cooked at home instead of living off of take-out.  People were more neighborly and made new friends with people they have lived next door to for years.  Governor DeSantis missed that part.  When he got on stage to deliver one of his useless speeches, he disciplined children that were wearing masks to protect themselves.  Back in February, he tried to tell a group of kids from Middleton High School, to take off their masks. “You do not have to wear those masks.  I mean please take them off,” DeSantis said.  At first, he asked politely with a sly laugh added to it.  He was not joking though.  “Honestly, it is not doing anything. We’ve gotta stop with this Covid theater. So, if you want to wear it, fine. But this is ridiculous,” he continued.  You can see him sigh over-dramatically and then he began delivering his speech.  Even his spokeswoman, Christina Pushaw claimed that masks were being used to “terrify and manipulate young people and encouraged them to breathe free, feel safe and be happy.”  Is she not aware of the symptoms of COVID-19 and what you will feel like if you have it?  Breathing is not easy when you have COVID-19.  Governor DeSantis even signed an order that barred schools from requiring kids to wear masks at school.  The classrooms are overcrowded, most kids are not going to keep their germs to themselves by washing their hands after using the bathroom, covering their mouth when they cough or sneeze, and using hand sanitizer often.  So, he thought masks were not needed to help keep our kids free from COVID-19!  Do his kids even go to public schools?  More and more people are moving to Florida with their children.  We do not have enough room for all of the kids that live here to go to school here.  How can he possibly think that these are good ideas?  He even thinks it is a great idea for parents to be able to sue the school their kids go to if they are “forced” to wear a mask for the day.  And yet, he is scrambling to fill all of the teaching vacancies at the numerous schools in the state of Florida!  He really does not think things through completely.  You cannot encourage parents to sue the schools their kids attend and then expect teachers and other school professionals to remain employed there.  It is not that hard to understand this concept.  If people feel appreciated, their loyalty is never a question.  If people are unappreciated, their loyalty disappears, and they move on which is exactly what teachers and other staff have done.  So, everyone can thank Governor Ronald Dion DeSantis for the teacher shortage in Florida.  Cheers to the man who does not want our education system to “indoctrinate” our kids before he can do it to the entire state of Florida himself.

The controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill that Governor DeSantis signed into law has supporters as well as protestors.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion because we do still live in a free country as of August 2022.  That could change at any minute it seems.  Our kids went back to school on August 10, 2022.  The kids all looked eager to learn in their freshly pressed uniforms and brand-new shoes.  You could not even tell that the teachers and teacher assistants were having under-cover panic attacks as their students filed into the classrooms for the first day of school.  This year, teachers have to be careful what they say to their students in fear of being sued by their parents or fired by their boss.  Governor DeSantis made sure that our kids will no longer learn about sexual orientation, gender identity, and African American history.  Books are being banned for even mentioning anything about sexuality.  Teachers use to have books in their classrooms for the students to borrow at their leisure.  Reading is fundamental.  It allows kids to use their imagination and sometimes escape from their reality.  Not every kid has the perfect upbringing with their every need being met.  Since DeSantis had a problem with so much, teachers were sent a checklist to use to review all of the books in their classrooms.  So, instead of preparing lesson plans and making sure the classroom is fully supplied, teachers have to go through all of their books to make sure the kids do not learn something Governor DeSantis does not want them to know.  Books banned will contain the following things:

  1. Sexual orientation or gender identity.
  2. Promoting, compelling, or encouraging students to believe one race is superior over others, one sex is superior over the other, people are racist, people are sexist, people are oppressive, moral character is either privileged or oppressed based on race or sex, disrespectful behavior towards another race or sex, discrimination against others based on the historical actions of their ancestors, people should be discriminated against based on their race or sex to achieve inclusion, people feel guilty or psychological distress because of their ancestor’s actions, merit, hard work, fairness, objectivity, and racial colorblindness are racist or sexist and used to oppress members of another race or sex
  3. The book is either the 1619 Project or references the 1619 Project
  4. The books propose racism is currently embedded in our society here in America and our legal systems in order to uphold white people’s supremacy.
  5. If the book denies or minimizes the Holocaust.

Teachers have enough work to do year-round plus before school to make sure our kids have access to everything they need in order to be successful.  How does banning books to instruct our kids about history that is not going away, going to be beneficial?  Kids need to learn about the past in order to have a better future.  Our past was done by our ancestors.  There is absolutely nothing we can do about it, and we cannot change it.  Governor DeSantis is trying to erase all of the bad parts of American history.  He does not want our kids to know that Africans were used as slaves.  They were sold, abused, and even murdered.  White people are often seen as privileged back then and now because they were, and are still, in control of everything.  Banning books is just another way for white America to assert its dominance over a government official.  He is promoting parents to sue the school and teachers for making sure their child is educated.  The new law may say that this only applies to kindergarten through the third grade, but the wording is what makes it apply to any grade level.  The wording is “not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate” which makes it possible for any teacher to get into trouble, and lose their teaching license along with their employment.  Since our governor signed this bill into law so quickly, he forgot to mention exactly what is deemed age and developmentally appropriate or what the consequences are if the teachers break this new law.  Two people in the same family can interpret one thing in two different ways.  What I think is appropriate, my mother may not find appropriate.  There is a lot of uncertainty at the beginning of this new school year, and it is all because of Governor Ronald Dion DeSantis.

Governor DeSantis is making sure his name stays in the news at any and all costs.  He is campaigning his false promise that “Freedom Lives Here” when he is taking them from us.  He is somehow raising millions of dollars for his re-election campaign while spilling his crap into the media about things that are not exactly a priority.  He is making sure to remove anyone in power that does not agree with him and replace them with puppets that he, the puppet master, can control with the pull of a string.  He is letting veterans and first responders become teachers since he alienated the ones that actually went to school and got their teaching license through years of schooling.  He is not concerned about the cost of living here.  Rent is no longer affordable in any county.  The cheap housing options look like condemned houses that are on the verge of collapsing.  Gas prices are ridiculously high, and people can no longer afford to just take a leisure Sunday drive to see the countryside.  Food prices are so high that people are going hungry.  Many kids are going to school just so they can have access to two healthy meals a day.  For a lot of kids, that is their only option for eating at least five days a week.  Governor DeSantis does not care about the average citizen of Florida.  He is only showing that he cares about the ones that can get him re-elected.  We are going hungry and becoming homeless, but it does not seem to matter to the people in charge.  When your voters are no longer here, what will you do then Ron? What will you do when the shoe is on the other foot, and you are a regular, working-class citizen?  Will you wonder how you are going to pay your rent?  Will you worry about the bank taking your house back because the mortgage rates skyrocketed?  Will you wonder how you are going to feed your kids because the cost of groceries is too high that you can only afford a loaf of bread, a half-gallon of milk, a small jar of peanut butter, and one box of cereal?  Will you wonder how your daughters are going to raise their babies when they got pregnant at the age of fifteen by a boyfriend who no longer wants them, and it is too late for an abortion?  Will you wonder what you did wrong if your son comes to you and tells you he is gay?  These are circumstances a lot of us face and you do not even care about us or our situations.  You are not for the people.  You are for yourself and the ones that can afford the $400,000 homes with $50,000 cars parked in the driveway.  Everyone deserves the same type of respect no matter what tax bracket we are in.  We are all human.  We all bleed red.  You should remember that.  Governor Ronald Dion DeSantis is running Florida into the ground and yet most of the citizens here are blind to it all.  Wake up, people!  Open your damn eyes and see the injustices we are facing here in Florida.  Our state needs you in order for it to survive longer.  Everything that is perishable has an expiration date.  Land and resources have one as well.  Let’s not move the date closer and closer to our current time.  I would like to leave behind a great state for my kids, grandkids, and eventually great-grandkids to enjoy.  We need to remove Governor DeSantis from his elected position.  Site Article IV, Section 7 as the reason.  It worked for him against Andrew Warren, and he only made a statement.  Governor DeSantis is incompetent and neglects his duties as Governor.  Let’s work together as a united front and take Florida back and make it so everyone feels valued and not just the select few.  It is time to take a stand and get our great sunshine state of Florida back to the people.  Wake up, rise up, take your stand among the greats and let’s take over!

Check out the video below to see how you can qualify to become a teacher in the state of Florida without having a license or any other kind of certification.  Veterans do have a wealth of knowledge and experience to share with our kids but so do a lot of other people that are not veterans.  Why does Governor Ron DeSantis single out veterans only?  I support our veterans, but they are not the only ones that need a job these days.

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About The Author

Julie Nocito

Julie is a freelance writer from upstate New York who currently lives in central Florida. Julie has been writing freelance works since she was in 11th grade and still enjoys doing it. Julie is able to write anything for you whether it be blogs, web content, business reviews and more. She will do her research in order to give thorough and honest information.