Congress\u2019 lucrative break<\/p>\n
Republican Tom Massie of Kentucky introduced articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for gross mismanagement of the war in Iran. Rather than face the wrath of the president by letting the articles come to the floor for discussion or possibly a vote to impeach, the speaker of the House adjourned Congress for seven weeks. With pay.<\/p>\n
The current salary for a congressman is $174,000 a year, about $3,350 a week.<\/p>\n
The current salary for the speaker of the House is $223,500 a year, about $4,300 a week.<\/p>\n
If they\u2019re getting paid during the break, current full-time House staff members, approximately 8,000 workers, make an average of $1,200 a week.<\/p>\n
All together, this little stunt could cost the U.S. taxpayers nearly $10 million a week.<\/p>\n
Minimum wage in Florida is currently $14 an hour. $560 for a 40-hour week. $2,500 a month. Many of those positions have little paid leave or vacation time. If they don\u2019t work, they don\u2019t get paid.<\/p>\n
Without doing an unscientific poll, like asking those riding the bus down I-Drive at 6 a.m. any day of the week, I feel safe in my contention that most of our hard-working citizens would absolutely love it if their boss strolled by one day and yelled, \u201cEveryone take seven weeks off, with pay!\u201d<\/p>\n
Not gonna happen. But that\u2019s what Mike Johnson just did.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Mary Sharpe, Lady Lake<\/p>\n
Florida, the cruelest state<\/p>\n
Gov. Ron DeSantis proclaims Florida \u201cthe freest state.\u201d That\u2019s debatable. After reading the article about the Board of Governors voting to ban undocumented students from our state universities, I would argue that Florida has become the cruelest state under DeSantis.<\/p>\n
Last year the Legislature forced DACA college students to shift from paying in-state to costlier out-of-state tuition, a mean-spirited and severe hardship. Now, our lawmakers and education overseers do not want undocumented students in Florida to get a college education, a move that is narrow-minded and mean-spirited. How will that help them prepare for life and the job market?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just undocumented immigrants. In 2018, voters restored voting rights to most felons who served their sentences. But instead of allowing them to re-integrate into society as full citizens, DeSantis pushed a law requiring them to pay any outstanding legal obligations with no easy way to verify this, throwing them in limbo \u2014\u00a0 or worse, re-arresting them for unknowingly voting illegally.<\/p>\n
Then there are Florida\u2019s abortion restrictions. Do you see a pattern here? All these laws are negative. They hurt people. They help no one. They lack compassion.<\/p>\n
They make a case for Florida as the cruelest state, certainly not the freest.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Scott Benarde, West Palm Beach<\/p>\n
Youngsters lack practical skills<\/p>\n
Young people today, we\u2019d better accept, are generally in need of more guidance and instruction in basic skills than their predecessors. To be blunt, I think they say and do a lot more stupid stuff than their parents and grandparents ever did and worse, they don\u2019t seem to care that they\u2019re doing it. Confront them and they\u2019re prone to make excuses and shirk responsibility.<\/p>\n
Certainly, the world around us all has dramatically changed in the past two to three generations, but especially for a growing number of our affluent, supposedly well-educated children, I think there appears to have been a steady and noticeable decrease in the knowledge and use of basic, practical-use, life skills. Working adults, especially in management positions, see it everywhere today.<\/p>\n
Occupations that deal with basic necessities: utilities, transportation, construction and so on \u2014 professions so often commonly and glibly called \u201cthe trades\u201d \u2014 have long suffered an annoying, impractical decline in interest. At the same time, American arrogance and its culture\u2019s worship of wealth have taught our kids to devalue and disrespect such practical vocations.<\/p>\n
These few decades may well have taken the rest of us on a shaky ride while our lazy progeny tries to avoid learning the basics. They may launch us into an uncertain world of self-serving and self-served-up technological enhancements. In doing so however, it seems a \u201ctradeoff\u201d has been made: Things that were necessary and worked well have often been replaced by things far more intrinsically complicated and, in most cases, only questionably more useful.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Maurice McCoy, Bokeelia<\/p>\n