The Flagler County Commission’s attempt unilaterally to impose an increase in the sales tax is the latest example of a lazy, bumbling commission addicted to spending, deceptive in its methods and indifferent to the long-term public interest.
Pierre Tristam
Critical Rage Theory
Critical race theory has been around almost 50 years and went mainstream 25 years ago, but Trumpist Republicans are discovering it only now, passing laws in several states to ban the teaching of critical race theory without understanding the first thing about it, but proving with every ban that it is less theory than fact.
‘Enough’ Is Not Enough: Flagler’s Dangerous Leer at Extremism
What happened on Tuesday at the Palm Coast City Council is indefensible and dangerous. But it’s nothing new. We’ve simply not been paying attention to a perilous degradation of public discourse and behavior. We are slowly becoming a crueler community debased by primitive instincts, because no one in charge, or too few people in charge, are standing up and saying enough.
What Stolen Election Diehards Owe Holocaust Deniers
Holocaust denialism’s dregs on the fringe don’t get much attention because responsible institutions from publishers to campuses to media organizations kept them in their gutter. Election deniers are owed no less.
Stop Trash-Talking the Unemployed
Misinformation and distortions by businesses and some politicians, echoed by media, are blaming the unemployed for staying home to live on government checks. The evidence says otherwise, though belittling workers and lampooning government is part of the continuing war against better wages and stronger worker-safety protections.
The Odious Victor Barbosa
An examination of Palm Coast Councilman Victor Barbosa’s accusation of “corruption” against Manager Matt Morton reveals it to be baseless and defamatory, while Barbosa’s own methods, from trying to get city employees fired, meddling in administrative business, blindsiding the council and shaming of residents in the city’s name, raise questions about his own understanding of, or fitness for, the job.
Lysenko, Stalin and Trump
On the one-year mark of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump’s malicious, politically motivated anti-science handling of a calamity that has killed more than half a million Americans so far recalls the alliance between fake Soviet scientist Trofim Lysenko and Stalin, which led to the death of millions.
The Golden Rule Is Not Cancel Culture
The Dr. Seuss estate’s decision to pull six books from reprints has nothing to do with cancel culture. That pair of terms has become its own dogmatic dumbbell anyway. Our misplaced nostalgia for books we were so fond of isn’t more important than the golden rule of looking out for our neighbors, to whom the same nostalgia translates as insult or put-down.
Addiction Is Not a Crime. The Drug War Is.
To continue with our cruel and sadistic drug war is the daily crime. The only way out is to decriminalize all drugs, treat, repair and, somehow, atone for lawmakers’ and the judicial system’s half-century assault on their own citizens.
Joe Biden’s Inauguration, and Amanda Gorman’s Beacon
President Joe Biden’s moving and restorative inauguration was upstaged by Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, whose words reflected the unvanquished voice of the American we idealize, the possible and the impossibly scaled in this country of the “battered and beautiful.”