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Hey America, is everything okay down there? Y'all have some truly dystopian stuff going on there. Felony prosecution for showing kids books that the Governor d
by mabbo 4y ago
Hey America, is everything okay down there?
Y'all have some truly dystopian stuff going on there. Felony prosecution for showing kids books that the Governor didn't approve of?
Yikes.
- jdlyga 4y agoNothing's ever been ok in Florida. They do their own thing down there, and we stay far away from the crazyness. Each state is semi-independent with the federal/state separation of powers. It's good for vacation though.
- srndsnd 4y agoI dunno. As the country bifurcates more and more, I'm thinking long and hard about if I want to travel to certain states. I'd rather as little of my money as possible be spent there.
- throwaway5959 4y agoDon’t worry, your federal tax dollars get routed to these states automatically.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gadflyinyoureye 4y agoI know how you feel. I refuse to go to Virginia since they don't accept my CCW permit from Florida.
- seanw444 4y agoI don't step in non-constitutional-carry states. The good thing is that, with the exception of basically Florida, there are no states I care to visit that don't already have it. The problem is traveling to those states. I'm temporarily a felon to get there, even though it is my right to keep and bear that handgun nationally. Beats me. I will not contribute my money to a government that does not allow me my rights, and will also not disarm myself to make myself more of a juicy target just to temporarily sight-see. Not worth it. Plenty of pretty sights to see in the states that aren't ridiculous.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago> and will also not disarm myself to make myself more of a juicy target Are you the president of the United States? Are you a multi-millionaire? Are you openly a member of a gang or other criminal organization? If not, then, quite plainly, you're not a target. Period.
- seanw444 4y agoHmm. Watch Active Self Protection on YouTube, and tell me that again. You'd be surprised how often people get targeted for no reason / stupid reasons. Frankly, I find that the people that oppose guns and concealed carry are usually the type that live in nice neighborhoods and make nearly six figures, where the opinion is invalid. So, basically the demographic of Hacker News.
- soco 4y agoHow about this crazy idea that instead of bringing war to those nice neighborhoods, to try to make all neighborhoods better?
- seanw444 4y ago"Bringing war" is a misunderstanding of the point. It's to have the means to defend yourself if you become a victim. Not to initiate it.
- EForEndeavour 4y agoI don't want to come off as a troll, but I honestly believe that a person can do both those things at the same time: 1. Do what you can to make all neighbourhoods better. (Donate to or volunteer at local organizations working to improve neighbourhoods, get to know your neighbours, vote for positive change, join neighbourhood watch, etc.) 2. Do what you can to protect yourself until Step 1 comes to fruition. (Avoid high-risk areas, maintain situational awareness, train in self-defense, carry self-defense tools, etc.)
- notch656c 4y ago
- newaccount2021 4y ago[dead]
- notch656c 4y agoThere were some books that some segment of voters didn't approve of that certain school libraries were providing. This seems like a backdoor way to stop that while bypassing having to go through controversial school board meetings and/or 1A constitutionality issues to block those books. Not to say this isn't insane, just explaining how I think it happened.
- edgyquant 4y ago[flagged]
- nickthegreek 4y agoequally dystopian agenda? One side is removing all books that aren't on a whitelist.
- l33t233372 4y agoAm I mistaken in understanding that this “White list” is actually a large collection of white lists, and each district’s librarians curate their district’s list?
- nickthegreek 4y agoWouldn't that be even worse? A teacher could get a felony for having a book that their neighboring school can read. Hyper local laws being felonies sounds incredibly dangerous. How often are the lists updated and how likely is it for the teacher to be operating on the correct list?
- giraffe_lady 4y agoProgressives are not responsible for the actions their opponents choose to take, or the justifications they use when taking them.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
- renlo 4y ago[flagged]
- miguelazo 4y agoConflating Spain with events in another European country, as if the EU (of which Ukraine isn't even part of) were comparable to the United States, is ridiculous. You clearly have no grasp of history or geography, let alone modern politics.
- renlo 4y ago[flagged]
- miguelazo 4y agoNo, your point is that lumping New York and Florida together is comparable to lumping Spain and Latvia together. That is definitely not the case. Completely different histories, languages, and governing structures.
- anotherboffin 4y agoCame here to say pretty much this. Conflating two states in a nation with two different nations in the EU isn’t exactly the best way to say “everything is ok here”.
- happytoexplain 4y agoAnalogies are often terrible because they just shift the conversation to identifying the differences and similarities in the two sides of the analogy and arguing about their relevance or lack thereof. That may lead somewhere eventually, but probably not, and certainly not efficiently. A good analogy illustrates a different way of viewing something that not all readers might have considered, rather than simply asserting that two things are equivalent in the given context. Edit: Also, I am American, so I hope you can curb your European-focused hatred when reading my comment.
- dang 4y ago
- hsnewman 4y agoWe have an big propaganda issue that is being exploited by our national enemy's (I'm talking about you Russia). All this stuff that upsets our stable society is only good for our enemies. Nobody should care of what other people are reading, unless it poses a threat to our society. Talk about shouting fire in a theater.
- barbazoo 4y agoHow is this Russia's doing? Do you have a source for that claim?
- hsnewman 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_warfare "Russian interference in foreign elections Russian interference in foreign elections, most notably the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, has been described as information warfare." Hey putin, you can downvote me all you want!
- happytoexplain 4y agoRead as written, it seems like the parent is saying that things like this (felony for providing a child anything but whitelisted books) destabilize the society they occur in, and bad national actors exploit and encourage that instability. Not that Russia directly induced this law.
- barbazoo 4y agoI just don't get the link to these idiotic policies put into place in places like Florida. Is Russia using Facebook or something to make people there believe dumb shit?
- sasattack 4y agoI think it's a subtle form of white nationalism and American exceptionalism when you pretend that the most racist, backwards, destructive, Country on Earth couldn't have come up with every single one of these policies all on their own
- berkle4455 4y agoIt’s Florida. And, no, things aren’t okay.
- miguelazo 4y agoPlenty of other states aren't far behind.
- jimbob45 4y agoFlorida gets a bad rap. Their Sunshine Law[0] has them voluntarily offering their dirty laundry to the public to keep themselves accountable. Only an ignorant or a jealous fool would call that a bad thing. You have to truly be living in 1984 to want your government to hide more things from you. [0]https://floridadep.gov/sites/default/files/FloridaSunshinePublicRecordsLaws.pdf https://floridadep.gov/sites/default/files/FloridaSunshinePu...
- mrguyorama 4y ago1) Small time offenders should probably be given the same dignity and privacy as other people. There's no reason to believe allowing people to turn a police blotter into weekly entertainment is a positive thing. 2) This is about the state government doing things. Florida's different criminal disclosure laws have no relevance here. Florida is fucky because florida's state government is run by a narcissist who wishes he was a dictator.
- scifibestfi 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nickthegreek 4y agoBooks didnt prompt this, people did.
- CydeWeys 4y agoPlease tell me exactly which books are so heinous that having them present in schools merits felony charges?
- notch656c 4y agoI am very much against this law but I think "present in school" is much different than "curated." I couldn't give a shit if kids were bringing Anarchist Cookbook and images of the tortures at Abu Dhabi prison to school. What the kid and his family obtain on their own through private means and choose to read in a public venue like a school IMO is none of my business. If the teachers are curating books that disproportionately pushes certain non-academic agendas, though, then maybe the parents ought to have the right to guide the employment of that teacher to make sure it follows the desires of the voters. Criminal charges are insane though.
- CydeWeys 4y agoWhat you're describing very much isn't happening, though. These books indeed were merely "present in school" on a book shelf. Nobody's being indoctrinated into practical terrorism in Florida schools by being forced to read the Anarchist's Cookbook or anything like that.
- notch656c 4y agoIf the books in the school library just appear there with no influence by the school staff in charge of the libraries then I guess we can just fire the library staff. Then there's no one there to risk a felony. I didn't realize it was completely non-curated and unmanaged in Florida.
- mfer 4y agoTo fill in some context... This isn't about Governor approval. This was approved by the legislature and signed into law by the governor. Not a mandate by them. The context of all of this is teachers putting books in front of kids that their parents don't approve of. I'm not in Florida but I'll give you a local example to me that's come under debate. A book with sexually explicit material was recently pulled from an elementary school. Kids 10-ish and under. sex education doesn't come until the end of elementary school. If I understand it right, this was not an education book. There is debate over whether this should be in the school and there are parents, politicians, and teachers on both sides of this. What got Florida to this point is worth exploring and discussing. No matter what side you're on.
- CydeWeys 4y ago> I'm not in Florida but I'll give you a local example to me that's come under debate. A book with sexually explicit material was recently pulled from an elementary school. What book was it? I ask because the first real science fiction book that I ever read, that inspired a life-long love for the genre, and which I read under the age of ten, was Rendezvous With Rama, which did contain a sex scene. And the presence of said sex scene didn't traumatize me or anything; I mostly just didn't understand it. Certainly not worth preventing me from having access to that book in its entirety over!
- AlexandrB 4y agoGreat question! Because books like Catcher in the Rye get flagged for sexual content all the time.
- mfer 4y agoUnfortunately, I don't remember the name of the book. It was one I was not familiar with. The discussion noted that the book discussed using "toys". They also noted that there was an add for buying sex toys as part of the book. These are elements that really caught my attention. I have a hard time seeing most parents in the US being ok with this material being put in front of kids who are 5-10 years old.
- havblue 4y agoA lot of people are under the impression that public schools are a disaster in this country unless you're in a high performing school district. Either buy an expensive house or try to make enough money to send your kids to private school. So, no, public schools are not okay here, regardless of your view on this law.
- Someone1234 4y agoIt is designed that way. Instead of taking property tax money, pooling it, then evenly dividing it across a state. The way most states are designed is that property tax is given to the local school district, meaning that areas with cheaper homes get less money than areas with more expensive homes. This is made worse by demographic problems associated with poverty which makes teaching poor kids more expensive than rich (e.g. ESL, food poverty, unstable households, behavioral issues, untreated mental health problems, etc). There're three tiers: Private education, rich area public, and poor area public education.
- yamtaddle 4y agoThe money's a very small part of the problem. Failing schools have huge piles of money thrown at them all the time, and it doesn't help like one might think it would if that were the main problem. Actually fixing US schools amounts to "fix (or significantly mitigate) the US poverty-cycle problem", unfortunately. Unfortunate because if just funding poor schools like rich schools (Nb sometimes those funding levels are the opposite of what you'd expect, though—there are state and federal programs to funnel money to really, really bad schools) then it'd be straightforward and (relatively!) cheap to fix. The actual causes are more complex and would require far more "political will", as they say, plus a lot more money, to fix.
- Someone1234 4y ago> The money's a very small part of the problem. Failing schools have huge piles of money thrown at them all the time, and it doesn't help like one might think it would if that were the main problem. I disagree. When poorer areas have worse student:teacher ratios while paying teachers less, and giving them the most challenging students, it is absolutely about the money. Even if teachers are willing to take on a bigger challenge, we're also asking them to take a pay cut to do so which isn't reasonable.
- zacharytelschow 4y agoCan I correctly surmise that you're Canadian? If so, your leader declared a national emergency to squash free speech, banished handguns so you can no longer protect yourself, and cut off political opponents from the financial system. Trying to control the books children can view in an educational environment seems trivial by comparison.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- speakfreely 4y agoNot that Canadian authoritarianism makes this FL issue any less ridiculous, but since you brought it up, I am kind of amazed that no one in a "modern democracy" (what I thought Canada was aiming for) had any problem with the alarming weaponization of the financial system against anyone who even donated to the trucker protests. In my mind, it was somewhat equivalent to a Republican-controlled US government freezing the bank accounts of anyone who donated to Planned Parenthood and then was protesting the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade. It was an alarming abandonment by Trudeau's government of the principles that I would've assumed they were trying to uphold.
- zacharytelschow 4y ago> Republican-controlled US government freezing the bank accounts of anyone who donated to Planned Parenthood I'm not familiar with this. Searches yield articles about freezing of Planned Parenthood funding. Could you point me in the right direction for more details?
- speakfreely 4y agoIt was an example of something comparable to what the Canadian government did, except with US conservatives as the aggressors.
- bb101 4y ago"banished handguns so you can no longer protect yourself..." I think this view has been quite comprehensively debunked by now. I for one do not want to live in a country where most people have access to handguns.
- dmje 4y agoIt really does look truly weird from out here. I mean, I'm living in the UK, where some seriously bad shit is going down, but even given all o that, stuff in the US looks pretty dark...!
- schulboy 4y agoWhat countries do you feel are correct here? Looking across the pond I see people being arrested for mean tweets and memes. Seems rather further dystopian than a state mandating their public tax funded schools keep content neutral around divide topics - allowing parents to make their decisions.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y agoPoliticization of schooling, particularly party-political school board elections, is setting up conflict between teachers (who are seen as a natural liberal constituency) and some people who seem to have drunk particularly deeply of the anti-woke koolade.
- dang 4y agoPlease don't take HN threads into nationalistic and ideological flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mardifoufs 4y agoCanada literally suspended its entire charter and its constitutional rights not even a year ago. But I guess we really like to sneer at the americans and project while looking the other way or coming up with excuses when we do much worse. The inferiority complex here in canada would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.