Monday, May 31, 2021
9:00 AM
Veterans Memorial Island
Riverside Park, Vero Beach
Keynote Speaker: Mrs. Michelle Dale
Topic: 100th Anniversary of troops returning from WWI
For your comfort please bring a lawn chair.
(In the event of rain, the event will move to the Vero Beach High School Performing Arts Center.)
For more information, please call the Veterans Council at (772) 410-5820
Veterans Memorial Island Sanctuary is located adjacent to Riverside Park on the Barrier Island, south of the Merrill Barber Bridge. After World War II, the Intracoastal Waterway was slated for dredging and Mr. Alex Mac William, Sr., a veteran, and member of the Florida Legislature, persuaded the Federal Government to realign the existing Vero Beach channel to make way for a modern drawbridge and to create a memorial island with the surplus dredging material. The Island was purchased by the City of Vero Beach on May 5, 1947 and it was dedicated in the early 1960's as Memorial Island Park. On August 19, 2003, a Veterans Memorial Island Sanctuary Advisory Committee was formed to assist the City Council and the Veterans Council with reviewing documentation for proposed memorials to be constructed on the Island. On July 6, 2004, the name was changed to Veterans Memorial Island Sanctuary. Veterans Memorial Island Sanctuary is now a quiet haven for reflection on the sacrifices made by the men and women in the Armed Forces of the United States. It contains memorials to the men and women of Indian River County who died in combat while defending our nation. It has been said that this is one of the most beautiful veteran sanctuaries in the country. People are welcome to visit and take a walk on the island or sit on a bench and reflect on the sacrifices of our Veterans of the Armed Forces. The island was created for quiet contemplation, and therefore general recreational activities are not permitted.
DeSantis: People Moving to Florida ‘Overwhelmingly’ Registering as Republicans, Including Democrats
Epoch Times
Gov. Ron DeSantis said that people moving to Florida from other states are “overwhelmingly” registering as Republicans, and that includes Democrats who fled their states due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“The media, at the beginning of this, said Florida’s bad, and I think it’s because they want to damage [former President Donald] Trump in Florida, they want to damage me. So, they just kept saying it was bad,” DeSantis told Fox News on May 26.
“And even though the facts didn’t say it, like literally last April, they’re saying Florida is doing worse than New York.
“New York was like 10 times worse.”
DeSantis, a Republican, has resisted lockdowns, in a move that has drawn criticism from some Democrats and corporate media outlets. In recent months, the governor has issued executive orders or signed bills ending statewide mask mandates, local emergency orders to necessitate lockdowns, and preventing so-called “vaccine passport” systems from being implemented—actions that have been near-universally praised by conservatives.
“And so, I think what it did is the people that buy those phony narratives for these media, they probably aren’t coming to Florida. But most people see through it. But the people that see through it, they think like us. And so, I think a lot of these people are coming. I think they are registering as Republicans overwhelmingly,” DeSantis said. “And I also have come across a lot of people who, quite frankly, were Democrats. The lockdowns turned them into Republicans.”
He was responding to a comment from Fox News’ Sean Hannity, who noted that a number of people from New Jersey, New York, and California have left their states due to lockdowns and left-wing politics for Republican-led states such as Florida.
But the governor noted that he has “come across a lot of people” who said they were Democrats but are now Republicans because of school lockdowns caused by teachers’ unions’ decisions.
“People say, ‘I was a Democrat because of education and I’m in California and they’re locking my kids out of school. I come to Florida, they’re in school.’ People are free. People are happy,” he said.
He added: “If you have a political party that puts the interest of teachers’ unions over the interest of kids being able to just access an education at all, that tells you all you need to know about the modern Democrat Party.”
There has been growing speculation that DeSantis may attempt to run for president in 2024 if Trump doesn’t. Last week, DeSantis provided hints about his future in politics.
“I can tell you this: In the state of Florida, with me as governor, I have only begun to fight,” DeSantis said.
ATTORNEY GENERAL ASHLEY MOODY
Attorney General Ashley Moody recognized May as Military Appreciation Month by highlighting consumer protection resources for military members, veterans and their families. The Attorney General’s Military and Veteran Assistance Program actively assists military members and veterans who may have been targeted by businesses and individuals that engage in unfair methods of competition or deceptive and unfair trade practices.
Attorney General Ashley Moody said, “Our military members and veterans have sacrificed so much for our country. We can never thank them enough for their service, but we can show our appreciation and offer support when needed. My office’s Military and Veteran Assistance Program works diligently to ensure that our active duty, guard and reserve members, and veterans of the Armed Forces are protected from unscrupulous businesses and individuals. MVAP also assists the families of these courageous Americans.”
The Attorney General’s Office developed MVAP to help educate military members and veterans about scams designed to target their community, what they can do to guard against fraud and how to report scams and deceptive business practices. Additionally, MVAP partners with the statewide Florida Veterans Legal Helpline. The helpline provides free advice and assistance to eligible veterans and their families on a variety of civil legal matters.
For more information on MVAP, click here.
For more information on the Florida Veterans Legal Helpline, click here.
Scams and deceptive business practices targeting service members and veterans can be reported to the Attorney General’s Office by calling 1(866) 9NO-SCAM or visiting MyFloridaLegal.com.
FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL BILL BARR: INDOCTRINATION IN STATE-RUN SCHOOLS MAY BE UNCONSTITUTIONAL
Former Attorney General William Barr received an award from the Alliance Defending Freedom’s (ADF) last week. Barr gave a speech in which he cautioned the biggest threat to religious liberty today is the militant secular-progressive education in our state-run schools.
Barr said, “Over the past 12 tumultuous months, there has been a great deal of discussion about the radical ideology being promoted in our schools, and what it means for national unity, public safety, and the health of our politics.”
The radical ideology to which Barr refers is critical race theory (CRT), which teaches that the United States is fundamentally racist, so students must view every social interaction and person in terms of race or color in order to be “antiracist.” This is the antithesis of the view of the civil rights movement, which taught that people should be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.CRT is more akin to Marxism, in fact, which posits human society is inherently flawed because it is structured according to social class – scaled from upper to lower – creating inherent conflict and antagonism. Such a system needs to be destroyed, Marxism claims. Similarly, critical race theory sorts society according to race, calling one race the oppressor and all others the oppressed. Again, the system must be destroyed.
Judeo-Christian philosophy, on the other hand, as reflected in the early goals of public education in the U.S., sought to create “a sense of common identity and common civic and cultural bonds,” according to Barr, as well as “the moral formation of America’s youth—the building of moral character.”
The two approaches to education are completely at odds, and, as we are beginning to see, cannot coexist. Whereas one is designed to promote unity through common, shared values, the other seeks to tear apart the fabric of a supposed inherently unjust society and replace it with something else. As Barr put it:
One of the main justifications for the common school movement was that they would be institutions to effectuate the melting pot—to promote our common identity, to promote a solidarity based on being an American. But now the schools have taken on the opposite mission of separating us, of teaching unbridgeable differences, of dividing us into many different identities destined to be antagonistic.
As radical secular-progressive theory intrudes more and more into the curriculum of public schools, Barr suggests, “We must confront the reality that it may no longer be fair, practical, or even constitutional to provide publicly-funded education solely through the vehicle of state-operated schools.”
While public schools increasingly fail to produce students proficient in basic reading and math, an example is what is being taught, instead, in one school district: During “Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, the school district distributed a children’s coloring book page that teaches: ‘Everyone gets to choose if they are a girl or a boy or both or neither or someone else, and no one else gets to choose for them.'”
Typically, parents aren’t even given notice or an option to remove their children from such instruction while their own tax dollars are paying for it. But Barr says it doesn’t have to be that way:
Public funding of education does NOT require that instruction must be delivered by means of government-run schools. The alternative is to have public funds travel with each student, allowing the student and the parents to choose the school—private, public, sectarian, or non-sectarian—that best fits their needs and the dictates of their conscience. Here Barr implies support and justification for school choice, vouchers, even home schooling.
A second and potentially more serious problem than how public education today is delivered and paid for, Barr points out, is a legal, constitutional one. Secular-progressive education, by definition, is antireligious. In fact, every day we hear stories about how students are prohibited from religious expression at school.
Breitbart News wrote about a recent court case with a fortunate and all too rare outcome. School administrators at the University of Iowa banned the Business Leaders in Christ (BLinC) student group from campus for “requiring its student leaders to affirm the Christian faith.” In this case, the group sued to be reinstated and prevailed in a federal appeals court.
By prohibiting the free exercise of religion on campus, the school violates one of the basic protections of the First Amendment to the Constitution. But the fact that the student group was banned at all points to antireligious discrimination so profound as to suggest the school had adopted an actual alternative to Judeo-Christian faith – that choosing to indoctrinate students with secular-progressivism is being promoted as a type of religion itself, and this violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
So Barr is suggesting that what we face today, with the pervasive teaching of radical left-wing ideologies on campuses that have a monopoly over public education, is ripe for constitutional challenges on a couple of fronts.
As he concluded in his speech to the ADF, “Confronting this issue is one of the most urgent tasks for concerned legislators, lawyers, and organizations such as this one. To save religious liberty, we must save our families and their children from the extreme secular-progressivism that pervades our current system of public schools.”
Watch Barr’s speech to the Alliance Defending Freedom:
CONGRESSMAN BILL POSEY
House Passes Posey’s Bipartisan Lagoon Initiatives
Representative Bill Posey’s legislation—the National Estuaries and Acidification Research Act or NEAR Act—aimed at fighting coastal acidification and helping estuaries like our Indian River Lagoon—has passed the House of Representatives with bipartisan support.
“Estuaries are some of most diverse ecosystems in the country, and because estuaries are places where freshwater mixes with salt water from the oceans, preserving this delicate balance is necessary but also challenging,” said Rep. Bill Posey. “This critical legislation will help protect our estuaries by ensuring that we continue to study and monitor the effects of coastal acidification.”
Specifically, the NEAR Act directs the National Academies of Science Ocean Study Board to conduct a two-year study examining the science of ocean acidification and its impact on our estuaries. The goal of the NEAR Act is to create a better understanding of coastal acidification, so we can better manage and mitigate its effects on our nation’s estuaries and other natural treasures.
The House also passed bipartisan legislation Rep. Posey cosponsored with Rep. Susanne Bonamici (D-OR), the Coastal and Ocean Acidification Stressors and Threats (COAST) Research Act, which directs NOAA to pick up the role of leading research for coastal acidification. This bill will help fund research to protect from future assaults on our coasts and help defend our wildlife and biodiversity from threats like acidification.
“I am pleased to see the House support this critical research in a bipartisan way. These bills will take important steps to preserve the future of our estuaries and coastal communities,” said Rep. Posey.
Keep up with the Congressman at:
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