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Happy Thursday, Fellow Democrats!


BREAKING NEWS!


The Democratic Club Monthly Meeting is canceled for tonight. But......

TONIGHT! Charlie Crist Town Hall






Office Hours

Our regular office hours are Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Our address is 2345 14^th Ave., Suite 7, Downtown Vero Beach.

Newsletter Highlights

* School board candidate Cindy Gibbs is a couple of hundred shy of completing her petitions to get on the ballot and to support her campaign. Learn how to help in the School Board Candidate section.
* Our friends in Gifford need help cleaning up their community this weekend (Saturday). See the flyer in the Local section.
* We are in need of a Communications Chair! See the Democrats of Indian River section for more details.


School Board Candidate


School Board Candidate

A candidate for school board could use our help!

Cindy Gibbs is running for Jackie Rosario’s seat on the school board. Here are ways you can help:

1. Get her name on the ballot! Cindy is close to achieving the goal of 1,245 petitions but could use your help to get the final few hundred signed. Please sign her petition (which you can access here: [link removed]) and drop it off at the Democratic Headquarters OR you can also stop by the office and sign a petition and grab some to share with your friends!

2. Cindy now has 401 followers on her Facebook page. Please like and share the Cindy Gibbs for School Board Facebook page - @gibbs4schools Let’s get 1,000 likes on that page! Plus, that way you can see all the information Cindy shares about her campaign and goals for our school district.

3. Share her campaign website on your social media or in emails to friends and colleagues in Indian River County [link removed]

4. It takes money to run a campaign, especially when you are running against a Republican. Could you host a house party for Cindy? Invite some friends over for some light snacks and drinks and let Cindy speak for a few minutes. Then ask your friends to support Cindy with a donation.

5. If a house party isn’t your thing, you can easily make a donation at [link removed]

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DEMOCRATS OF INDIAN RIVER


Democratic Executive Committee

We are in need of a Communications Chair! The Communications Chair is in charge of writing website blog posts, press releases, social media, and chairing the committee. For more information or to get involved, please email Stacey at ** [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])




Democratic Women’s Club

Five very accomplished seniors from Vero Beach High School and Indian River Charter High School were presented with scholarship awards from the Democratic Women’s Club of Indian River County at their luncheon last Saturday. The luncheon at Bent Pine was well attended by 80 people! State Representative Anna Eskamani gave an excellent and motivational presentation about political involvement and advocacy. Congratulations to the scholarship winners who are all incredible young women with amazing futures!




The next DWC Book Group meeting will be at 2:00 p.m. on Friday 4/22/22. “A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health”, by Dr. Leanna Wen will be discussed. If you are not a Book Group member and would like to attend the Zoom meeting, please contact Rita Milelli at
** [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
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Democratic Club of Indian River

The Democratic Club meeting originally scheduled for tonight is CANCELED!


FEDERAL

Side-By-Side: While Republicans Want to Raise Taxes on More Than 40% of Floridians, Democrats Push to Lower Costs

While Republicans are already on defense over their agenda of hiking taxes on more than 40% of Floridians and raising healthcare premiums for millions, they will also have to spend this April recess explaining their record of voting against measures to lower costs for Americans.

Over the past two weeks, Republicans in Congress have voted against bills that would lower the cost of insulin, which as many as 2.1 million Floridians rely on, and help as many as 5,736 Florida restaurants and businesses who didn’t receive the first round of Restaurant Revitalization Fund relief cover costs.

House Democrats, on the other hand, overwhelmingly voted in favor of bills to cap the monthly cost of insulin at $35 and get much needed relief to local businesses. And President Biden has proposed a plan to increase taxes on billionaires, not working families and seniors.

See for yourself how Democrats and Republicans’ agendas stack up against each other:





STATE

2022 Florida Legislative Session Health Care Debrief

The 2022 Florida legislative session ended on March 14 with legislators passing a $112.1 billion budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year. This is over 10% more than the current year’s $101.5 billion budget. The state had more to work with primarily because of an influx of federal funds from the American Rescue Plan and a good state economy.

The final budget includes nearly $49 billion in taxpayer funding for health care-related spending. While progress was made on some aspects of health care, legislators did miss some important opportunities to make health care more affordable and accessible for Floridians.

The budget includes:

$1 billion for Medicaid health care providers, including nursing home staffers, to push the minimum wage up to $15 per hour.

7% increase in Medicaid reimbursement rates for nursing homes, but only if they allow a public review of their financials.

$85 million in extra funding for certain children’s hospitals, $156 million for cancer treatment hospitals and $50 million to outlier hospitals.

Eliminates nearly all of the state's $300 million Critical Care Fund, which is used to reimburse the 28 hospitals that treat most of the state’s critically ill adults and children covered by Medicaid.

$41.9 million appropriation to take approximately 789 individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities off the Agency for Persons with Disabilities (APD) waiver waitlist. Unfortunately, there are 22,759 individuals on the waitlist.


The 2022 Session Health Care Debrief PDF (link below) features background on Florida's health care landscape and a review of legislation that passed and failed.

** [link removed] ([link removed])




Leadership Blue

The Florida Democratic Party is excited to share that our annual Leadership Blue Weekend has been scheduled for Friday, July 15 to Sunday, July 17 at the JW Marriott on Water Street in Tampa!

To see the latest updates and information on this year's Leadership Blue weekend, visit leadershipblue.com. We hope you will save the date and join us for a weekend in support of the FDP and Florida's Democratic candidates!

We look forward to sharing more details soon. To ensure you receive more information as we release it, please sign up here:
** [link removed] ([link removed])




LOCAL


Gifford Cleanup

Literacy Services Needs Volunteers!

Fellsmere Easter – Donations Needed



Brightline Speeds

Wondering how fast Brightline will be coming through town. You can see the speeds on the chart below.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

WOW! In the last week it has been encouraging to see so many of our local Democrats stepping up and writing letters to the editor of the TC Palm. Their amazing letters are below. Thank you!


We saw history being made as Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed

The Florida Democratic Black Women's Consortium witnessed history being made as Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. This historic first is an inspiration to all Black women, especially young Black girls aspiring to achieve their dreams.

We watched Judge Jackson's historic confirmation hearings. We watched her endure hateful and nonsensical questioning. We could only insert race into those hearings. Otherwise, why would she have been asked to define "woman?" Or endure lengthy commentaries about her judgment being too soft on crime. Or whether she has a hidden motive to promote critical race theory.

The GOP senators who hammered these questions at Judge Jackson never questioned Justice Brett Kavanaugh's lack of judgment when he was accused of assaulting a woman or his beer consumption that led to that accusation. Or even when he bellowed that he loved beer. GOP senators excused Kavanaugh's actions as youthful indiscretions.

The FDBWC finds Sens. Marco Rubio's and Rick Scott's nay votes very problematic. Their votes pain us because, as a young girl, Ketanji Brown lived in Florida and received her early education through the Miami-Dade public school system. That should have counted for something with Florida's senators. It should have shown that students who are products of Florida's public education system can successfully compete with any students in our nation.

We thank the three Republican senators who voted affirmatively for Judge Jackson. We thank them for considering her character and ability to apply the rule of law without inserting partisan politics. And we thank them for not choosing party over qualifications as Scott did, and I quote, "I have no interest in voting to confirm a liberal justice who thinks it's her job to legislate from the bench and rubber stamp Joe Biden's liberal agenda."

Valerie Brant-Wilson, Vero Beach, is the chair of the Florida Democratic Black Women's Consortium.



Censorship Has No Place in a Democratic Republic

Protecting children is a goal no one would argue with. But when protecting children means keeping them from feeling uncomfortable, it keeps them from growing up, from maturing. It keeps them from learning difficult truths: Life isn’t fair; parents aren’t perfect; humans are capable of doing terrible things to other humans.

Sometimes adults try to protect themselves and their families from a changing world by, for example, not allowing a child in a K-3 classroom to say anything about her two moms, or another child to bring up his beloved gay brother or trans aunt. Guess who’s made to feel uncomfortable and ashamed now? The children who discover their families are so abhorred by the state of Florida that they can’t even be mentioned in the classroom.

When protecting one’s own child leads a parent (or legislator) to limit speech in this way, or to take books they disapprove of for their own child off library shelves so that no child has access to them, that’s censorship. And censorship is not only wrong in a democratic republic, it’s the polar opposite of freedom and liberty for all.

Rebecca Barnhouse, Vero Beach



Florida’s political system is corrupt, broken — and both sides are complicit

Our political system here in Florida is corrupt and broken. As an observer of the environmental component of the latest legislative session in Tallahassee, I can unequivocally say that our system is serving big-money special interests, and is not serving the best interests of we, the people of this great state. Both sides of the aisle are complicit.

The most egregious bill, SB 2508, was filed mid-session. Big Sugar, Big Ag and Big Utilities got to Senate and House leadership and convinced them that rules hard fought over the past three years for more fair management of Lake Okeechobee releases should be annulled. They thought no one was looking, but the environmental community raised hell. The bill was amended, but it remains unacceptable because it waters down the Florida Forever land conservation program as well as critical wetlands protections.

Another bad bill passed by the legislature and awaiting the governor’s signature is HB 741 on net solar metering. According to the bill’s House Staff Analysis March 14 report, less than 1% of the electricity market is rooftop solar, with the other 99% belonging to four investor-owned utility companies.

This bill quickly phases out the benefits to homeowners for installing solar panels and will have a chilling effect on this small-business industry that employs approximately 40,500 state-wide (Comprehensive Economic Development Impacts of the Rooftop Solar Power Industry report dated November 2021, by Washington Economics Group). This is the worst time to de-incentivize homeowners to install renewable energy sources.

Every single House and Senate elected official on the Treasure Coast voted for both these bills at every opportunity they had.

Please contact Gov. Ron DeSantis at (850) 488-7146 or www.flgov.com/email-the-governor to politely ask him to veto both these bills.

Karen Greb, Sebastian


CALENDAR

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

9:00 a.m. – Vero Beach City Council
For agenda and meeting information go to ** [link removed] ([link removed])

You can watch here: ** [link removed] ([link removed])



9:00 a.m. - IRC County Commission
For agenda and meeting information go to
** [link removed] ([link removed])



Thursday, April 21, 2022

6:00 p.m. – Democrats of Indian River, DEC Meeting
Meeting via Zoom. Contact Stacey at [email protected] for meeting link.


7:00 p.m. - Fellsmere City Council
For agenda and meeting information go to
** www.cityoffellsmere.org/citycouncil ([link removed])





TIDBITS

This calm dog paraglides with his human!

** [link removed] ([link removed])

That's all Democrats!
Stay Safe out There!
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