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What You Missed This Week in La Gaceta

From As We Heard It, by Patrick Manteiga

► The Florida Legislature is considering a bill that would prohibit fruits and vegetables from containing vaccines. It’s OK for the fruits and vegetables to be genetically engineered and be covered in pesticides, but the Legislature wants to draw the line at your apple preventing measles.
We wonder what the heck they are thinking. Our auto insurance went up by $1,000, or close to 20 percent. We had no accidents, no claims, no children live at home, credit is great and I’m 60, which should be the sweet spot for being a safe driver. The cost is around $5,000. The next closest bid was $10,000. How can this be if auto insurance is a regulated industry?
There are no bills that the Legislature is considering that cap these stupid increases at a reasonable level.
It’s sad that these guys and gals up there aren’t fighting for the things that affect us. We would like to afford to drive to the grocery store to buy lettuce. We don’t care if it’s vaccinated or not.(to read more, buy a paper)

► “Any security professional, military, government, or otherwise, would be fired on the spot for this type of conduct and criminally prosecuted for being so reckless with this kind of information. The fact that she wouldn’t be held accountable for this, I think, blows the mind of anyone who’s held our nation’s secrets dear, and who’s had a top-secret clearance like I have and others who know that even one hiccup causes a problem.” – Pete Hegseth in 2016 on Fox News pontificating about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton using a private e-mail server for her government e-mail communications.
Nine years later:
“Nobody was texting war plans.” – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth answering a question on March 26, 2025 from a reporter who inquired, “Why were those details shared on Signal and how did you learn that a journalist was privy to the targets, types of weapons used and timing?”
Hillary Clinton made a mistake when she used a private server to handle her government e-mail. There was a potential that confidential information could have gotten out to the wrong hands, but there never surfaced an incident where secrets got out to the wrong people.
Hegseth’s mistake was far worse. Confidential information was leaked in real time to a journalist who should not have received the information. … Hegseth’s short time as the head of the greatest military force on earth has been a joke. He is not qualified and our fighting men and women deserve better.(to read more, buy a paper)

► State Senator Randy Fine wants to be the great savior of Jews, but instead he just comes across as Muslim-phobic. He obviously hates all Muslims or anyone who he suspects is Muslim.
Fine was chairing a committee this week and one of the public speakers was wearing a keffiyeh, which is a traditional Middle Eastern headdress. As this taxpayer left the podium, Fine said, “Enjoy your terrorist rag.”
When the audience started to voice opposition to Fine’s asinine comment, he added, “I’m the chairman. I can say what I want. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”
This is his last week as a state senator. He resigned to run for Congress. He is leaving the Legislature and wants to cement his position as the biggest jerk in the capital. … (to read more, buy a paper)

► Is the new formula for New College failing to attract students?
The governor has made New College into a ultra-conservative school from what was an ultra-liberal one. His plan has drastically raised the cost of New College, which currently has just over 800 students.
With New College struggling, it appears the plan to cover the failure is to make the college larger by stripping Ringling Museum from Florida State University and giving it to New College. The other move is for New College to take over USF Sarasota Campus.
These plans for the USF merger were secret until the press made them public.
The USF Sarasota Campus has around 2,000 students and can offer many more classes and opportunities than New College.
There is no local push for this. In fact, no community wants to reduce its selection of colleges and universities as this plan would do.(to read more, buy a paper)

From Chairman of the Bored, by Gene Siudut

► … And that’s when I discovered the Dickinson work. While it’s a nice piece, I blasted through it quickly. That’s not because I am a speed reader, but because it’s not a book.
It’s a 90-word poem.
I get the outdoorsy/spring theme of the theme of the recommended books, but with the State’s assault on schools, education, etc. I can’t imagine anyone from the State recommending a 19th century transcendentalist , let alone a poem.
I assume someone just started looking up words associated with spring and came up with the title and recommended it without ever knowing it wasn’t a book, nor its content. And for the record, “Green Eggs and Ham,” which has seven times the amount of words of Dickinsons’s poem.
Full disclosure, “Green Eggs and Ham” only has 50 words, Dr. Suess just used the same ones a lot due to a challenge that he could not write a book using only 50 words. …(to read more, buy a paper)

From The Reasonable Standard, by Matt Newton

► Not long ago, the State Legislature unveiled the Live Local Act. It held great promise: an expeditated, administrative process to vest non-residential land (i.e. commercial and industrial) with residential entitlements.
Rather than have real estate developers navigate the lengthy, very expensive, and often-emotional public hearing process, the Legislature empowered them with a cheaper, expedited and administrative option to add residential units to communities.
Many local governments were appalled.
Because here’s the thing: local governments and their elected officials have historically depicted certain land as non-residential on their long-range planning maps for good reason.
For example, urban planners typically cluster commercial land at major intersections to manage traffic and avoid strip commercial development. Many communities encourage adding residential land to these commercial developments through vertical integration—i.e. adding floors of residential use on top of floors of commercial use. …(to read more, buy a paper)

From In Context, by Doris Weatherford

► Elon Musk believes that the federal budget is full of waste, fraud, and abuse because that’s what he sees when he looks in the mirror: he and his billionaire friends routinely rip off the government, so he thinks that poor people do, too. By his standards, it would be only rational: he has had some $38 billion in federal subsidies for his adventures in electric cars, space exploration, and more. I’m not opposed to such innovation, but I am opposed to the pot calling the kettle black. And I’m delighted to see that at least a few of the low-income Musk/Trump disciples are awakening to how they harmed their individual selves by dancing to the tune of deceptive oligarchs.
The point that many of us have missed is that Republicans didn’t (narrowly) win the election because voters agreed with Project 2025: they won because Kamala Harris lost. They won because many people, sadly including some women, couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a woman, especially a woman of color. The deciding Electoral College difference was in the Rust Belt states, where masculinity is threatened by the long-term underemployment that was created by billionaires such as Musk. …(to read more, buy a paper)

From Silhouettes, an interview with Jane Hernandez, by Tiffany Razzano

► As a University of Tampa graduate, one of Jane Hernandez’s greatest passions is the restoration and preservation of the Henry B. Plant Hall on campus.
For the past 16 years, she’s been a member of The Chiselers, an organization that was founded in 1959 and is dedicated to raising funds – hundreds of thousands of dollars each year – to restore the historic building, and now serves as the group’s president.
Plant Hall was initially built between 1888 and 1891 by railroad magnate Henry B. Plant as the Tampa Bay Hotel. Today, it’s home to classrooms, UT administrative offices and the Henry B. Plant Museum, and is a designated National Historic Landmark.
…(to read more, buy a paper)

From Líneas de la memoria, por Gabriel Cartaya

► Cuando supe de la existencia del libro Jose Martí y las flores (2024), no conocía a su autor y, mucho menos, que vivíamos cerca. Un día me llamó por teléfono y entonces supe que Vilfredo Ávalo Viamontes radica en Port Richey, trabaja en Tampa y tiene otro libro –La floriografia martiana (2025)– donde se extiende, sin terminar, su larga investigación sobre este apasionante tema.
Ávalo Viamontes es de Camagüey, Cuba, donde se hizo profesor, historiador e investigador. Desde allí dio a conocer sus primeros escritos acerca de un campo del conocimiento martiano poco conocido, en artículos como “Descripciones botánicas de Martí sobre las flores”, “Aproximación a la visión martiana en torno a la jardinería” y “Las flores en el corpus de la obra martiana”. Posee un doctorado en Ciencias Pedagógicas y se ha desempeñado como docente en universidades de Cuba, Venezuela y Ecuador. También, ha publicado en revistas como Islas (Cuba), Razón y palabra (México), Tendencias pedagógicas (Madrid) e Historia de la Educación Latinoamericana (Colombia).
En las páginas de estos dos libros de Ávalo, como se expresa en la presentación del primero, se afirma su “utilidad para adentrarse en el fascinante mundo de las flores y su relación con la virtud como parte de la ética y la estética martianas”. Con el ánimo de propiciar que esta obra se conozca, y se reconozca al autor, le solicitamos una entrevista que damos a conocer. … (to read more, buy a paper)

From Briznas culturales, por Leonardo Venta

► Ya está próximo el 45.º aniversario luctuoso de Roland Barthes –que falleciera el 26 de marzo de 1980, varias semanas después de ser atropellado por un vehículo en una calle parisina– y he decidido rememorarle con el siguiente humilde y breve trabajo sobre Mitologías (1957), una colección de ensayos que previamente habían aparecido en Les Lettres nouvelles.
Barthes, crítico literario, sociólogo, semiólogo y filósofo francés, fue uno de los intelectuales más relevantes del pasado siglo. Es considerado responsable de aplicar a la crítica literaria las percepciones surgidas del psicoanálisis, la lingüística y el estructuralismo. Estableció conceptos como el “del placer del texto” y de este como “un cuerpo”, así como el de la “muerte del autor”, entre otros. Es igualmente reconocido por articular la teoría y la práctica de la intertextualidad, así como promover el estudio de los signos culturales.
En el campo ideológico, se destaca por su posición desafiante a las normas establecidas y, por consiguiente, a las clases hegemónicas. Uno de sus aportes más relevantes e interesantes al pensamiento moderno es la nueva valoración que ofrece al concepto del mito. …(to read more, buy a paper)