Students, take a number

Florida bill to restrict preferred pronouns in schools advances | March 16

I have a solution to the problem facing teachers who will not be allowed to ask what pronoun a student wishes to use. As students will not have the freedom to be called by a name of their choice, why not just assign each student a number when they enter the Florida school system? They will be known simply as “number such and such.” Who knows? As in the old TV sci-fi show, “The Prisoner,” some may proclaim, “I am not a number! I am a free man!”

Ramille Matsoukis, Clearwater

Binding arbitration on insurance

In hurricane-prone Florida, an idea to make property insurance more competitive | Editorial, March 12

I propose that one solution to the rising costs of all lines of insurance, whether homeowners or auto, is to substitute binding arbitration as the primary means of settling disputes between policyholders and their insurers. A three-person panel composed of one arbitrator chosen by the policyholder, one by the insurer and one agreed to by both sides can render an opinion in considerably less time and at much lower cost than civil litigation. Right now, the principal winners in insurance litigation are lawyers who walk away with fat contingency fees and attorneys fees, not policyholders or insurance companies. A Florida law passed in December made binding arbitration an option for homeowners in return for a discount, but how about making binding arbitration mandatory for all new insurance policies?

Marlene Stein, Boynton Beach

Ukraine is a vital interest

Has Ron DeSantis changed his stance on Ukraine? | PolitiFact, March 15

Gov. Ron DeSantis recently asserted that defending Ukraine against Russian aggression is not in the United States’ “vital interest” — an unusual comment indeed coming from a former naval officer and one-time member of Congress. Has the tyro of Tallahassee forgotten the lessons of nine decades ago when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler failed to dissuade him from annexing Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland and all of Austria? In his quest to effectively reestablish the old Soviet Union as a reconstituted Russian Empire, Vladimir Putin has already occupied parts of Georgia and Moldova, not to mention Crimea and Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. If he is permitted to carry out his designs on the rest of Ukraine, which country’s border will his forces cross next?

Fred Kalhammer, Sun City Center