The Confederate battle flag remains an intensely debated topic in Crestview.

Here's what readers said about the flag fluttering above Confederate Park on East First Avenue, and what they thought of the City Council's Aug. 6 special meeting on the issue.

Flag debate a 'dog and pony show'

We all agree that Crestview has 99 problems and this flag should not be one of them.

Unfortunately, the NAACP is pushing this issue instead of going into the community and figuring out why our kids are being bombarded with drugs, why gangs are appealing to our children and why a 7th Special Forces sergeant is (allegedly) involved in a gang-related shooting of one of our community children.

That flag hasn't taken away anyone's right to an education, nor has it taken away a single job from anyone that wanted/needed one

…It's all a dog and pony show to divert attention away from the real issues that deserve attention.

Martha F. Lundy 

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See how it all started

The past is over, but should not be forgotten. We should be able to look back and see ( in a positive way) where we are today.

It should make everyone feel great to be able to look back and see where and how it all started, and see now where we are and be happy that we all have learned from mistakes.

If we can't see what happened before, then how can we see that we have learned from our mistakes?

Carol Baker Hughes

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No racist vibe at all

As a black man and newer resident of Crestview, I loved the community talking about an issue that concerns us. As I mingled with all the people, I felt the passion in their voices and didn't get a racist vibe at all.

Roger Perry 

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A meeting highlight

It was awesome to hear (an anti-Confederate flag) history professor with two degrees in history be yelled at that he needed to "learn his history."

Patrick J OMalley 

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Why does this even matter?

Okay, so I have to admit, I've lived in Crestview for almost 30 years and didn't even know there was a Confederate flag until everyone started throwing a fit over it.

My problem with this whole scenario is that the past is in the past! Learn from it and move on. This applies to both sides. Instead of division here about something that happened 150 years ago, why are we not working together to teach our children to respect each other and work together?

I was raised to love my neighbor, no matter their race, sex, religion, etc. I have worked really hard to pass that on to my children, too.

So much time and energy spent on a symbol that means different things to different people. I wish I understood why this even matters.

Sara La Roche 

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Everyone's a historian

Everyone thinks they are an activist and historian when it comes to the flag. I guess they skipped economics and civics class.

Elizabeth Andrews 

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About the Confederate flag…

It is no different than a monument honoring MLK, George (Washington) Carver or Rosa Parks.

Jeff Williams 

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Examples of white privilege

When a white lady walks into Wal-Mart to buy hair supplies, everything she needs is right there in the aisle marked hair products.

A black lady has to go to an ethnic hair place because Wal-Mart doesn't carry her type, and things like (bandages) come in a color mostly toned to white skin.

History in school is mostly about what white people did, with very little about blacks even though we accomplished much more than written in history.

These are some examples of white privilege.

Anthony Evans 

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Tired of being called racist

White people struggle just as much as anybody else in any race. More so now that the likes of the NAACP and (similar) groups make it a point to push that down people's throat.

Now, automatically, if we are white and disagree with another race, we are racist… I am so beyond being called a racist by people in groups that are for the advancement of colored people.

Have you ever taken a moment to realize this group's name is the epitome of racist?

Dorrian Vance 

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Some residents are concerned about invocations, or public prayers, before Okaloosa County School Board meetings. Here's some feedback we received on that issue.

Prayer time should include all faiths

I would hope that, just as the school district serves all its students, those wishing to keep prayer would work to include all people of faith.

Raymonda Schwartz 

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Try moments of silence

Sounds like a good idea to me: take away all religion in school or accept them all.

Why can't there be generic moments of silence instead of Christians harping about how they are being stomped on and should have only their religion in school?

Stephanie Wahner

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This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: HUBBUB: Crestview's Confederate flag debate a 'dog and pony show, prayer time should include all faiths

Editor's Note: These featured comments are the most thoughtful or eloquently stated comments from our Facebook page and crestviewbulletin.com and do not necessarily reflect the newspaper management's views.

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Much debate on social media still centers on the Confederate battle flag fluttering on East First Avenue in Crestview. Here are some of our readers' comments:

Represent heritage, lose hate

… Apparently, folks in your community are feeling the need to drive through town with battle flags on their trucks and yell racial slurs out the window at people.

Y'all ain't right.

… Rep the heritage and lose the hate. If it's about heritage (and it is for me) divorce yourself from racists. Condemn them.

Loree Arrington

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Flag is a history lesson

It's part of history, people. If we don't learn from our past, we can't change the future.

Pushing it away, hiding from it, sticking your head in the sand and pretending it never happened does not make it go away. That's how all the rumors get started in the first place.

If people don't know the truth about history, then we are doomed to repeat it.

Teach the next generation about where it came from, why it was created, and why we moved on will accomplish more than if we hide it and create drama and strife between races.

Dawn Bayles Wamsley

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Flag resurrection 'a step backward'

A step backward and loss for the South again as we continue to honor a Confederate soldier with a questionable past (facts that justified the memorial), who fought for the state's right to continue to keep African Americans enslaved.

So sad, and the very same reason why there are still many deep-rooted African American haters in the Southern states.

If the rest of the world can acknowledge that maybe it's time to right the wrongs of the Civil War and Confederate soldiers, why can't you?

LaDonte McQueen

Flag represents failure

The confederacy lost. The confederate flag is essentially the "championship" T-shirts that go overseas.

William Echevarria

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Confederacy and Nazi parallels

It's just a flag right? By that logic, if Germans wanted to celebrate their heritage, you should be okay with it; otherwise, that's hypocritical, no? The parallels are uncanny.

Cody Lawler 

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Which issue is more important?

Just out of curiosity, what is more important to the people of Crestview: flying this flag or lowering property taxes?

If you had to choose council members based on those two issues, would you pick council members who are likely to increase property taxes and support flying the (Confederate battle flag) or those council members who are likely to take down the CBF and vote to lower property taxes?

John Q. Baker

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Changing topics…

The (tentative) millage rate went up! Anyone catch that part? Fort Walton beach has a SWAT team of their own but yet (the Crestview Police Department) sent the … SWAT team and SWAT trucks out to Fort Walton Beach to handle a call with one shooter in his house.

Why, since our town is so broke and the CPD equipment is so old, are we sending all equipment 30 minutes away?

Kyle Able

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Let's disagree without labeling

Opposing opinions seem to be too easily blamed on racism and hatred. In this day and time, we ought to be able to disagree on issues and not automatically (be) deemed a racist.

Shirl Griffin Long

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Readers who learned about two Crestview teenagers charged with a rash of burglaries, and children staying out all night raised these concerns.

No morals

Morals in this country have gone away. People feel entitled to things that aren't theirs and for some reason feel they have a right to take them.

Lisa Hare Nivison

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Does Crestview have a curfew?

"Nothing good happens after midnight" was the rule for my teenagers. I can't imagine young children out that late without adult supervision. Does Crestview have a curfew?

Barbara Gordon

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Street walking is 'awful'

I live down Stillwell (Boulevard) and there (are) two teenage girls that walk the street between midnight and 4 a.m. on a regular basis. They can't be any older than 14 or 15. It's awful.

Vickie Smith

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This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: HUBBUB: Which issue is more important, does Crestview have a curfew?

Editor's Note: This column was inspired by this recent column>>

Perhaps the question should be, “Who benefits from racism in 2015?”

•President Obama. Any criticism of his policies is met with cries of racism.

Criticize Obamacare; you are racist. Criticize illegal immigration; you are racist. Criticize the Iran deal; you are racist. 

His election — twice — was supposed to prove that America is post-racial. But he uses race to divide Americans; that’s how community organizers organize — by pitting one group against another. 

From what I see, race relations are worse today than at any time since the late 1960s, early '70s.

•Al Sharpton. He used the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Freddie Gray to raise funds for his National Action Network. (Maybe he will use that money to pay his tax bill?) He is quick to call racism before the facts are in and even after the facts prove otherwise. Google Tawana Brawley.

•Planned Parenthood. It's founded by Hillary Clinton’s hero, Margaret Sanger, who felt that blacks should be exterminated like weeds. 

Planned Parenthood aborts more than 1,700 black babies each day, about half the daily 3,300 abortions performed in the U.S. Yet blacks make up only 12.2 percent of the population.

A recent report shows that the number of black babies aborted in New York City exceeds the number of black babies born there.

Sanger would be proud.

•The Democratic Party and Big Government.  The party that, right up until President Lyndon Johnson figured out how to get “those (redacted) to vote Democrat for the next 200 years," was the party that opposed civil rights for blacks. 

Johnson’s Great Society has done in 50 years what hundreds of years of slavery and discrimination could not — destroy the black family. 

In the 1950s, only one in four black children lived in single-parent homes. Today, that number is three out of four. 

The anti-poverty programs that came out of Johnson's Great Society have not reduced poverty (14 percent in 1965 vs. 14.5 percent in 2014), but they have increased black dependency on government; they are in virtual chains on the government plantation.

•The New Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam. Leaders of both groups have called on blacks to kill whites — “every last cracker.”

Oh, wait, which black congressman said “cracker” was a term of endearment? I forget.

•The NAACP. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People does some admirable work addressing racial issues like the case of the children who have been racially harassed in the local schools. 

But they also stir up racial strife where none exists.

They want to eradicate every vestige of Confederate history from American life (a stated goal of the NAACP). Like removing the Confederate battle flag from memorials to Confederate soldiers, like trying to have a portrait of Robert E. Lee removed from Lee County, Fla., property, like digging up the dead? 

Do you really think that this promotes unity and racial healing?

Or is it more likely to swell the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan?

•And the Klan, of course. They have to be loving the current atmosphere. They got to face off in Charleston, S.C., recently against black protestors on TV and the internet.

They are back out of the shadows and even out of the sheets.

The increase in racial tension following the events starting with Ferguson, Mo. last year just fuels their flames.

Don’t encourage them.

Dale Robinson is the Crestview News Bulletin's circulation manager.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: ROBINSON: Who is racist in 2015? Seriously — you have to ask?

Healthcare remains at the center of debate in Florida’s Capitol.

But while many people focus on the number of Floridians covered by some form of health insurance, equal attention should be paid to factors driving the costs of delivering healthcare.

These costs affect the insured, the uninsured, employers and the state.

If costs are reduced, healthcare becomes more accessible to all Floridians. We must therefore look at spending on the front end and develop an effective mechanism to contain costs while considering any state options for extending coverage to more people.

Currently in Florida, fear of medical litigation among physicians has manifested itself in the practice of defensive medicine. This means ordering unnecessary medical tests, procedures, medications and consultations — with little clinical or therapeutic value — to help physicians protect themselves from malpractice litigation.

The practice of defensive medicine costs Floridians more than $40 billion per year.The billions of dollars Florida loses each year due to unnecessary healthcare expenses is a hidden driver in the cost of healthcare, and, according to the Gallup Organization, accounts for as much as 26 percent of overall healthcare spending. 

The dysfunctional, inefficient medical malpractice system is imposing an avoidable, onerous burden on a wide swath of Florida’s economy, affecting Florida’s physicians, patients and businesses.

A proposal called the Patients’ Compensation System is intended to transform the broken medical malpractice system in Florida and preserve the physician-patient relationship.

In essence, the proposal would remove medical malpractice from the inefficient court system and place it in a streamlined administrative system.

Rather than flooding courts with lawsuits that take years to resolve, the administrative model allows for a fair, less contentious and timely determination of any compensation that should be paid to an injured patient.

During a House Health and Human Services Committee meeting, Chair Jason Broduer (R-Sanford) revealed an improved version of the proposal.

He identified the legislation as a priority of his committee for the 2016 Legislative Session and a part of the solution to address the issue of escalating healthcare costs.

The newly designed Patients’ Compensation System — which responds to the valuable feedback from Florida’s physicians and other stakeholders — has these three key fundamental changes:

•It applies exclusively to physicians, as physicians are uniquely forced to practice defensive medicine.

•It significantly decreases the cost of medical malpractice coverage because physicians will no longer need to purchase professional liability insurance. Under the new proposal, an administrative fee will be determined based on the specialty practice of Florida physicians — with the fee being significantly lower than current medical malpractice rates.

•It will not increase reporting to the National Practitioner Database and Boards of Medicine.

Affordability extends to everyone across the healthcare spectrum — whether using private or public health insurance.

The Patients Compensation System would make Florida a national model for how to protect the physician-patient relationship while bringing down healthcare spending. 

The new and improved Patients’ Compensation System will be filed in the 2016 Legislative Session and will be under review by Florida’s legislators.

Wayne W. Oliver is the executive director of Patient for Fair Compensation.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: OLIVER: Here's a proposal to address healthcare affordability

Crestview's almost two-decade Confederate battle flag saga has culminated.

City workers on Thursday unceremoniously removed the rebel flag from the William "Bill" Lundy Memorial on East First Avenue and North Ferdon Boulevard. Such a flag had fluttered in the city since 1958, when the Crestview Lions Club dedicated a memorial to Lundy, purportedly Florida's last surviving Confederate veteran.

But this symbol of Southern heritage — for many residents, anyway — seemed more like a celebration of the oppressive South's slavery to others.

Okaloosa County's NAACP branch and community activists had publicly objected to the flag since 1996, but efforts to have it removed, up until 2013, failed.

Then Dylan Roof, a white man, killed nine black people mid-June at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., and a photo of him with the Confederate flag spread on the internet. Outrage fueled a nationwide effort to move all rebel flags from the public square to museums, where critics said they belong.

TV Land pulled "The Dukes of Hazzard" from its schedule, apparently, because the 1980s series' iconic General Lee featured the rebel flag.

And professional golfer and Great Floridian Bubba Watson, who owns the actual General Lee, vowed to take the Confederate flag off the top of the 1969 Dodge Charger, according to CBS Sports.

2015 has not been the Confederate flag's year; various states have sent a clear message by removing it from the public square.

A crowd of hundreds cheered Friday in Charleston as the rebel flag came down at the South Carolina Capitol grounds. Uniformed highway patrol officers lowered the flag, folded it and retired it during the ceremony, during which some sang, "Hey, hey, hey, goodbye," according to CNN.

A much different response followed the Crestview flag's unceremonious removal.

"Don't you just love it when politicians cave to the pressure of political correctness?" one woman said on the News Bulletin's Facebook page.

"Whether you agree or not, it should alarm and concern every voter that they were given no say in the matter," another said.

"What gives them the right to just do this?" one man said. "The people have no voice anymore!"

That's not so surprising when you consider public opinion: 57 percent of Americans view the flag as a symbol of Southern pride, not racism, according to a CNN-ORC poll.

Of course, some, like Sabu Williams, of the local NAACP, and community activist Mae Reatha Coleman spent years petitioning for the flag's removal — with Coleman, whom I know personally, telling anyone who would listen why it's so painful for her to see the city endorse this otherwise harmless piece of fabric. They're among those who have seen victory after fighting so long for what they believed in.

Then there's the Lundy family, whose members intimately feel the sting from Thursday's action. For them, this isn't just about preserving history but also protecting Bill Lundy's honor, particularly as a number of residents question his military record's accuracy.

So many aspects to this story have made it one of the most difficult ones to cover. Crestview's flag isn't just about Southern heritage or racism, depending on your view; it's also about family honor and now, as former Crestview City Councilwoman Robyn Helt pointed out Monday, protocol. She criticized the city for removing the flag outside of Florida's Sunshine law.

She has a fair point, for more reasons than one.

With all the passion, pride, pain and scrutiny surrounding this flag, residents needed a public meeting about its fate.

And if the flag had to come down, then, like in South Carolina, the city's residents needed a proper ceremony to cheer or mourn its departure.

It's unfortunate that, after more than 50 years fluttering, Crestview residents didn't have that chance to say goodbye.

What's your view? Write a letter to the editor or tweet News Bulletin Editor Thomas Boni.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: BONI: The Confederate flag deserved a proper farewell

I grew up in the North — yes, I am a Yankee, born and bred. I have no "dog in the fight" when it comes to some cultural or historical connection to the South, its heritage and the Confederate flag.

Yet, this whole recent uproar over that flag has, for the first time, made me passionate about that flag. 

Not because I choose to fly it at my home, or display it prominently. I don't and likely will not. But this is yet another example of the insanity of our time, how the tragic incident in South Carolina has created such a backlash against — what else — this flag. 

As if this flag had anything to do with that event. 

What about the moral breakdown of the society, and the fact that the sick young man who murdered nine people came from a terribly dysfunctional background brought on by a broken family life? 

Instead, the left and media go off on a symbol of Southern heritage, claiming somehow that it contributed to this man's hate. True, that flag has been used in the past as a racist symbol by some, but today it's largely representative of Southern heritage.  

This whole episode is really about the left jumping on every opportunity, or forcing opportunities, to change society into their leftist image — one without values, except, of course, theirs; one deplete of our historical American way of life; and one in which we can boldly move forward into the "brave new world order" of tomorrow. 

A world in which the elite among us — specifically, leftists, who are, of course, smarter, wiser, and simply better than the rest of us minions — can dictate their worldview to everyone else. After all, they, of course, have all of our best interests in mind. And we can trust them. 

Really? 

In truth, this is political correctness simply out of control. We need to stop the madness before it's too late!

What's your view? Write a letter to the editor or tweet @cnbeditor.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: GUEST COLUMN: Stop the P.C. madness before it's too late