Letters to the editor for Saturday, September 9, 2023

Letters to the editor should be 250 words or less. Include your name and city or community of residence. Guest opinions should be 600 words or less and include a brief summary of the author’s credentials relevant to the topic. Guest opinions may include a head shot of the author. For the Fort Myers News-Press, email submissions to mailbag@news-press.com and for the Naples Daily News to letters@naplesnews.com

Inadequate teacher pay

In Florida, the Legislature one year ago increased the pay for a new teacher to $48,500; a good change. This pay remains essentially the same for 10 years going forward with no adjustment for annual inflation; last year 7% and this year 3%. Nationwide, the average annual pay for a teacher is $68,000 or 41% more than in Lee County, Florida. We wonder why Lee County Schools still have almost 300 open positions. Schools are changing the daily six periods a day to seven so that the high student population can be accommodated due to a teacher shortage with no added compensation for teachers. The class teaching time is now 10 minutes shorter in these schools and the teacher has a 10-minute shorter preparation time daily. Minimally, the annual cost of living needs to be added to teacher pay if we as parents and residents wish to retain our teachers. This is a high cost of living area and we need to have a plan, which we do not.

Joe Bromiley, Fort Myers

Collier's anti-business vote

Property rights are the foundation of American greatness. The Fifth Amendment of the  Constitution provides that "[n]o person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." It was why Collier County was a safe place to invest.Becoming a Bill of Rights Sanctuary County  repudiated the 5th Amendment. It gave Sheriff Rambosk the power to ignore two centuries of case law and preempted SCOTUS.  Collier County has become a risky place to invest because the taking clause is no longer recognized as supreme.  Property values are decreasing, municipal bonds are being shorted.  The BCCC is responsible for rising borrowing costs, not the Federal Reserve Bank.  The BCCC, in  one thoughtless vote, decreased sales and property tax revenue. It has become clear that four-fifths of BCCC commissioners are anti-business.

Bebe Kanter, Quiet Collier, Inc., Naples

Slavery, then and now

Two hundred years ago, to pick a year, there were few if any governments around the world that condemned slavery. Hypothetically speaking, if we could have taken polls back then, I suspect that we’d find about half of this country either believed in or tolerated slavery. My own ancestors must be included in that survey, though how they felt about the issue or how they treated the slaves they legally owned on their several-thousand acre Mississippi farm I have no idea.

In the past two years, we have allowed more than seven million migrants to come into this country. Few if any will do more than work at menial jobs and have families that end up on the dole of the American taxpayer. My own brother has a small farm and sooner or later, they will work there for low wages. Let’s not fool ourselves, this is today’s form of slavery and those in the government on both sides of the political aisle know it.

Today, I ask you what is the real difference between then and now? It seems to me that the only answer is the law, not the practice. The irony here is not lost on those with a good education, only on those whose education was more indoctrination than a study in truth.

Ed McCoy, Bokeelia

About trans athletes

Some facts that may help you make a decision about trans athletes and where they play. Take tennis for instance. In women’s contests the best two out of three sets wins. In men’s contests the best three out of five sets wins. The difference is purely based on strength and endurance. Mixing men in women’s sports, no matter how many parts are removed, gives the trans an advantage. Period.

John Piccolo, Estero

Florida's teachers

A quote from a recent contributor, "I love these scorched earth letters where I'm told how great someone is without one FACT. Florida is now the least liked state for teachers, look it up, it's a FACT!" (Excessive gubernatorial power - 9/6). She said teachers were leaving because of the woke ideology that Governor DeSantis is trying to rein in.

Well I did look it up, at least I tried to. Spent about 1/2 hour and I can't find one article that says Florida is the least liked state for teachers.

I did find out though that Maryland, Louisiana, N. Carolina and Washington are losing teachers faster than others.

I did find out that Florida is not even in the Top 10 states of teachers leaving.

I also found out that U.S. News and World Report said that Florida was number one in higher education and the WalletHub had Florida at number 9 in grades up to K-12.

Another thing I found out was Florida was right in the middle salary wise for teachers at number 22.

I don't doubt that some teachers are leaving because of recent changes to our education laws but I'm sure others are relocating here with the influx from blue states.

So if the contributor is saying something is a "FACT," by all means please include that information in your letter.

Rick Manuel, Dade City

Bias in the news

It is time for the government to look at the media moguls that control, indirectly though it may be, the news and opinions that we hear everyday. Comcast controls NBC, MSNBC and CNBC., MSNBC may be the farthest left outlet for the Democratic Party. The same could be said CNN, CBS and ABC. When one viewpoint determines what news we see or hear or read, then we are in trouble. The same can be said about the Fox owned outlets.

But what sets Fox a bit apart from the left side of the aisle is that Fox does allow contrasting views to be aired.

The other major outlets have, until recently, refused to air any anti Biden or Hunter Biden news. They just ignore presenting anything that is anti far left. The NYT uses the motto, "All the news that's fit to print." It should be changed to " All the news that fits the left."

Michael Zubrow, Naples

Right to life, liberty upended

“The Courage to Be Free” by Governor DeSantis (Subtitled: “When freedom means Death”). Florida’s governor has rewritten the Declaration of Independence. Our founding fathers had placed LIFE before LIBERTY in that Declaration. DeSantis signed a law purporting to protect people’s right to liberty, but its application removes their right to life, i.e. Florida SB 252 prevents businesses and government agencies from mandating face masks and COVID vaccinations even if a state of emergency has been declared related to a public health pandemic and even if the medical community recommends such measures to curb infections, hospitalizations and deaths. The law also prevents businesses from firing or refusing to hire a person over vaccine status or the refusal to wear a mask when requested. Liberty replaces Life as the dominant right. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature, not medical professionals, have dictated health care policies.

This loss of our Declaration’s dominant right to Life is being felt by retirement communities. For example, a large retirement community in Tamarac, Florida, this past week, announced that the clubhouse where hundreds of seniors gather for social activities has been closed. A significant uptick in COVID cases in the community created a concern for its vulnerable elderly. They had no choice but to close the property, thanks to the DeSantis legislation.

When will Ron DeSantis ever get anything right? COVID protection. Disney free speech. Available hurricane insurance. Libraries with history and science. Christian compassion for migrants. Diversity. Equality. And the common good of Florida residents, young and old alike. Freedom does not consist in destroying or curtailing these legitimate liberties which cannot be enjoyed when death intervenes.

Joe Haack, Naples

Trump, Biden and jobs

President Biden continually makes the point that he has created approximately 11 plus new jobs since he took office and this is the most of any president in history. There actually is some truth in this, but the historical facts create a different picture simply because of the impact that COVID had on employment in 2020. Here are the historical facts on total employment in the U.S. at the end of the year:

2016 - 151.44 million (At this point Trump took office); 2017 - 153.34 million; 2018 - 155.76 million; 2019 - 157.53 million (then COVID hit); 2020 - 147.81 million (At this point Biden took office); 2021 - 152.59 million; 2022 - 158.30 million; 2023 - 159.38 million (projected)

So what does this tell us? In his first three years in office, Trump added over 6 million jobs to a peak of about 157.53 million jobs before COVID hit. From that peak, you can see that Biden in his first three years in office has in effect added less than 2 million jobs from the Trump peak. This paints a pretty dismal picture and is why Biden is rated very low on the economy by the public. The fact that illegal immigration has added millions of people into our country and the resulting growth in employment is pretty dismal. In addition, inflation has added close to 20% to the costs to Americans during Biden's presidency and wages have increased well less than 12%. On the other hand, inflation added less than 5% to the costs to Americans during Trump's presidency and wage increases were very close to the same increase. All in all, not a great record for Biden.

Ron Wobbeking, Naples

Bull in a china shop

Mr. Trump is like the proverbial bull in a china shop.His sociopathic blueprint is indelible and, like the bull, he can never be tamed or trained to behave non-destructively in democracy’s fragile china shop.Mr. Trump, like the bull, simply cannot stop busting up the fragile china shop. He can only be stopped with an indictment tranquilizer dart and put in a secure corral far away from our fragile democracy.The aftermath of a bull in a china shop looks like an evil force intentionally chose to destroy everything in its path, but that’s not the case. It was just a bull doing what bulls innately do.Maybe we need to take the same attitude toward Mr. Trump and stop hating him like he has the innate ability to choose to stop being destructive. He doesn’t.He already has four indictment tranquilizer darts in him and soon will be dispassionately removed to a "secure facility" far from democracy’s debris strewn shop so the restoration can begin.

J. Cant, Naples

Trump-bashing obsession

There were 15 letters published in Sunday’s Mailbag. Of these, four concerned the head-scratching Naples sanctuary ordinance, one promoted diverse public education curricula, one was anti-gun, and two disparaged Ron DeSantis. But the unofficial winner of today’s Mailbag popularity contest is Donald J. Trump, with seven letters utterly trashing him.

You liberals can’t get the Orange Man out of your heads, can you?

Gary Marsh, Estero

Effective government

What Florida needs is government, effective government. There are many good letters to the editor today (Sunday), I will just remind you of two. Encouraging you to read  others though. 1, “Deaths from firearms,“ asks the question, ”what can we do to prevent our children and grandchildren from being a death statistic from firearms?” 2. “Remedy at ballot box” answers the question, if America’s democracy is to survive the white nationalist party of cruelty, hate and voter fraud (guns and violence ) must be destroyed.

There is no doubt this dominant party is bad for Florida, citizens get left out and we are all waiting for help. We need our local governments to act.

Guest columnist Senator Rick Scott speaks out for citrus growers, who he says need help, and he criticizes the federal government’s response. But there is no mention of all the help the federal government has given Florida, and to at least notice all the help available to Florida in the infrastructure act, and the inflation reduction act and other housing and education and transportation funding which our white supremacist government has denied the people of Florida.

Lewis Robinson, Fort Myers

God help us!

Now we've heard from Newt Gingrich, a third member of the three wives club along with Trump and Giuliani. Newt says that you can't look at Trump as a candidate, but as the leader of a movement. Newt in all his wisdom says that Trump is simply a figure unlike anyone else in the Republican Party. Isn't that the truth!

It sounds like the kind of movement that you need to lie yourself into. God help us!

Roger W. Quagliano, Estero

Editorials as news

Some time ago our local paper eliminated editorials. Worry not, they are still with us, all over the news section. An example follows.

The Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, is working on a plan to improve the efficiency and control of our unelected bureaucracy. This bureaucracy is running much of our government, writing regulations which should be the job of Congress and often undermining our elected officials. It continues to grow with each new project and continues to spend more money on projects no longer needed. And as recently as a few months ago, as many as 25% of these employees were still working from home with little or no supervision, though the COVID emergency had ended.

The Naples Daily News calls this "gutting" the government. It is really a plan to take a new look at how the government is run, improve its efficiency and provide a way for the next administration to improve things. It is a long overdue look at civil service and update it from when it was last written in Jimmy Carter days. The paper suggests that 50,000 federal workers may lose their jobs out of the several million presently employed. Hardly gutting.

The plan would be available to any new president, who may or may not be Donald Trump. That may be why our paper is afraid of a program the country needs so badly.

Richard Krieger, North Naples

Riding the Trump train

A frequent writer to the press boasts his credentials with Med after his name and then blusters on singing his praises of Donald Trump and legitimizing his devious behavior.One would expect that any individual with enough brain substance to get through the curriculum required for that degree would have enough sense to not get ensnared in that train of thought.It makes one wonder what kind of school we are talking about, a correspondence school perhaps or the defunct Trump University.

Fred Jodice, North Fort Myers

Medicare and drug prices

Up until now, the United States has been alone as the only major country where the government did not negotiate or regulate medicine prices; instead it allowed companies to set whatever prices they believe the market will bear.  The Biden administration has now announced the first ten drugs whose prices it will negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for about 65 million Medicare recipients.

Since drug products often are the difference between life and death, the market will bear high prices, prices which often force consumers into poverty. A Rand study found that drug prices average two and a half times higher in the U.S. than in 32 other countries. For name brand drugs, U.S. prices were three and a half times more.  Drug companies in the U.S. have raised prices relentlessly for decades while manipulating the patent system to delay competition from lower-priced generics.

In 2022, Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act which permits the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices the government will pay under Medicare.  Pharmaceutical companies are suing to stop the law.  It should be noted that the government negotiates prices for every other element which Medicare covers of the health care system, including rates for doctors, other providers, and hospitals.  It’s time for pharmaceuticals to catch up. This plan is a key part of Bidenomics,  Joe Biden’s economic initiative for growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up — not the top down. It has worked before and it will work again because health and health care are universal rights, except when it comes to women. But that’s another issue and one for women to resolve.

Sally Lam, Naples

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Letters to the editor for Saturday, September 9, 2023