Letters to the editor for Sunday, December 11, 2022

Officers are true heroes

In the Dec. 7 edition, two articles discuss the awarding of Congressional Gold Medals to the heroic officers and police forces who protected the U.S. Capitol and our elected representatives (and their staffs) during the armed insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Several of these brave officers were killed or severely injured during the battle. In each article when the police were called heroes, the word was placed in quotation marks. I found this to be insulting and degrading to a group of people who put their own lives on the line to protect, not only our legislators, but who I, and many others believe, saved our democratic form of government. These people are true heroes who were outnumbered and had no way of knowing if or when reinforcements would arrive. No qualifiers should have been used.Mark Delligatti, Naples

Drag queens are not groomers

I think an important point in the controversy about the propriety of having drag queens host library reading circles or any other child-friendly activity is that Drag introduces children to camp (using Susan Sontag's definition) in the same way Mad magazine introduced us Boomers to satire.

My childhood was greatly enriched by reading Mad in the 1960s when I was a pre-teen. It introduced me to a new kind of humor that later opened me to Rocky & Bullwinkle, Jane Austin, and Edith Wharton. Heck, Rudy Giuliani famously dressed in drag to raise money for a charity in 2000, and he's as conservative as you can get in politics.

Kids need laughter in these grim COVID and Ian days. Y'all need to relax and be open to the fun that is Drag.

Elizabeth Rosenberg, Cape Coral

DeSantis is authoritarian

What’s wrong with Ron’s constitution?

I’ll tell you what’s wrong.  Ron DeSantis’s constitution is authoritarian.  It is unconstitutional; it is not the Constitution of the United States.

It is not the Constitution of the State of Florida.

The Stop WOKE Act which DeSantis signed into Florida law to muzzle the discussion of race and racism in classrooms and the workplace was declared unconstitutional by U.S. District Judge Mark Walker:  “The First Amendment does not permit the State of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark.”

DeSantis also signed into law an anti-riot statute to quell demonstrations: Jim Crow-era law to prevent civil rights demonstrations.  DeSantis’s anti-demonstration statute was declared unconstitutional by a federal court. Criminalizing peaceful protests and shielding those who injure or kill protesters is unconstitutional.  Similarly, DeSantis executive order preventing mask mandates in schools during COVID flies in the face of Article 9, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution which gives school boards, not the governor, authority to operate public schools.  The order threatened to withhold state funds from school boards which require mask usage. That funding is constitutionally protected.

DeSantis has a habit of creating political stunts and generating headlines that excite his base, only to have those stunts unravel soon thereafter.

DeSantis delighted fans with the Immigration/Martha’s Vineyard stunt which became a fiasco as it generated investigations, lawsuits and a misuse of specified Florida funding.  Also, the 20 arrests from the governor’s Office of Election Crimes and Security is proving to be a debacle.

State prosecutor Andrew Warren, a Democrat, was removed by DeSantis as Hillsborough County State Attorney after not agreeing to enforce DeSantis’ abortion ban. DeSantis cited Warren’s alleged “woke agenda” as the reason for his decision. The governor has to face a violation of free speech rights, a violation of the voters’ right to have the state attorney of their choice. Another constitutional violation by DeSantis when the current Florida Supreme Court precedent upholds the right to abortion. Warren was following the Constitution laws of Florida, while DeSantis and his state Legislature were creating unconstitutional statutes.

In 1776, we declared our independence from an authoritarian. Let’s not go through that again. DeSantis is not a solution.  Ron DeSantis is a problem, a dictator.

Sally Lam, Naples

Winning?

Politics, left, right or center has been consumed by winning the next election. Why not focus on actually doing something. A least the current administration is trying. Inflation is slowly retreating, gas prices are down and expected to further decline. Infrastructure is being invested in and civil rights are being protected. The U.S. and NATO are supporting freedom for Ukraine. Yet we hear from the former president expressing profound support for political prisoners, aka the Capitol insurrectionists, dining with disturbed individuals and supported by the Freedom Circus in the 2024 election. By the time this makes print we will know the outcome of the Georgia Senate race and that’s one scary match-up. The Republicans have embraced moral turpitude for the sake of winning. And the circus will come to town in January with the quest for Hunter's laptop and somehow the Clintons, Soros and Pelosi will be blamed for everything. Stay tuned.

Laurence Jacks, Estero

Dangerous for democracy

There is a political ideology writer who frequently sends the Naples Daily News opinion letters. His latest is attacking newspapers for reporting that Trump hosted a white nationalist. White nationalism is by definition a political ideology, a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a white racial and national identity. Many of its proponents identify with and are attached to the concept of a white nation, or a "white ethnostate" according to Wikipedia. The one hosted at Mar-a-Lago is known for making derogatory racial statements about non-whites, and this is documented. The letter Naples Daily News published on Dec. 4 ignores the defamatory statements by the dinner guest, and accuses "the media," referring to the Naples Daily News which published the opinion letter, of practicing "social and linguistic terrorism." This is wrong. Call out white nationalist politics for what it is, dangerous for democracy.

Vencine Kelly, Naples

It's about free speech

Chicken Liberal is frantically proclaiming that the sky will fall if Twitter is allowed to proceed under the ownership of Elon Musk. We are told that the country will soon be inflicted with hate speech, misinformation, disinformation, lies, propaganda and other such.The great unwashed cannot be trusted, but the man who pays the fiddler calls the tune. Musk has the means of control.The future evils we are told to fear on Twitter are now the basis of most current political campaigns and, to a lesser degree, most mainstream political commentary.To express a political opinion is to be both biased and a propagandist. The objective is to sell something.People who have a mainstream microphone with which they can influence public opinion have been carefully vetted. They don’t want to risk opening up this opportunity to a competitive unknown and unknowable mass of people.Since the mainstream media is overwhelmingly liberal and has the most to lose, Musk and Twitter are a risk they want to extinguish.Musk has nailed it. It is about free speech.Bob Stabile, Bonita Springs

Be ashamed for voting Democrat

So the three biggest fools running the show, Biden, Powell and Yellen, are so stupid that it is no longer funny. These idiots have ruined our once great economy created by Trump. I hope you morons who voted Democrat/communist are happy with your choices. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Michael Adler, Miromar Lakes

Self-serving

The assertion by attorney  Amy Boggs in an opinion article dated Dec. 4 that the insurance industry created the “perfect storm” is a self-serving dissertation. Since when was the industry allowed to make the laws governing its operations. All of the rules and regulations from funding and creation of an insurance company and terms and conditions of its policies are established by state legislatures and overseen by state agencies. You would be hard pressed to find another industry subject to the same degree of oversight as the insurance industry or the recipient of more copious criticism and selfish political diatribes. Its an American tradition that it is year-round “open season” on insurance claims and taxes. Hostile claim disputes and questionable judicial decisions are the results of tacitly condoning a climate of enmity towards the insurance industry and then collegially bragging about it as a profit center while deceiving the public with negative or meretricious ads championing their cause.

Leo Boghosian, Bonita Springs

Tougher traffic enforcement

The anarchy on the streets with so many drivers needs to stop. Drivers that refuse To follow the driving laws must be stopped with high price consequences.

Our roads are not racetracks and a place to express your attitudes.

Red light cameras need to be put up on major intersections and if you run the light: First fine $500, second time $1,000 and lose license for 30 days, third would be $5,000 and lose license for a year. Caught driving without license equals jail time.

Causing an accident or death equals jail time and can never drive again.

Stop means stop.

Next up is the speeders. There are signs posted everywhere. If you can’t read them, don’t drive. If someone is going the speed limit get off their rears. If you can’t follow the laws don’t drive or move to a country that allows this behavior. You hurt or kill someone, jail time. Consequences for bad actions.

I am calling on our leaders to have a stronger police presence for traffic violations.

The money derived could support some forces.

Step up and do the right thing or get out of your car.

Christianne Murphy, Golden Gate

Time to push back against the Left

It must be about time to get down in the gutter with those on the Left and attack the way they attack. Those of us on the Right are just too nice and allow the disgusting tactics of the Left to continue. It is time to fight back. Let's take the issue of violence. No violence is acceptable and the Left has constantly used violence as a weapon against the Right. They constantly accuse the Right of promoting violence. However, let's look at the facts. The Left says that the Right promotes violence against the LGBTQ+ community. Their evidence is the supposed anti LGBTQ+ legislation in some states. They continually refer to the so called "anti gay" law in Florida. That law's main provisions prohibit instruction of gender identity and sexual orientation in children up to third grade and also does not allow schools to hide mental or health issues they discover in children from their parents. Where does the so-called violence come in?On the other hand, let's look at some of the violence actually proposed by those on the Left. Let's start with the Left's attack on the Supreme Court justices. For example, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, on the steps of the Supreme Court said, "I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you." This was followed with an individual who was heavily armed appearing at Kavanaugh's house with the intent to kill him. So who promoted violence? The Left has openly and viciously attacked the Row v. Wade ruling and as a result, around 100 pro-life centers have been attacked. Again, who proposed that violence?Let's also talk about the BLM protests/riots in the summer of 2020. The Left continually called them mostly peaceful protests as thousands of buildings were damaged or destroyed, people were killed, hundreds of businesses were forced to close, hundreds of businesses were looted, government buildings were destroyed or damaged, parts of one city were actually taken over by the so-called protestors, thousands of people lost their jobs and some $20 billion in damages were done in this so-called mostly peaceful protests. The current Vice President Harris said that this so-called unrest would not stop and it should not stop. Who is promoting this violence?This is the standard trick of the Left. They accuse the Right of doing something and the facts are that the Left is already doing it.

Ron Wobbeking, Naples

Downfall of democracy not Socialism, but Christianity

From the time of Jesus until the time of Martin Luther, Christianity’s foundation was love and compassion. Luther changed all that with his doctrine of “sola fide” or “believe and you shall be saved.”“Sola fide” was attractive. By believing, one has license to drift. And Christian humanity drifted towards greed and prejudice which picked affluent Christians up and dumped off those who were poor or different. And ecumenism help spread “sola fide” to where even Catholics embrace it and adopt the license to drift into greed and racism.Democracy needs love and compassion: The basic message of Jesus Christ is love and compassion. Today’s Christianity has abandoned Christ’s message. So with today’s Christianity at the center of democracy, democracy will fail because Christianity has lost the message of Jesus Christ: that love and compassion provide the path to salvation. Hiding behind faith only yields greed. Greed is not salutary according to Jesus and not productive in a democracy when 90 percent of the wealth is held by 1 percent of the people. St Francis of Assisi maintained that: “We live in a world in which there is never enough for those who have nothing, but there is always enough for those who have everything.” The messianic message of Jesus has been abandoned by today’s Christians. The Sermon on the Mount falls on deaf ears today.Christians, please prove me wrong !

Joe Haack, Naples

Liberal hypocrisy

I am speechless. The Sunday letter writers really got their dander up and the hypocrisy within their words shows the group-think and one-mindedness of the liberal, progressive, democratic sheep, oops, I mean followers. If you actually took the time to look into the details, you would find how wrong you are and how your talking points are regurgitated like a bad vegan hamburger. Are you ready?Sen. Scott's plan was to allow Congress to re-certify safety net programs every five years. The purpose is to close programs that don't work, fund properly programs, and hold the government responsible for crimes within the programs. At some time Social Security and Medicare will need some updating, not in your or my lifetime but it will happen. You can't run programs when you are broke!Get over yourself, Trump is not the president. Your problems are Joe B and the gang are destroying the country as we speak but you would rather scream about Trump instead of holding Spanky and the Gang responsible.Stop telling us we did not know who we were voting for. You pound your chest saying you get the government you voted for. And stop telling us about climate change and COVID -- your fear machine is working overtime.And lastly, your over-the-top bellowing about DeSantis only means you are freaked out because you know there is no one on the Democrats' bench but third stringers. DeSantis scares the crap out of you and the more you scream, the more fearful you are.

Jack Holt, Cape Coral

Got the Holiday Blues? Seek support

The holiday season is usually a cheerful time full of exciting traditions, time with family and friends, and time off from work, making it “the most wonderful time of the year.” However, for many, it can also bring the Holiday Blues – increased levels of stress and anxiety due to high expectations, additional obligations, strained family relationships or experiencing a holiday season after losing a loved one or experiencing divorce. Those who have a mental illness or substance use disorder may also find the holiday season especially challenging.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 64 percent of people with mental illness report that the holidays worsen their conditions. Further, some people without a mental illness face the Holiday Blues. A survey by the American Addiction Centers found that since 1999, nearly 91,000 drug-and-alcohol-related deaths have been reported during the month of December. Further, 29 percent of men and women said that they drink more during the holidays.

To avoid the Holiday Blues, individuals can spend time with loved ones, create new traditions or celebrate old ones, volunteer, prioritize sleep and healthy eating, and be okay with saying "no" when feeling overwhelmed.

If anxiety or depression becomes overwhelming during the holidays, reach out to a mental health specialist. If you’re having suicidal thoughts, call 9-8-8. Also, by calling 2-1-1, you can be connected with behavioral health resources in your community.

Make this holiday season bright, and if you’re experiencing the Holiday Blues, remember help is available.

Natalie K. Kelly, CEO of the Florida Association of Managing Entities

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Letters to the editor for Sunday, December 11, 2022