Letters to the editor for Sunday, December 25, 2022

Rich musical choices in Naples

Naples is a musical and cultural mecca and it’s the reason many of us selected it as our retirement home. So, how do we decide how to spend our time, when there are so many worthwhile events to attend? Well, I don’t have all the answers but I know how I do it!Do I want to hear great renowned music played by musical giants? (If I say yes, I just look toward our wonderful Artis-Naples.)

But what if I’m in the mood for an intimate setting, where I can feel that the music is so close to me that it’s filling my soul? When I want to see the music up close, as if I’m in someone’s living room and a wonderful musical artist has stopped by just to entertain me. Where I can be so filled with the glory of music at the end of the evening that I’m deliciously content? Not a problem, I just look toward Milana's Grand Piano Series, and it always satisfies those moods!How lucky I am to be in Naples, where my music needs can be satisfied so effortlessly!

Sue Bookbinder, Naples

Change the channel

Two letter writers appear in every other edition and prattle on about the left and the evil danger the Democratic Party presents. Frankly it’s boring. Maybe they don’t recall the last time we had worse inflation under Ronald Reagan. Was it his fault or geopolitical events? Perhaps the current inflation was caused by a once-in-a-century pandemic and concurring geopolitics. Perhaps inflation is global and maybe we’re doing a better job of bringing it lower.  I would worry more about climate change, clean water, antisemitism, hate and overdevelopment in our own backyard. And do yourselves a favor and turn off Fox News.

Laurence Jacks, Estero

Affordable housing prevents crime

Hurricane Ian and the critical shortage of affordable housing continue to push ever more Naples mentally ill into the forests. A roof and food are often the first step toward accessing other essential social services, while the instability of being unhoused leads to vagrancy and minor crimes of survival. Nationally, it makes you 11 times more likely to be arrested.

Investing in affordable housing is known to  prevent crime from occurring. Kids without housing security drop out of schools. It would pay huge dividends toward safety while reducing incarceration and the time the Collier County Sheriff's Office  spends responding to “intrusions” of unstably housed people into working class neighborhoods. Collier County residents are tired of fighting a decades-long war on crime with guns, instead of a solution.

Bebe Kanter, founder of Quiet Collier, Naples

Requiring JROTC classes wrong

The New York Times on Dec. 11, 2022 printed an expose on how high schoolers are being forced into required Junior Reserve Officers Training (JROTC) classes without their or their parents' consent. The article quoted a Fort Myers father who was outraged that his daughter was being forced into the program: "The only word I can think of is 'indoctrination.'" I call it "grooming."

The JROTC instructors are retired military personnel whose salary is subsidized by the military, making JROTC a budget booster for the schools. The military certifies the instructors, then hands off all oversight to the schools, but many JROTC activities operate off campus and outside normal school hours with no school oversight at all. A separate New York Times expose in September 2022 found that sexual abuse of students by JROTC instructors was at a higher rate than traditional teachers. Over a five-year period, 33 JROTC instructors were criminally charged with sexual misconduct involving students, several after having been charged with previous misconduct complaints.

Lee County has seven high schools where kids are automatically enrolled in JROTC and four high schools have over 75 percent enrollment in JROTC in certain grades. The article quotes a retired Army major who taught JROTC for years in three states and found that Florida was under the most intense pressure to keep kids in class, including "when they were so opposed to it that they refused to do the work."

This kind of forceful indoctrination should be antithetical to every person who values our American freedom from governmental overreach. None of our children should be forced to spend their school hours being forced to accept a set of beliefs that might be contrary to a family's sincerely held moral and ethical beliefs. How much longer are we going to allow this coercion to continue?

Elizabeth Rosenberg, Cape Coral

Chaos on the southern border

America is under siege at the southern border. Over 1.7-million illegal aliens have flooded into the United States in 2021, 2.4 million have illegally crossed the border this year in 2022 and another 900,000 have gone unapprehended on President Biden’s watch in less than two years. The explosion of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border on Biden’s watch now exceeds the population of Los Angeles. And, this number will explode once Title 42 authority expires. No other president has ever lost control of our borders like President Biden.

Biden is the first president to enact immigration policies that have threatened the security of the American homeland. Biden has made every state a border state by not enforcing existing immigration laws. Biden’s border policies that he enacted in the first days of his administration have created chaos, suffering, human trafficking, and unleashed a flood of illegal drugs into America. Biden has lost a son, Beau. And his son Hunter has struggled with drugs. Why isn’t he focused on drying up these drugs so other parents don’t have to bury their children or go through the hell his drug-addicted son have put his family through? His lack of action is callous insult to all the families that have lost someone due to fentanyl.

The Roman Empire fell when their political class ran up Rome’s debt to unsustainable levels. When leaders did not defend its borders, Rome was over run by barbarians. History is repeating itself today in America.Biden has increased the national debt over $5 trillion in two years to over $31 trillion (135 percent of the 2021 American GDP) and our homeland is being overrun by waves of illegal immigrants from all over the globe. Rome redux. For the first time in history, an American president has waved the white flag of surrender at our own border to a foreign enemy -- the Mexican cartels.

This is President Biden’s crisis. But, he refuses to own it.The illegal immigrants who have overwhelmed the border have played the American taxpayers as rubes. The Biden administration is letting these migrants cross into the country with no background security checks or COVID testing endangering American citizens. But, the Biden administration fired thousands of American military members, health care workers and first responders who refused to get vaccinated.

America has lost over 1 million of our citizens to COVID -- 800,000 on Biden’s watch. All the effort and expense to fight this deadly disease is being undermined because these migrants are potential COVID time bombs this winter potentially infecting unsuspecting American citizens. Border cities have been exhausted and financially tapped by these waves of migrants.

Enough is enough.America has continuously renewed and strengthened itself through legal immigration. The Biden administration decision to not enforce our nation’s immigration laws is undermining the public trust in our government.If President Biden will not visit the border and have a sense of urgency to secure it, Sen. McConnell should leverage Sen. Schumer’s failure to have the appropriation bills passed by regular order and refuse to pass any bill to fund the government until Biden allocates funds from his $1.3 trillion infrastructure bill to complete the border wall.

William Lewis, Estero

How to get copy of deed

Several clients have reached out to me about purchasing a copy of a recorded deed to their property, when it can be obtained from the Collier County Clerk website without charge. Open up collierclerk.org and click on Records, then Official Land Records. Type in your name (I've had the best results using a last name only), then, under type of document click on Deed. Select the first and last day of the year you purchased and print your deed and click Search. Don't waste your money.

John Licciardi, attorney, Naples

Extraterrestrial aliens

Everything going on around us today is not a show; some of it is serious stuff.

Some of it actually represents the real world -- not the illusion created by those little devices in your hands and the little windows you believe you’re looking at, thinking you’re looking through them at that same, real world. Did you get that?

The subject of extraterrestrial aliens despite our natural ignorance of its probable complexity is today a part of the same, real world, a world that fewer of us can see each successive year as we talk, particularly our youth, to our hands. We’ve all seen the news reports lately. They’re not just for propagandist purposes.

What indeed is really going on with these “little grey men” who, here in the U.S., have long been reported as apparently flying around in their amazing spacecraft, landing here and there, and doing something or other with or to us?

Current surveys, so I’ve heard, suggest a majority of Americans believe in or have accepted the possibility these E.T.’s are real. We thank Spielberg for the highly marketable acronym, but in any case it’s all too easy to say “yes” on a survey you know nobody actually takes seriously anyway.

Both my dad and I were in the Navy. So ask a Navy pilot who has seen one of these craft up close if he thinks they’re real or is has he simply been mistaken. “Are you serious?” he might ask. Well, are we?

Ed "Mac" McCoy, Bokeelia

'Sweeter deals' for insurance companies

I read with dismay and disbelief the details of the “sweeter deals” insurance companies will receive as a result of recent legislation passed by the Florida Legislature.  One critical question went unasked: How much money do the insurance companies donate each year to their Republican friends in the Legislature?  It sure looks like a case of “he who pays the piper calls the tune.”

Gail Hermosilla, Estero

Vaccines, herd immunity both valuable

I suggest people watch the whole NBC News show where Lester Holt interviewed Dr Fauci. In the segment before that interview another doctor pointed out the reason the flu season is going to hit so hard this year is because we did such a good job of hiding from it in the last three years. Our immune system forgot about the flu. I am not sure why we think hiding from a ubiquitous virus is good for the species. The flu is here, COVID is here and our best chance is when we develop herd immunity. I agree a vaccine (flu, COVID or whatever) is a very valuable tool in that fight but the real answer is we need to be exposed to it and overcome it. If immuno-compromised people want to isolate themselves that is their choice but it is not healthy for the masses if we really want a stronger population. Of course after that rare insight into science, Dr Fauci came on and said we need to mask up and social distance for the flu.

Greg Fretwell, Estero

Biden, the left, destroying country

I continually read and hear on the news how terrible Trump was as president. Please compare what we had with Trump and what we've got with Biden, who with the help of the left, are doing their very best to destroy this once great country. President Biden and his family are all a bunch of crooks and should be charged with selling influence all over the world.

Maurice Sinclair, Cape Coral

Protecting the profiteers

Corporations and trade groups opposing anti-price gouging and profiteering bills blanketed Capitol Hill with nine times more lobbying power than the bills' supporters.

Republicans in Congress accuse Democratic government of not handling and producing inflation. Yet when legislation is on the floor to prevent price gouging and profiteering legislators protect the profits of the profiteers.

That’s because big business and aligned trade groups use their lobbying power to prevent passage.

Corporate America deploys its overwhelming lobbying power to stop anti-price gouging and profiteering legislation to protect their profits. It’s all about the money.

So please tell me when your senator (former governor) or legislator talk about inflation, fail to provide you with service, and then allow partners in crime to profiteer and gouge money from you, how does that feel?

Public Citizen writes about that, and you can read about it.

Lewis Robinson, Fort Myers

Competent school board members usurped

As a native of the town of Naples, I’ve seen many changes to this town in my 19 years of life. But this change is one we’ll prefer to forget.

I voted in my first election this past year. I sat down a few nights before and did my research, going to candidates’ websites, reading non-politically affiliated informative articles about key local, state, and national issues, and evaluating how each person, each policy, each decision I made, would contribute to the development of a town I knew so well and love so much. Then, I sat down with my parents to discuss how we were all going to vote. That table was where I was introduced to our main villain.

Seeming innocent enough, my parents had cited a Facebook post. The post detailed which candidates to vote for, without much reason as to who they were and how they felt on the issues plaguing our town, but opting rather to emphasize how “pro-America” they were. That same morning, I recalled FOX 92.5 telling its viewers about how great the same candidates would be for Naples. Nothing wrong with that, right? Not until both sources confirmed that someone was endorsing all of these candidates and they were hosting an open house with these candidates where they’d have a prime opportunity to look good for people before the election while the candidates who grew Collier’s students, children, and reputation were at home with their families. This person’s name? Alfie Oakes, owner of Seed to Table and soon enough, Collier County.

I believe he has overstepped a line. A line that has now usurped three positions from competent school board members who were close to our county’s heart, and given them to the highest bidder.

Two major local events come immediately to my mind following this election. The first was a rezoning of schools with the pending opening of Aubrey Rogers High School. We expected a small reshuffling of kids, based mostly on who was closer to the school, and making sure every school had a size fit to ensure proper education. This, sadly, was not the case. Some Palmetto Ridge students face an hour-long bus ride to go to school. Streets in Golden Gate Estates are now zoned for Barron. Kids five minutes from Gulf Coast are zoned from a school 25 minutes west. And yet, not one of the three newly elected school board members said or did anything. Then, things got so much worse.

Jerry Rutherford’s website hinted at a throwback to the good old days. The basics, the fundamentals, the no-frills experience in our education were going to be brought to our table. His conservative values were lauded. Alfie Oakes backed him on his laundry list. And when Rutherford stated his position on corporal punishment, notably paddling, a TikToker from New Jersey made some strides. Suddenly, everyone was furious. Rutherford had enough of a change of heart to keep his mouth shut, and make a half-hearted attempt at an apology. Kelly Lichter showed her true passion for our children as well, when she blamed the entire situation on our leftist media down here in Naples. Oakes will do the same again in two years. He will own the school board, our commissioners, our property appraisers, our police and fire rescue officials, everyone on a ballot whose name he likes.

So what do I call for? I call for Stephanie Lucarelli, Jen Mitchell, Roy Terry, Jory Westberry, and Erick Carter to fight against the injustice pushed upon them. I call for the people of Naples to research the candidates and issues at hand on nonpartisan websites rather than hunting on social media for what they want to hear. I am 19, a cook, a far right Republican, and a firm believer that Naples is golden. But as Robert Frost said, nothing gold can stay.Charles Andrew Jaikaran, Naples

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Letters to the editor for Sunday, December 25, 2022