Letters to the editor for Sunday, October 22, 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
Residents' vote ignored
Four of the five Collier County commissioners ignored and disrespected the voice and vote of Collier County citizens by raiding the Collier County trust fund for conservation acquisition. Also, they reduced the percentage of taxes to be collected for the fund this year.
Only Commissioner Bert Saunders voted against raiding the trust fund. Let’s keep his name in mind at election time.
Dorothy S. Kuzneski, Naples
Partnership Against Antisemitism
On October 7 Israel was attacked by scores of Hamas terrorists. In the bloodiest day since the Holocaust, they murdered a population adjusted equivalent of over 40,000 Americans.This was not a case of collateral damage or soldiers losing control in the heat of battle. It had nothing to do with Palestinians' rights. The sole purpose of this savage invasion was to rape, kill, maim, desecrate, and kidnap as many Israeli civilians as possible.Israel will do everything possible to rescue its hostages. She is engaged in ground operations in Gaza while trying to spare civilians and stall an unrestricted assault from Hezbollah on her northern border.
Hamas’ grandees luxuriating in Qatar should be arrested and brought before the ICC; the war criminals hiding behind human shields in Gaza should be eliminated. But that may not happen.Demonstrations in support of Hamas are everywhere and Israel is held responsible for the war online, on campuses, in media, by the Squad and the UN. Cries of “a humanitarian crisis and disproportionate force,” and calls for a “cessation of hostilities” began before the IDF even entered Gaza.Attempts by Israel to defend itself always inspire choreographed spikes of antisemitism. There is no evidence of an imminent threat in Naples, but we need to be prepared.The Christian-Jewish Partnership Against Antisemitism Conference at the Jewish Federation Iser Cultural Center, 7 p.m. Nov. 30, will begin to do just that. Please join us.Allen Menkin, M.D., project coordinator, The Christian-Jewish Partnership, Naples
History repeating itself?
Kristallnacht, means the “Night of Broken Glass.” It is the term given to the events of November 9-10, 1938. The term symbolizes the shattered glass from the thousands of Jewish synagogues, homes, businesses and lives that were destroyed. Historians consider Kristallnacht the night the Holocaust began.The vicious attack upon the state of Israel on Saturday, October 7, 2023, bears startling similarities to Kristallnacht. Both historic events saw innocent men, woman and children brutally attacked as they went about their daily lives. Both events saw the peace, the hopes and the dreams of lives brutality shattered. Most tragically, the horrific murders committed has shattered humanity.The atrocities of these two historic events were carried out by terrorists. Terrorists do not want peace; they want chaos. Terrorists do not want hope; they want despair. Terrorists do not want to build; they want to destroy. Terrorists do not want to create a better world; they want hate and fear to fester and shatter civilization.So, are we witnessing history being repeated?Virginia Segaloff, chair of the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue of Collier County’s annual Kristallnacht Commemoration
Partisan business plan
A lot of people complaining about the economy and blaming the Biden administration. I was watching a local commercial where the announcer exclaimed if you are a liberal do not give me your money. Good business plan. Did you learn that from Mike Pillow? Then you have bakers, dressmakers and as far as I know, candlestick makers that are refusing to take money from people they don’t particularly like. Personally I wouldn’t want to have any dealings with people that hated me. They are loud and proud (boys) so we know who to avoid. They’re slowly going broke (Rudy and Mike Pillow to name a few), slowly going to court and jail. They call us woke and progressive. Thanks.
Charles Perkins, North Fort Myers
Property insurance
I live in the Golden Gate Estates and have been shuffled from one property insurer to the next until I ended up with Citizens Insurance as a last resort. Now, apparently the last resort has found two other last resorts that I must choose from, Slide or Monarch Insurance. I chose Slide Insurance which was less expensive than either Monarch or Citizens so, as of Oct. 17, I will have Slide Insurance. Since I paid Citizens for a year of insurance in May 2023, I should get a refund from Citizens and then start paying for Slide Insurance on Oct. 17, right? Wrong. According to my Ins. agent and customer service from both Citizens and Slide, Citizens keeps my full year payment and I start paying Slide in May 2024. I feel I'm getting ripped off. Am I the only one?
James Noon, Naples
Concern for the world
It is of great concern I have of our world today which seems to ignore the greater good for all and emphasize personal victory and/or enrichment. Interestingly, I am not talking politics in the United States. The Hamas-Israeli war is one point. Hamas believes that an entity that denies another's existence, territory and religion should be bombarded, terrorized and murdered without concern to their age, sex or innocence. They have just established a wish for their own death sentence.
Willard Sass, Naples
No moral equivalence
American tragedies like Pearl Harbor, the assassination of JFK and MLK, and 9/11 are real for a generation, then they become history. In Judaism memory is reality. For us the atrocities of 22 Tishrei 5784 (October 7, 2023) will be real so long as a single Jew remains on this planet.
We will also remember that in this time of darkness wonderful people, public officials, clergy, neighbors, shopkeepers and police officers came forward to comfort us. Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum honors the memory of people like them as “Righteous Among the Nations.”
But others remain so ignorant, miseducated, or willfully hateful that they cannot acknowledge Absolute Evil when they see it. They rush to praise Hamas murderers, rapists, and kidnappers, and they are dumb when cheering Palestinian mobs desecrate the victims’ dead bodies. When they speak, they spew antisemitic, antizionist hatred under the guise of “equity” and “social justice.“
Major Universities are cesspools of antisemitism. They vilify Israel and taunt their Jewish students. Many public schools depict Jews as “colonizers” and “oppressors.” Groups from the far right and extreme left are united in support of Hamas and their atrocities. Antisemitic incidents are at an all-time high; and there is reason to believe they will spike even higher. The war against Israel is not complicated. Israel is right, the barbarians are wrong. There is no moral equivalence between the two. If Israel does not prevail on the battlefield, it will be destroyed by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its puppets. Then they will come for America.
Edward Alexander, Naples
GOP clueless on labor issues
Now that some of the labor strikes and strife have subsided — Hollywood-based entertainment writers, health care workers centered in California, meatpackers at Hormel in southern Minnesota — while others by the actors and auto workers persist — several of the Republican presidential candidates need to address how they would treat the past, current, and future unease of workers.
We know from what they’ve said thus far on the campaign trail, that it’s not favorable to employees and their families.
Start with Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator masquerading as the “Happy Warrior.” His self-proclaimed “simple” and final solution is to fire them; “You strike, you’re fired,” he has declared, notwithstanding that doing so would be a blatant violation of federal law and many state laws as well, including here in Florida where the state Constitution does prohibit strikes by government employees but safeguards the rights of strikers in the private sector.
Our Governor DeSantis is more graphic; he has pledged, if elected, to “start slitting throats” of federal employees on his first day in office, another hyperbolic illegality.
As for the front-runner and likely nominee, former President Trump, federal employees would fare little better. They would presumably keep their heads, but would lose their livelihood since he has announced his intention to slash the workforce, replace some with his own acolytes of unswerving loyalty, and take away job security of the remaining civil servants. Much of that grand design, which could impact a sizeable segment of the 90,000 federal employees here in Florida, would be unlawful, too.
Other candidates like former Vice President Mike Pence and Nikki Haley have been less demonstrative — and illegal — in their views but hardly supportive of the concerns of employees, opting to blame the discontent of workers on the Biden administration.
So, the Republican hierarchy seems intent on using unlawful tactics and playing the blame game to ineffectually address mounting management-labor problems.
It’s yet another illustration of how the GOP is clueless when it comes to this issue — and many others as well.
Marshall H. Tanick, Naples
Administration loses its way
Jake Sullivan, who is the National Security advisor for the Biden administration, announced two days before Hamas invaded Israel that the Middle East was the quietest it has been in decades. You have to wonder how our intelligence community was apparently totally unaware of what Hamas had been planning for two years. Do you think it could be tied to what Biden has repeatedly professed - that the biggest threats are climate change, white supremacy and MAGA Republicans? We now have some 7 million illegal immigrants in our country, most of whom have not been vetted and recent reports are that the Biden administration has lost track of many of them. The most important job of any administration is to protect the citizens. It appears that the Biden administration has lost its way on that job.
Ron Wobbeking, Naples
Dots not connected
After the horrendous attack by Hamas on Israel last week, it was very evident the security of the supposed strongest defense in the Middle East, aka “The Iron Dome,” was so badly compromised by terrorists using barbaric and unforeseen not-so-modern methods like parasails, motorbikes, drones, bulldozers and more powerful missiles. Training in broad daylight adjacent to the border with newly constructed concrete block dummy homes used to practice hostage-taking and parasail flights, no one took notice. Likened to the 9/11 attacks here, we had access to actionable intelligence but the dots were just not connected. Now, acting with anger and vengeance, Israel will conduct military raids which will undoubtedly cause many more deaths - especially with the miles of elaborate tunnels throughout Gaza. Cutting power and water is affecting just as many civilians as the terrorists - maybe more since Hamas was prepared for it. The rebuilding of the unnecessary leveling of Gaza will take forever and guess who will help pay for it? We can’t even send aid to Ukraine anymore due to Republican dysfunction. I don’t know how or what the U.S. can do for intervention but our intelligence didn’t help matters either. Nipping in the bud was paramount to both hotspots but it’s too late now.
Glenn Chenot, Cape Coral
Godly heritage
In reply to a previous letter: 1. In your letter, you referred to America as a democracy, According to the Constitution (Art. IV, sec. 4,) every state is guaranteed a republican form of government.2. John Dewey, a secular humanist who signed the Humanist Manifesto 1 and 2, is anti-God, and brought secular humanism into the schools in the 1920s. Secular Humanism has been declared by the courts as a religion.
3. Currently the public schools are considered to be secular. This was not the case for the first 300 years. Our nation was formed on a belief in God, the Bible and prayer. In 1620, the Pilgrims prayed. The first school textbook, the “New England Primer,” published in 1690, contained prayers, Bible questions and moral stories. The Primer was used in schools until the early 1900s. It also included the Ten Commandments.Our early colleges, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and William and Mary were all founded to teach ministers of the Gospel, and certainly embraced prayer. Many of our Founders attended these colleges. Today, these colleges are a complete opposite from their beginnings.The Declaration of Independence never intended to sponsor a "secular democracy." America has a Godly heritage.
Jerry Rutherford, Naples
Extreme fringe influence
The Republican Party no longer holds a majority in Congress. It is now divided between centrist Republicans and the far-right wing of the party. As the recent speaker battles have demonstrated, the party faces challenges in effectively governing the House with its current composition.There are pressing issues that require attention. To address these issues, we need a speaker of the House. To achieve this, I believe, as others have suggested, that the Republican Party should nominate a candidate who is acceptable to the majority of the party, excluding the far-right faction, while also gaining support from a small minority of more conservative Democrats.In the long run, I believe it is in the best interest of the country for both the Democratic and Republican parties to distance themselves from their extreme fringe members. Allowing them to form their own parties would relegate these elements to smaller fringe groups, limiting their outsized influence, which the current configuration enables.
Joe Kunz, Naples
Don't dictate to me
I believe we can start with the premise that in all professions (science, health care, teachers, police, politicians, lawyers, accountants etc.), there are some bad apples.Knowing that, I still believe a vast majority of those employed in their individuals fields are best suited to provide us with the best choices. They have studied their professions quite extensively, and my thoughts are they are the best providers in giving us the information we need to make an informed decision.
I personally do not want a politician making decisions for me, about me, as a laboratory experiment. They do not have all knowledge in all fields to do that. Their personal opinions are not relevant to my health, or how teachers (who are quite trained in their field), etc. to decide how to teach relevant topics for their students. We do not exist in a vacuum. If past events cannot be taught, how will our next generation understand how we got here, and more relevant, so the past can be understood and not be repeated. If someone disagrees with someone else's perspective, do something for yourself, talk about it calmly, and you can agree to disagree, but don't make it a personal vendetta for others. If our representatives would do their job of coming up with solutions that benefit ALL, we would not be in the mess we are in.It is not expected we can agree on everything, but let's work with each other, and not against each other. Don't tell me how to live, and what YOU think is important to me. I have a brain, and can make those decisions myself.
Barbara Herstig, Naples
Social Security increase
The only people who think that a 3.2% cost of living increase in Social Security payments is adequate have three things in common. They don’t have to purchase gasoline, groceries and they think that Bidenomics is an effective tool against inflation.
Don Rader, Naples
Government's concern
The writer of “Personal Choice“ in Wednesday’s mailbag wondered what business the government has whether a woman wants to bring her baby to term or not and asks, “What business is it of theirs?” I would ask that writer, why is the government involved with whether your grouchy neighbor can dispatch your 8-year-old son for trashing his garden repeatedly while retrieving a ball? What business is it of theirs?
Gary Marsh, Estero
Another deliberate blunder
We heard the secretary of State lament the tragedy of Israel, echoing President Biden, who took several days to remark. Neither man addressed the evil Iran, that fomented the Hamas barbarity. Nor did they admit that lifting sanctions on Iran oil and giving 6 billion "in humanitarian aid" to them was a mistake. And this unspent money must be frozen.
Iran's promise they would not use this line of credit to spread terror, is consistent with their hate America agenda.
Another deliberate blunder, like the Afghanistan withdrawal, by Biden. so noted. Some Democrats wanted an immediate ceasefire, while others joined the radicals who were blaming Israel for the Hamas butchery!
We pray for Biden's immediate impeachment.
B. Cueny, Naples
Worthless UN
There isn’t a person on the planet who by now doesn’t know about the war crimes committed in Israel by the terrorist regime called Hamas. The murder of babies by setting them on fire and also chopping their heads off. The pregnant mother who had her fetus cut out and was then bludgeoned to death. 260 young people assassinated at a music festival. Americans murdered and taken hostage. I could go on and on.
So where is the outrage from the worthless UN and their equally worthless Human Rights Council? Not a peep. Outrageous. We need to kick them out of New York and stop funding this disgusting body of useless people.
Michael Adler, Miromar Lakes
Games-playing obsession
Representative government it’s called; but what is it called when how those who do the representing do their job as if they were playing on a sports team, rather than standing for (at least a majority of the time) the wishes and views of a majority of the district they represent? Is what’s taking place in the U.S. House today a symptom of this malady, this “games-playing” obsession?
On one side in this case, the Democrats present an almost entirely-united front on every issue – fight for the team, no individualism, no diversity of opinion, recited the mantra, go team! How is this representing the people each representative is serving? Common knowledge is that privately Americans are generally so self-centered that no two ever agree on anything; suddenly all these political robots are in link-step; how is that possible?
On the other side the Republicans, who want to pretend they are in power, have a team that is individualistically centered, displaying just the opposite of a team effort. It's like putting a team together for an “all stars” game, one that wastes too much time and effort on themselves and loses because they can’t figure out how to win against a united front.
I want to see sports on Saturday night, not babies getting their heads cut off – so, get with it government; we’re all losing because you’re all playing as if our futures were some sorry game and not what counted most in the real world!
Ed McCoy, Bokeelia
What did Trump mean?
What did Trump mean when he said that “Hamas is smart, very smart”?
Did he mean that their average intelligence across many definitions of that term is greater than yours or mine?
Did he mean that the terrorists were deeply learned in the enlightenment thought and feelings of Muslim masters like Rumi?
No. He meant he admires their politicization of brutal, sadistic violence. To him it’s shrewd, like that of that “geniuses” Putin and Kim Jong-un.
Trump longs to take his place alongside of emperors like Nero and Robespierre.
The brilliant men and women who set up America’s democracy knew that it was going to be very successful. It responded to a human need. It defined inalienable rights.
They also knew that America's success would elicit an intense desire from demagogues to control our achievement as a people in the service of their egos. So, the Founders crated the Constitution. You remember, that document Trump swore an oath to and now wants to suspend.
When you look at how insistent commercial are that people are so happy, you know that things are bad. They’re sad like comedies that tell you when to laugh. The intensity of Trump’s rage and his desire for vengeance attracts fans. Trump’s passion, his love of risk, and his narcissism are compelling. Autocrats glow with a syrup made with bleach and hydroxychloroquine.
People like Trump or Putin or Xi don’t smile. They aren’t joking.
Many agree with Trump’s call to shoot shoplifters on sight. It’s Hamas’ kind of participatory violence. Terrorist leaders understand that kind of thinking. They think it’s “smart.”
Michael Sales, Naples
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Letters to the editor for Sunday, October 22, 2023
