If C&J charges for parking, NH should get the money: Letters

If C&J charges for parking, NH should get the money

Sept. 17 − To the Editor:

C&J Bus Lines wants to charge for parking at its Portsmouth depot claiming that the lot gets full sometimes. I believe the real reason they want to charge for parking is to make more money. The lot is state owned and was made to make it affordable and convenient to fly from Logan Airport and work in Boston.

C&J built its own lot in Seabrook and charges to park there.  Despite making money on parking, it did not lower the ticket price. Maybe the reason the Portsmouth lot occasionally gets crowded is people who used to catch the C&J buses to Logan and South Station in Newburyport now drive to Portsmouth to avoid paying for parking at Seabrook.

The State of New Hampshire built and owns the depot. If anyone should make money from parking it is the state not C&J.

Walter Hamilton

Portsmouth

Cars are seen parked in front of the C&J Bus Lines' terminal at Pease in Portsmouth.
Cars are seen parked in front of the C&J Bus Lines' terminal at Pease in Portsmouth.

It would make more sense to honor Amerigo Vespucci

Sept. 17 − To the Editor:

Advocates celebrating the re-designation of an October day as Columbus Day who as Italians proclaim Columbus as one of their brethren have a lot to learn. Christophoro Columbo was Catalon. Every single word of his writings were in Catalonian. That he was from Genoa is a myth long disproven.

So, without having to make false claims about a Catalonian explorer, Italian-American New Hampshireites can still take some pride in an entire hemisphere being named in recognition of the undisputedly Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci. I think "America" gets enough publicity all by itself.

John Robinson

Portsmouth

Guns and voting: We have it backwards

Sept. 18 −To the Editor:

A quick Google search of voter fraud finds an Arizona State University poll shows an average of 344 cases of voter fraud nationally.  According to the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, there were103 cases of confirmed election fraud between 2005 and 2022 with 107 million votes cast, an average of 6 fraudulent votes per year.

Compare that with 48,204 deaths due to gun violence in 2022, of which 27,032 were from suicide, 19,651 were from homicide, 463 were “unintentional accidents,” and 643 were fatally shot by law enforcement.  Also, gun deaths are the leading cause of deaths for American children.

There is a national effort to restrict voting due to voter fraud, particularly from Republican lawmakers, while little or no effort is being made to curb gun violence.  Millions of Americans are having their voting rights restricted for such a tiny handful of voter fraud incidents.  Meanwhile, thousands of Americans, including children, are losing their lives with virtually no effort being made to tighten our gun laws to keep semiautomatic rifles out of the hands of would-be assassins like the 14-year-old boy who killed 4 people in Georgia last week, or the two men who tried to assassinate former President Trump.

The reason, in part, may be due to the fact that the right to bear arms is in the Constitution, but not a right to vote.  For the sake of our lives, our freedoms, and our democracy, we need to change that, for surely, we have it backwards.

James Fieseher MD, FAAFP

Dover

Trump's closest advisors have warned us. Will we listen?

Sept. 17 − To the Editor:

Responding to Ms. Russell’s rebuttal of my earlier letter, her own words prove my point. Trump signed a memo (written by John McEntee, whoever that is) ordering the immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, and presented it to General Milley who told him he was out of his (expletive deleted) mind. To acknowledge that Biden messed up the withdrawal doesn’t change the simple fact that Trump was out of his (expletive deleted) mind and still is.

Just look at his desperate efforts to bolster his failing campaign with racist dog whistles (Haitians kidnapping and eating pets) and the promise of a new round or Red Scare/McCarthyism (landing on the pejorative Comrade Kamala.)

Vice President/Candidate Harris pointed out at the debate that all of his advisors who tried to be the adult in the room have said that returning him to the White House endangers our country. These are people who are not ideologically aligned with VP Harris, but who endorse her because her opponent is dangerous and the Republican Party has become a personality cult (with our own Governor Sununu now onboard.) Trump boasts that he fired them all as incompetent. Are we pretending that Rudy Guiliani and John Eastman are competent? Both have been disbarred! Are these architects of the fraudulent electors scheme the kind of guys we want advising our next president? No. We do not.

Jeffrey Cooper

Portsmouth

JD Vance wrong to accept dangerous 'facts of life'

Sept. 17 − To the Editor:

JD Vance, dismissed school shootings as a “Fact of Life.”  For Vance, since school shootings happen, we should accept them because shootings are a “fact of life.”

What other “facts of life” would Vance have accepted?  Let’s go back a bit and envision Vance’s advice for past problems.  What about lead in gasoline?  Vance would do nothing about it because, for Vance, lead pollution is a “fact of life.”  He’d advice: accept it and move on.

Republicans claimed requiring seat belts, air bags, catalytic converters would sink the auto market.  No sinking occurred and now we are safer and breath cleaner air. Before seat belts, catalytic converters, and air bags, hundreds of thousands of people died from accidents and polluted air. Since accident and pollution were “facts of life,” Vance would have let them slide.

Before Title IX female athletes took seconds or didn’t play sports.  Title IX paved the way for today where American women won more Olympic medals than men.  Ignoring female athletes was a “fact of life” that Vance would have accepted along with death and taxes.

Vance should get his facts straight.  It is a fact that school shootings occur; however, by adding the phrase “of life” Vance dismisses them.  It is fact of life, for example, that we must die.  It is not a “fact of life” that children must die by gun violence.  Vance is wrong.  He was also wrong when he dismissed childless women as “cat ladies.”  He got it wrong again when he said Ohio citizens from Haiti eat pets.

It is a verifiable fact that Vance gets it wrong time and again.  Though it is not a “fact of life” that Vance will constantly get things wrong, he seems to be working on it.

John Michael Atherton

Dover

Haitians need our empathy, not misinformation

Sept. 15 − To the Editor:

Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, I started traveling there once or twice a year as part of a non-profit group that runs a medical clinic and builds homes. I joined a large and disparate Seacoast community, devoted to helping the people of Haiti. Sadly, COVID ended those trips for many of us. The poverty I saw there was staggering. Families living in lean-tos flooded every time it rained. Families getting by on barely one meal a day, only surviving because of remittances from relatives, lucky enough to get to the US. Equally staggering was the Haitian people’s resilience, devotion family, and warmth toward us as they endured the poverty they were born into - poverty created and reinforced at various times by Western powers including us. I quickly learned that Haitians like many of us here view education as the key to the future. So each day we would see children emerge from huts on their way to school, amazingly in spanking clean and carefully ironed clothes. Really not different from what we see as our children wait for the school bus except for the huts and the ironed clothes. Only the luck of birth separates the affluent among us from Haitians and others living in poverty.

Ironically, the disseminators of the baseless accusations about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, enthusiastically welcomed into their fold in August a just failed presidential candidate (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr), one who had once proudly posted/boasted on social media about eating a dog.

Judy Spiller

Kittery Point, Maine

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: If C&J charges for parking, NH should get the money: Letters