Tuesday's letters: Don't glamorize sexist restaurant, Biden amazing, obsession with Trump

Shameful to promote restaurant

Please explain why reporter Laura Finaldi needed to promote the Twin Peaks restaurants as having “scantily clad female wait staff.”

I don’t know who I’m more disgusted with – the restaurant’s immature male mentality about women or the paper for making it a selling point rather than condemning it (“Twin Peaks restaurant opening at Fruitville Commons in Sarasota,” Sept. 8)

It’s hard to blame waitresses in a male-dominated economy (in 2020, women made 83 cents for every dollar earned by men) because many of them are supporting themselves and families – and they end up taking these insulting jobs to make a decent living.

This leaves at fault the companies that employ this type of sexist marketing and newspapers like the Herald-Tribune that promote it. Shame on both.

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It’s up to all of us to uphold the dignity of women and boycott blatantly sexist establishments like Twin Peaks.

Karen R. Koenig, Sarasota

Biden successful, despite GOP roadblocks

President Joe Biden and the Democrats have done an amazing job passing long-needed, important legislation, and in spite of a Republican effort to undermine all their efforts.

Despite inheriting the greatest public health crisis in U.S. history (COVID), crumbling and outdated infrastructure and a deepening climate crisis that Republicans did nothing about, Democrats delivered:

• The largest economic recovery plan since Franklin Roosevelt.

• The largest infrastructure plan since Dwight Eisenhower.

• The second-largest health care bill since Lyndon Johnson.

• The most significant gun legislation in 30 years.

• The lowest child poverty rate in recent history.

• The largest climate change bill in history.

High inflation wasn’t created by Democrats. It’s a worldwide problem created by the pandemic, the Ukraine/Russia war and corporate greed. Biden has done everything in his limited presidential power to help alleviate this.

Conversely, Republicans have engaged in suppressing voters, taking over the machinery of elections, ending women’s reproductive rights, banning books, restricting education and sabotaging every Democratic piece of legislation. They have done nothing to help or protect the American people.

Biden and Democrats are the only hope democracy has in America. True patriots will vote for democracy this November.

Frank Roeske, Englewood

Ignore climate change, pay the price

I was disheartened to read Florida House Speaker-designate Paul Renner’s column on your Sept. 11 Opinion page (“ESG threatens our pocketbook, our national security and our democracy”). He argues that Wall Street asset managers threaten our pocketbooks, our national security and our democracy by embracing progressive Environmental, Social and Governance goals (ESG).

For example, Renner argues that they should not necessarily consider addressing climate change in their decision making because it could adversely impact the bottom line – as if the only thing that matters is maximizing profits at the expense of any other consideration.

It is this kind of shortsighted and transactional thinking that we should reject.

This is just another example of our state government leading this state in the wrong direction.

Ronald Young, Sarasota

A plug for socially conscious investing

I read the guest column Sept. 11 by Florida House Speaker-designate Paul Renner.

Apparently, socially conscious investing is the newest front in the culture wars.

I have news for Renner and Gov. Ron DeSantis: Florida and its economy are in far more danger from sea-level rise due to the continued burning of carbon than it is from ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance investing).

I am delighted that activist investors are standing up for sustainability over short-term gain. I find it despicable that politicians who should know better are misdirecting public attention away from real and present danger to imaginary concerns.

John Hoover, Sarasota

End tiresome fixation with Trump

On a day when the Ukrainian military created a breach in Russia’s western front, seizing an important railroad hub, and two days after the longest-serving English monarch dies, the headline topping the Sept. 10 paper was about Donald Trump’s Sarasota office appearing unoccupied (“Trump link here clouded,” Sept. 10)!

Please, this may be of extraordinary interest to your reporters, but local residents could care less. Your ongoing obsession with the former president has become quite tiresome.

With a failing national government, sky-high inflation, two quarters of negative growth, etc., your fixation with the 45th president is a waste of paper and ink.

Michael Petersen, Sarasota

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Don't promote restaurant that demeans women, amazing job by Biden