Letters to the editor for Sunday, June 30, 2024

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

Praise for property appraiser

I was unaware that there is a property tax exemption for widows/widowers. until last week when I received a letter from the Lee County Property Appraiser's Office. Annette Vann, Exemptions and Compliance manager, was notifying me that a routine audit of their records indicated that I might be eligible for an additional $5,000 exemption. I emailed her a copy of my wife's death certificate and the same day received an email back informing me that my additional widower's exemption will be processed for this year. This is just another example of the attitude of helpfulness that Lee County Property Appraiser Matt Caldwell has instilled throughout his department making it a pleasure to deal with them. I will definitely be voting for him in the upcoming elections.

Harris Segel, Fort Myers

Proven for Collier schools

In the August school board election, politicians are trying to take control of our public schools. We know that politicians are only out for themselves, not the future of our children’s education.Two of the school board candidates, incumbents Stephanie Lucarelli and Erick Carter, have proven that they work in the best interests of our students. Erick has especially represented the technical school students in their quest for great job training. Stephanie has been outstanding in student services support.The choice is yours. You can choose political hacks who care about themselves or you can choose Stephanie Lucarelli and Erick Carter to continue to support our students.

Bill Korson, Naples

Support these incumbents

We believe the fate of our local good government will be set August 20, the mail ballots for which will be sent by our elections supervisor July 11.

We believe all voters should support our excellent incumbents who have proven they are caring, competent, dedicated, honest, and focused on the continued balanced progress of our county.

We start with urging your support for Stephanie Lucarelli and Erick Carter, two outstanding School Board members.

Stephanie Lucarelli is working hard to serve Collier County's students! Among many other accomplishments, as a school board member, Stephanie has: Fought for fiscal responsibility by putting the district on track to be debt free by 2026; Voted to approve historic teacher raises; Collaborated with law enforcement to keep our students safe!

If you would like to join her re-election team or sign up for a yard sign, please head to VoteLucarelli.com/contact/

Erick Carter has been a co-owner of a local business for over 20 years. He seeks reelection to our school board for a third term this year.

Among many other accomplishments, as a school board member, Erick has: Opened more opportunities for Collier County juniors and seniors to attend technical colleges, so they can confidently start their careers debt free; Ensuring the school district has quantifiable goals on all of our programs; Establishing Zero Base Budgeting where applicable.

If you would like to join his re-election team or sign up for a yard sign, please head to erick@erickcarter.com.

Mike Lyster, past chair, Collier GOP Executive Committee; and Mike Reagen, past president, Greater Naples Chamber

Yes on Amendment 4

In an interview this week with Dr. Kevin Roberts, president of Heritage Foundation, he stated that even if a woman’s doctor says she needs lifesaving health care requiring an abortion, she should not receive care because abortion is NOT healthcare; “abortion is murder.”Babies grow inside a mother’s womb. If the mother dies, then the baby usually dies. Dr. Roberts must have missed this high school biology class.Dr. Roberts also claimed that some states support abortion three days after birth. That is a lie! It’s not happening and it’s infuriating to hear an educator with a PhD make such an absurd statement.The six-week abortion ban in Florida is dangerous for women. Even if wanted, sometimes there are complications, as was the case when I had an ectopic pregnancy.Without access to lifesaving health care, women will die. The Republican Party seems fine with this, even though death of mother usually means death of unborn baby.Women and the people who love them need to act. Their lives are depending on us. Vote YES on Amendment 4 in November. While you’re at it vote for the Democrats. Unlike the Republican slate, Democrats protect rights of ALL Floridians.

Janine Mohl, Cape Coral

Protect reproductive freedom

June 24 marked the second anniversary of the overturning of Roe versus Wade, since then it has been a fight to protect our rights. On June 24th I, and many others, stood on the corners of Daniels Parkway and US 41 to show our support for reproductive freedom and Amendment 4. It was inspiring to see so many folks, young and old, come together to raise awareness and show support! We received cheers from drivers, thumbs up, and honks. It’s great to see that you aren’t alone. Patients deserve the right to make their own private health care decisions with their loved ones and their doctors. On November 5 Floridians will have a chance to vote Yes on Amendment 4 to protect reproductive freedom in the State of Florida.

Michaela O’Brien, Fort Myers

Alfie Oakes' paperwork

I am not going to form an opinion on the issue regarding Alfie Oakes' paperwork based on my political point of view as I know many people will do. It's a bit of a he said/she said situation. But I will say this. I came to Naples from a district in Illinois where an individual of the wrong political persuasion filed paperwork to be on the school board ballot. His paperwork was rejected because the paperclip was in the wrong place. In that situation, it was easily verifiable.

Allison Spataro, Naples

Trump at fault on border

Today’s immigration issues are Trump’s fault.

In February of this year, under the direction of Donald Trump, Mike Johnson and his House Republicans blocked the strongest border security bill in decades. It was crafted by Republican Senator James Lankford and endorsed by the acting chief of U.S. Customs and the Border Patrol Union. Why did Trump and his supporters block this well-advised border legislation? Because they admittedly feared that it would help Joe Biden politically.

Our border issues today are the fault of a politically motivated Donald Trump and his supporters in the House of Representatives. So when you hear Trump rant and rave about immigration, he is talking about a situation which he created.

Sally Lam, Naples

Sainthood for Jan. 6 rioters?

Those creationists and others who don’t subscribe to evolution must be astonished when observing how the former president and his MAGA movement characterize the January 6th rioters.The miscreants were first regarded as “tourists,” then “patriots,” followed by “hostages,” becoming “victims,” and most recently by the ex-president this week as “warriors.”This morphing might be unsettling to some, but it shows that Charles Darwin’s doctrine is alive and well in the MAGA universe.At this rate, beatification is coming soon, prior to canonization, and ultimately sainthood.

Marshall H. Tanick, Naples

Important election

Everyone should agree that election donations have reached unacceptable amounts to steer elections. There should also be personal limits by individuals. This election is way too important to flash the cash and have rallies. Eliminate corporate influence peddling. Unacceptable.Women wake up. This is not just about abortion. It is about your personal space and rights. Any minority by ethnicity or beliefs should pay close attention to how parties treat and speak to you and your needs for a future.This election will not only determine your immediate future but the future of your family. This is important!Please vote. Let’s get name calling and bullying out of our government and start working for the people. Locally remove your politics and work for the city. Not developers and your party’s agenda.

Christianne Murphy, Bonita Springs

Lives depend on vote

Another reason to NOT vote for Trump is his philosophy on climate change which he could care less about. He called it a Chinese hoax previously. He wants to bring back mining for coal, the filthiest of the carbon fuels. The temperatures have increased monumentally both in the air and sea. The wildfire frequency has increased both in numbers and areas. Water levels are rising due to melting icebergs. We are on the downslope of our lives and may not see the terrible results but our children and grandchildren will unless we wake up. Putting the felon and sex offender in charge again will certainly exacerbate the climate issues. So how could anyone with a conscience and a modicum of intelligence vote for this charlatan? I think it’s pretty clear who these voters are. Do they really want their offspring breathing filthy air or drinking polluted water? I think not.

November will be here before you realize. Whatever you do, don't stay home. Vote like your life depends on it because it does.

Glenn Chenot, Cape Coral

Pickleball Capital

Naples is the Pickleball Capital of the world. The game is not as easy as it looks. I tried it and I'm not very good at it. I decided to try something a little easier and work my way up: Cucumber Ball.

Ira Linzer, Naples

Biden vs. Trump

Fox News and many Republicans keep saying we were better off four years ago.

Four years ago in June 2020, Trump was still president. The virus COVID-19 was raging across America and the planet, with thousands of people dying weekly. Trump’s answer was it will just go away, when it didn’t, he suggested you use bleach in your body, maybe stick an ultra-lite up one of your lower body parts.

Stupid is stupid. Lucky for America, the Biden administration took over in 2021, and no doubt saved millions of American lives. Trump predicted the stock market would crash under the Biden administration, as of June 20, 2024, the Dow was at an all-time (39,150.33) to be exact. Trump is the only president in the last 100 years to lose jobs (3,907,000) million, to be exact. The Biden administration has created over 15 million jobs in 3½ years. The Trump administration economy was heading for inflation. But to be fair, the inflation was caused mainly from the pandemic. Trump’s enormous debt of 7.8 trillion did not help matters. Inflation is down from a high of 9.1 to a respectable 3.3 now.

Wages are up by 17 percent. We cannot blame businesses for increasing their prices after the pandemic. Government has no control of private businesses. The American economy is still the largest and best in the world.

E. L. “Bud” Ruff, Naples

Climate change not new

Climate change is one of the hot topics today. No one can deny that the climate is changing. Also, no one can deny that the climate has changed constantly. At one time glaciers covered much of what is now America. Also at one time, the ocean came as far in as Colorado. Climate change resulted in where we are today. In the 1970's, the hot topic regarding climate change was the coming ice age. In the 1990's it was that acid rain would destroy our vegetation. Today the issue is that the warming climate will cause rising oceans and more severe weather. What we know from history is that we are not great at predictions on mother nature.

I will quote from an article in today's Minneapolis paper: "Though previous research found a decrease in area burned globally by wildfires this century, the new study found that extreme wildfire events have increased 2.2-fold since 2003. ... According to the study, burn severity has increased in more regions than it has decreased." Not exactly sure how to read this, but it sounds like the number of fires is down, the amount of acreage burned is down, but the extremes of the fires that do occur have increased. The article ties this all into climate change but provides no concrete evidence.

Of course, the real question is how much humans are causing climate change and what can or should be done with the human impact? Trillions of dollars are going to be spent around the world to try to negate any human impact on climate. Humans have a long history of trying to control the climate (cloud seeding) and there is no record of any success. La Nina and El Nino are Pacific weather patterns that cause different climate changes and scientists admit we have no control over them.

Ron Wobbeking, Naples

Liberal bias

You gave some guy the front page of Perspective last Sunday telling us that the state will not smell like marijuana if Florida voters make it legal. (He should spend a Saturday night in some of the Detroit neighborhoods.) But you will not print my “Get High, Kill Babies” bumper sticker idea and completely ignored my request to further investigate all of the civil suits from the victims that should have followed the Trump guilty verdict. I am beginning to think you are a liberal leaning media outlet.

Don Rader, Naples

Biden an abysmal failure

Another little girl was murdered by two illegal immigrants, both with criminal records, that had been cited previously. This follows shortly behind a mother of five being sexually assaulted and murdered by another previously expelled illegal. Let’s not forget Laken Reilly, whom the president addressed during his State of the Union but knew not how to pronounce her name. That shows how unimportant these incidents are to our soon to be jobless President Biden.

Jews are being attacked outside their places of worship, but not a word from the president. His excuse being that he is preparing for the debate with the future President Trump. Biden is being spoon fed so much information that he can’t comment on the horrid incidents occurring almost daily. His mind is incapable of doing more than one thing at a time.

The buck stops at the desk he sits at but does not really occupy. We know the power is in the hands of Obama, who so subtly in an interview with Stephen Colbert, said that would be exactly what he hoped for. Biden is supposed to represent all Americans. However, he only represents them at the time he is pandering for their money and their votes. Biden has been an abysmal failure from day one. It is hard to recall one incident when he did something good for America.

There will be lots of progressives who will vilify me for what I say but let them. They are sealing their own doom and that of those who follow, if they vote for Biden.

Michael Zubrow, Naples

What Biden hasn't done

I think Joe Biden has done a better than average job as president, but I'm well aware that many of you out there disagree. Hey ... you do you. If you have a minute, though, I'd like to focus on a few things he hasn't done. He hasn't committed a felony and been convicted by a jury of his peers. He hasn't cried "foul" when his campaigns have come up short. He hasn't attempted to negate the results of a legitimate election. He hasn't encouraged his supporters to stage a violent assault on the temple of our democracy that led to numerous injuries and a number of deaths. He hasn't sat by watching TV as said attack was unfolding. He hasn't suggested that his VP might just deserve lynching. He hasn't called felonious thugs patriots and promised to pardon them if elected. He hasn't crowed about his ability to grab women by their privates without consequence because of his "fame." He hasn't been ordered to pay a fortune to a woman whose character he defamed by a judge who said that, by any reasonable definition, he was a rapist. He hasn't worked to deprive half of the population of agency in matters pertaining to their own bodies. He hasn't cozied up to some of the worst authoritarians on the planet. He hasn't compromised national security by treating classified materials as his personal possessions. He hasn't downplayed a deadly virus or suggested that it might succumb to the internal application of bleach. He hasn't lied to the American people too many times to count on tape. He hasn't pardoned felons for demonstrating loyalty to him. He hasn't imperiled election workers and law enforcement personnel by placing them in the crosshairs of his most unhinged supporters. He hasn't threatened to suspend the Constitution if it becomes personally inconvenient. He hasn't asserted the right to murder a political opponent while president. He hasn't refused to honor fallen heroes because his hair might get wet. He hasn't wondered aloud why they were willing to risk death to defeat tyranny. He hasn't given tax relief to the super rich at the expense of everyone else. He hasn't minimized the threat of impending ecological collapse. He hasn't supported gun fetishists at every turn. He hasn't displayed bigotry of every kind and degree. He hasn't made a good faith attempt to turn our democratic republic into Putin's Russia. He hasn't been openly contemptuous of the rule of law. He hasn't ... well ... this is getting tedious. Why go on for weeks when the upshot of all this is perfectly clear.You anti-Biden Americans have been on to something all along. Compared to the opposition, the man just hasn't done much ... at all.

Geremy Spampinato, Naples

Vulgar, anonymous caller

Recently The News-Press printed a letter I had written in which I, not subtly, mocked Governor DeSantis for his legislative attempt to solve the global warming problem by simply denying its existence. This approach works very well until, of course, it no longer does. In my letter I mentioned that I had written a previous letter in which I chided our same illustrious governor on his failure to understand the meaning and potential advantage of what is being referred to as lab grown meat, as well as his ultimately futile attempt to legislate the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of such products within the State of Florida. Time will tell, but I suspect that this legislation will likely go the same way as our 18th Amendment and, basically, for the same reasons. I also mentioned that my first letter had generated a voicemail response from one of your readers. It was a brief and vulgar rant with no factual substance. Naturally, it had been left anonymously.Now I've been musing about which of our governor's cornucopia of intellectual weaknesses I should write about next. I was trying to decide between his paranoia of gay people, his attempts to rewrite the history of slavery in America, his attempts to remove library books from our schools that deal with subjects he wishes to avoid, just to name a few. My current writer's block in choosing a subject is, quite frankly, because I am momentarily overwhelmed by the sheer number of possibilities.Then, it dawned upon me, that perhaps your readers might be interested in knowing that my second letter had also generated another anonymous voicemail on my phone by the same person who had been so offended by my first letter. This time, to her credit, she did attempt to provide a factual basis to refute the existence of global warming to which I had referred. She advised that, for 40 years, she has owned some land in Ocean City, MD that included a marsh. She said that this marsh has never been covered with water. Therefore, she concluded, this is proof positive that global warming does not exist. Well, at least this time, she did attempt (in her mind, at least) to provide a factual justification for her opinion. Of course, most people realize that such a fact has no logical relevance. One could safely say that it doesn't hold water. (Sorry, I couldn't resist). As one might also suspect, she, once again, disparaged my character. She even commented that she hoped my mortal existence will soon come to an end. Personally, I am rather amazed that a person could be so incensed by another person's difference of opinion that it is sufficient justification to wish that person experience a quick demise. She called me a wacko (the pot calling the kettle black, perhaps?) Finally, her insolent message concluded with an ad hominem attack advising that I need to "get my head out of my ​***". Had I the means to communicate a response directly to her, I would simply say, "Tu quoque, my dear, tu quoque!"

Robert Lightner, Cape Coral