Letters to the editor for Sunday, September 29, 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

Carlin for superintendent

Best man for the job has always been my opinion. Voting in Lee County is a very important responsibility because we need a leader to prioritize the educational and development needs of our students. We need someone with experience in/out of the classroom to enhance all educational aspects of student growth. As a parent, I want the very best teachers to teach my children. Leadership is no different. I expect nothing but the best superintendent for the job. On November 5, please don't vote for the best man for the job when it's crystal clear the answer is Dr. Denise Carlin. She has the qualifications, educational background and experience so desperately needed in Lee County.

Otto Hampel, Fort Myers

Schwan for Marco Council

I am writing in support of Bonita Schwan for Marco Island City Council. We enjoy living in Cozumel Building on Cape Marco with Bonita. Bonita is attentive and caring with a community-oriented mindset. She actively seeks to build a network of mutually beneficial relationships. With her public-spirited and civic-minded ambitions and goals, it is not surprising that she received over 90% of the owners’ votes and support for the position of serving on our Board of Directors.

Bonita is a wonderful leader on our Board. She has a positive and respective voice for us with a calming presence. She possesses qualities of openness, transparency, and reliability for the benefit of us owners. Bonita has been a great advocate for our condo owners and always stands up for us. She understands the challenges we face and knows how to articulate the solutions. As someone who has seen Bonita’s leadership firsthand, I can’t tell you how lucky we are that she is willing to serve Marco Island on City Council.

Marco voters, you will be in excellent hands with Bonita. She is fair and balanced and has the right experience to work for you. Please vote for Bonita! Mail in ballots will arrive any day! Early voting at the Marco Island Library begins October 21st and extends thru November 2nd. Election Day is on November 5th.

Michael Lipsitt, MD, Marco Island

Amendment 2 misleading

Please do an article on the Amendment 2 “the right to hunt and fish.” It is a very misleading amendment and if passed, it will result in dire consequences for the animal kingdom. I feel people would vote yes without understanding what it really entails. After all, the right to hunt and fish already exists.

Susan Carafiol, Naples

False advertising

Dave Elias on NBC2 did a fact check on the Republican Party's TV ad opposing Amendment 4. These ads are running numerous times a day on local channels. He found these ads to be mostly false. It doesn’t surprise me because Republican lies rather than the truth is the way they will win in their minds. Just taking it out of their dear leader's playbook. The liar in chief DJT.

Dennis Flynn, North Fort Myers

Positive impact of immigrants

There is a town which experienced two complimentary phenomena in the 2010s. First, public and private leadership brought back factories and factory jobs. Second, learning of those job opportunities, several thousand legal immigrants moved into town.At that time, the town’s population had dwindled and aged so that there were not enough workers to fill the new jobs. The documented, tax-paying immigrants were the salvation of the reindustrialization efforts.The unemployment rate today (2022 last year for which we have statistics) is lower than it was when the immigrants arrived. Median household income in the town has increased by 15% since 2020 and mean hourly wage increased by 18%. There has been no measurable impact on crime statistics or on the general health of the community.The town is Springfield, Ohio.

Daniel Graziano, Naples

Trump clearly unfit

As a long time Independent, I want to appeal to other Independent and GOP voters to listen to the long list of GOP leaders and former Trump advisers.

Their clear message from actual experience working with Trump is he is simply unfit for our highest office and should never return to our Oval Office. This is beyond politics, rather about our democracy's future with his continued attacks and disregard for our laws Trump has continued to display. His actual words are his clear plan for another term without past guardrails.

He has declared the convicted insurrectionists as "political prisoners" and clearly hinted about pardoning these criminals. This shows no respect for our justice system.

Please use your vote to prevent Trump from living up to his words.

James Keough, Cape Coral

Harris fli-flops

Kamala Harris has flip-flopped on several issues. Here are six where she has changed her mind: mandatory buy back, ban fracking, single payer system, expand Supreme Court, federal jobs guarantee and police funding and support. She has said that her values have not changed, however. A common definition of values is "an enduring belief upon which a person acts." It is clear from this that you act on what you believe and that defines your values. If what you believe changes, your action also changes and your values have also changed. This suggestion that her values haven't changed is just typical word salad from Harris. If we had a media that was truly into investigating and asking questions, they would ask her to explain this obvious conflict in her statements.

Ron Wobbeking, Naples

Border the key to Trump win

The Biden/Harris presidency is going to suffer greatly because of their open border policy put in place when obtaining office. The millions of unvetted and uninvited illegal immigrants swarming both small and large cities throughout the United States is going to be the catalyst that broke the back of the Democratic Party and gave the 2024 presidency to Donald J. Trump.

Jim McMenamy, Fort Myers

Vote thoughtfully

Like me, many conscientious SWFL voters, conservative or otherwise, are sick of the chaos, the threats, the violence, the ignorance, the misogyny, the incompetence, the graft, the courting of autocrats, the scandals, and the indictments/convictions. We oppose Project 2025, dangerous stacked SCOTUS calls (i.e. presidential immunity), and lies about the economy, crime, health care, immigration, personal net worth, reproductive freedoms, and everything else we hold dear.

Please note that U.S. Sen. Scott and Rep. Donalds both subscribe to Trump’s MAGA camp and ran informally to be the VP candidate on his ticket, implying agreement with his dangerous agenda.

But for many Republicans and some Independents, it’s understandably very difficult to cast a vote for any Democrat. Please, do not sit this one out. A vote for Harris or Debbie Mucarsel-Powell does not make you a Democrat. It makes you a patriot. This is about our future as a (small ‘d’) democratic republic. Policy differences do not change that fact.

Stand against what you know to be wrong for America; AKA Project 2025. Hold your nose, if necessary, and keep MAGA out of the White House by voting Democratic this one time. We need two strong, rational political parties (at least). Let’s improve our political system while we still have the opportunity and the right to do so.

How you vote is private. No one will know, unless you tell them. And then, let’s reconstitute a truly conservative, patriotic party to work across the aisle with, and not automatically against, the opposing party for bipartisan solutions to the pressing problems facing our nation and the world today. Time for effective legislative and executive leadership is running out. Vote thoughtfully!

Cliff Welles, Bonita Springs

DeSantis versus Goofy

Here comes Ron DeSantis once again to the rescue like Don Quixote riding on Rocinante, his clumsy horse, ready to do battle with the whirling windmills or Dudley DoRight riding backwards on his horse named Horse on his way to save Nell from Snidely Whiplash.Freshly satisfied with the thought that he has defeated Mickey Mouse and Goofy and has laid to rest the scope of women's choices, weighed in on what trained educators can teach their students about history and what they can and cannot read. If not enough he then turned his sights on the medical profession with his sidekick version of Pancho giving them lessons on how to deal with the pandemic.Behold, now he is going to dive headlong into the golf course shooting incident and come up with the real reasons it occurred and determine what the charges and punishment should be.Perhaps he got tired of flushing out competent people in the administration and replacing them with cronies who think the same way.What would Florida do without him? Perish the thought.

Fred Jodice, North Fort Myers

Lies imperil democracy

VP Candidate JD Vance has taken the Trump-Vance ticket to a new low with regard to prevarication.  His deliberate creation of falsehoods about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats and then avowing that he lied (to alert voters of the immigration threat) are both racially shocking and unprecedented. Previous lies, when called out, have typically been excused by speakers as misspeaks, facetious, mere jokes or results of incomplete vetting.  However, in Vance's case, he boldly uses lies to sell his wrongheaded narrative of America's demise. The Republican strategy seeks to stoke fear and anger among its followers by scapegoating immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, the poor, and people of color as the cause of America's ruin.

And it is the Trump-Vance team's promise that they will deliver the nation from these "polluters of America's blood." The method for advancing said beliefs is to create a world where lying is the new normal: science, medicine, scholars, media, universities, and Democrats lie; and, yes, even JD Vance lies. In such an environment, voters have no source of truth, except when your Republican leadership tells you when they are lying.

My hope and prayer are that the media and Democrats embrace fact-checking for both parties and that voters ask the question "Is it true?" when hearing/reading any political party statement. Our world is replete with misinformation, disinformation and mal information that imperils our form of governing. A representative democracy requires its voters to separate fact from fiction, truth from lies, if it is to endure. JD Vance and his running mate purposely make that goal of informed citizenry even more elusive.

James L. DeBoy, Fort Myers

Can't trust Trump

Whenever Trump wants to dodge an issue he claims he never heard of it or never met the person. He knows nothing about Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation when there is reliable evidence he did know. I just watched a fascinating documentary called “From Russia with Lev” in which there were many photos of Trump and Lev Parnas, a major witness for the House Republicans investigating Biden, telling us he didn’t know him. This just confirms that Trump lies anytime he is presented with facts he doesn’t like. There is no way we can trust this man with the leadership of our government. He wants to lie his way to dictatorship and destroy American democracy.

Benjamin Glick, M.D., Naples

Restore integrity, sanity

Why do my fellow Republicans vote for criminals to represent us in government? Rick Scott pleaded the fifth 75 times and avoided prison time while two of his top executives at Columbia/HCA went to prison for fraud.

Why vote for a fraudster? A unanimous jury found the Trump organization guilty of all criminal fraud charges. His Trump University defrauded students and paid $25 million in reparations. He paid eight charities $2 million when his Trump Foundations was dissolved for misusing the foundation for personal gain.

Why allow a “ businessman ” who spectacularly took six companies into bankruptcy and failed in many other ventures manage our country’s economy?

Why vote for a serial sexual predator, misogynist, and racist to be our president? The judge in the E. Jean Carroll case said, “he raped her.” More than 20 women have accused Trump of sexual assault, but fame, power, and the statute of limitations protected him.

This election I’ll vote for Kari Learner, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, and Kamala Harris to bring integrity and sanity back to our Grand Old Party and our country.

Thomas J. Donahue, MBA, PhD, Fort Myers

Trump support puzzling

If Harris ever said what Trump and Vance said about Haitians in Ohio stealing, killing, and eating cats and dogs, she’d be finished as a candidate — kaput! Trump tells the racist lie, then doubles down on the hurtful whopper, and pays no price for his mean-spirited, nonsensical allegations. Incredibly, Trump will probably win Ohio. Observant people know he’s a lying, hateful lunatic who inexplicably gets away with his glaring shortcomings. Sadly, his base is willfully unmovable.His words and actions should disqualify him from our consideration. Briefly: Billy Bush tapes, birtherism, disrespecting veterans and Gold Star families, mocking the disabled, fraud, COVID misinformation, Stormy, women’s rights, sexual abuse, groping, election denial, meddling phone call to Georgia, Jan. 6, Charlottesville, documents, budget deficit, and undermining the border bill. There are a whole lot more, but I think you get my point. A vote for him is an endorsement of his self-serving behavior.Those of us who see him as a scoundrel can’t understand why some of our friends and relatives, people we like and respect, give him undeserved allegiance. Many of us see him as obviously unfit for the presidency, and we’re puzzled by people who can look at his track record and still bet on this guy.

Kevin McNally, Bonita Springs

Truth about tariffs

When most individuals find out what they say is not true they stop saying it. Not Donald Trump, he keeps saying it over and over again. This is especially true about tariffs.

In Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania on Aug. 17, he said: “A tariff is a tax on a foreign country. That’s the way it is, whether you like it or not. A lot of people like to say it’s a tax on us. No, no, no. It’s a tax on a foreign country. It’s a tax on a country that’s ripping us off and stealing our jobs. And it’s a tax that doesn’t affect our country.”

Anyone who has any knowledge of economics, including every economist has said this in untrue. No tariff is ever paid by a foreign country. Every tariff is paid by the U.S. company importing the item. So, when a U.S. company pays a tariff, it pays a higher price for the item! Most of the time that higher price is paid by the U.S. consumer.

Tariffs may have some benefits for the U.S. economy, but, according to most economists, they would hurt the U.S. economy.

How can we vote for a candidate who keeps repeating the same significant lie over and over again?

Aaron Knott, Naples

How tariffs work

Given the attention paid to proposals for increased tariffs in this election cycle, let’s be clear about how they work in practice. I am not an economist, but with a 30-year career in international trade, I can explain this concept in simple terms.

1) The U.S. importer orders a product that is most competitively sourced from another country. Think Walmart, Target, Amazon, garment sellers, automakers (who use imported components), electronics and appliance sellers, and so on.2) The importer pays the negotiated price, and the exporter ships it to the U.S. The importer pays the assessed duty to U.S. Customs before shipment release. To be clear, the importer pays that tariff (duties), not the exporter.3) Profit margin is added to the total cost with duties, and the result is what the consumer or U.S. end user pays.

Exporters and/or importers might reduce their margins to remain competitive in the huge U.S. market, up to a point. Significant increases are passed on to consumers. Also, tariff increases are reciprocated by other countries, with negative impact on the competitiveness of U.S. exports, jobs, and the economy. Counting on tariffs to pay down the national debt, while preserving the previous tax cuts, and offering free IVF and childcare, just doesn’t add up. Consumers of all means can expect to shoulder the burden for a sharp increase in tariffs.

John Macdonald, Naples

Lying authoritarians

The lies come thick and fast, but polls suggest almost half our electorate is OK with putting two liars in the highest offices of the land.  JD Vance spread a false conspiracy theory about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio killing residents’ pets and eating them.  Confronted with the truth, Vance did something extraordinary: He claimed feeding false stories to the media was OK in the service of the campaign.  Now he has the unmitigated gall to suggest the threats and intimidation directed at Haitians in Springfield are not his fault; it’s the media coverage (that he started!) fueling the hate.

Of course, Trump, who will never admit an error, doubled down on the lie Vance started.  Trump continually refers to the Haitians as illegals, which is not true and threatens to deport them if he is elected.  He says he wants to deport millions of immigrants, after sending them to concentration camps where their fates will be decided.  And it won’t be just immigrants headed to the camps; Trump threatens to prosecute his perceived enemies, including journalists, broadcasters, donors, academics, etc.

Trump is determined to contest the election if he loses and is laying the groundwork for a coup if that’s necessary to bring him to power and keep him out of jail.  And yet his support among the electorate remains steady.  I know we face enormous problems, but I am dismayed that so many of us seem willing to give up on our democratic institutions and put these two lying authoritarians in power.

Ray Clasen, North Fort Myers

Left's dishonest claim

I need help. I need someone on the left politically to explain to me how Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy. (Never mind that we are a representative republic, and not a strict democracy.) Mr. Trump was president for four years and our system of government survived. What, pray tell, would he do if he were president for four more years to ruin our form of government.To me, this claim by the left smacks of the Nazi philosophy in World War II: tell a big enough lie long enough and people will believe it.

Chuck Bainbridge, Naples

Harris a leader for our time

Kamala Harris has already made history as the first female, Black, and South Asian vice president of the United States. Her journey from a dedicated prosecutor to a U.S. senator and now vice president showcases her commitment to justice, equality, and public service.Throughout her career, Harris has been a fierce advocate for social justice. She implemented programs to reduce recidivism, fought for police reform, and championed voting rights. Her dedication to women's rights and health care access highlights her focus on empowering all communities.On the global stage, Harris brings a fresh perspective, emphasizing diplomacy and collaboration. She's engaged with world leaders to tackle pressing issues like climate change and cybersecurity, aiming to restore the U.S.'s standing in the world.In times of crisis, Harris has shown decisive leadership. During the pandemic, she worked tirelessly to promote public health measures and support those most affected.Kamala Harris envisions a future where opportunity is accessible to everyone. With her experience, passion, and forward-thinking vision, she stands as a powerful candidate who can unite and lead our nation toward a brighter future.

Paul Howard, Naples

Move on from Trump

With the election starting already in three states with early voting, the felon is already blaming Jews if he loses. Of course he will never concede anyway, so, even a loss of a gargantuan amount won’t sway him to admit it and, as another January 6th approaches, he’ll again tell his illiterate minions that he was cheated. The difference this time is the authorities will be ready. Similar to not admitting the pet eating in Springfield was a hoax, he will never entertain defeat or certainly utter an apology because, per his thinking, that would show weakness and the macho criminal would never accede to that.

So, with November 5th on the horizon, hopefully this will be the last time we have to hear his rambling voice. Vote, vote, vote. Don’t stay home this time as it’s way too important.

Glenn Chenot, Cape Coral

Vote to reject violence

Trump seeks to describe himself as the victim of violence. But we live in a democracy where the people vote for their leaders and voting is the only way by which they become leaders. Donald Trump has suggested that other means are available − violent means. No Democrat has made a similar suggestion. If there is a call for violence, it is Donald Trump and MAGAs who have made the call.

Republicans like Mark Robinson, the GOP nominee for governor in North Carolina and the state’s lieutenant governor, during a speech at Lake Church in the town of White Lake, North Carolina on June 30, 2024 are calling for violence.

Here is what Robinson had to say:“Some folks need killing! It’s time for somebody to say it. It’s not a matter of vengeance. It’s not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It’s a matter of necessity! When you have wicked people doing wicked things, torturing and murdering and raping. We need to start handling our business again.… Don’t you feel it slipping away? … The further we start sliding into making 1776 a distant memory and the tenets of socialism and communism start coming into clearer focus. They’re watching us. They’re listening to us. They’re tracking us. They get mad at you. They cancel you. They dox you. They kick you off social media. They come in and close down your business. Folks, it’s happening … because we have forgotten who we are.”

Voting is the only way for resolution in a democracy, not violence.

Joe Haack, Naples

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Letters to the editor for Sunday, September 29, 2024