Vero Beach council goofs beach parking, Three Corners; Stuart safety issues; Lake O woes

Listen to head of Pelican Island Audubon on Three Corners

Richard Baker’s well-thought out and cogent letter to the editor.

I can’t say it better.

Vero, to retain its quiet character, should keep the Three Corners as a green space instead of trying to make it an entertainment area incongruous with the character of Vero. Quiet and laid back.

Hugh Stevenson, Vero Beach

Vero Beach council flubs by not listening to Three Corners selection committee

Was it a good decision or bad decision by the Vero Beach City Council to summarily dismiss the findings of the seven-member committee appointed by the council to review and recommend the best Three Corners plan submitted to the city?

\Why appoint a committee if you’re going to ultimately make the decision? I know that this is ultimately a council decision, but don’t waste people's time.

I know how the committee feels about the time and energy spent studying the proposals. Never again would I sit on an advisory board to the Vero Beach council, and I haven’t volunteered again since the early 2000s when I resigned from the Marina Advisory Board after serving for seven years. They were different council members, but the same results.

Something is just not right about how this important community decision was handled.

Bob Grice, Vero Beach

Cutting lifeguard hours, certification will put Martin County swimmers at risk

As one of the fastest growing and most visited counties in Florida, with our main attraction being our beaches, our Martin County commissioners decided to drop our level of protection for our beachgoers?

I'm not sure why they think it's a good idea to go from requiring emergency medical technician certification to emergency medical responders. With EMR, you can go from guarding at Sailfish Splash to being full time on the beach simply by passing a swim test.

I believe that if we don't keep EMT certification as a standard, we will be setting the county up for a lawsuit the minute one of the undertrained guards fails to protect our swimmers. We also changed the hours that the guards will be protecting our beach. It was 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Now it's 9 a.m. to 5p.m.

I believe this decision will hurt the morale of our current EMT trained lifeguards and put the general public at risk.

As a Martin County business owner since 2006, I believe our commissioners are being penny wise and pound foolish.

Jordan Schwartz, Stuart

Lake Okeechobee plan won't help save St. Lucie River

LOSOM: "Lake Okeechobee Same Old Mess."

If ever the city of Stuart and Martin County needed to fight for the St. Lucie River, it is now.

If you believe The Everglades Foundation's ad on WQCS radio, the so-called "Crown Jewel" of Everglades restoration, an unbuilt, unfunded and inadequate hole in the ground, has solved our problem and everything is fine.

It sounds like Big Sugar is supporting the group. I would never contribute to it.

No stormwater treatment area has ever cleaned the water to meet the standards to send clean water south to the Everglades.

And the local politicians say the Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual has solved the problem. Please don't vote for the city incumbents, Troy McDonald and Becky Bruner, who have overbuilt high-density apartments while failing to protect all these new residents from a poisoned river.

And don't re-elect Eula Clark and Campbell Rich if they run again. Stuart is the biggest victim, and it needs a full-time environmental attorney to file every type of administrative objection and lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency, Army Corps of Engineers and the creators of the pollution, like Mickey Mouse himself.

The objective is simple: Permanently stop the discharges, which LOSOM still allows, then require the perpetrators to pay for cleaning out the 12-foot-deep muck that surrounds the city of Stuart.

The upstream politicians will never do it. They like using small Stuart as a septic tank so they don't get the pollution.

I hate seeing the poor fishermen on the Roosevelt Bridge trying to get food for their families from a poisoned river. Even with "reduced discharges," which is a joke, 100 years of muck and poison is still there and increases with every discharge.

Mac Stuckey, Stuart

Vero Beach must finally get parking issues resolved

Now that Vero Beach is back to bidding again on our Three Corners development, how about also thinking ahead concerning adequate parking when planning all these new transformations (including downtown)?

I haven't read or heard much concerning this issue. Parking always seems like an afterthought.

Having worked on the beachside for the past 21 years, I hear complaints constantly about not enough parking. Please, let's effectively figure out all parking issues for the future of this wonderful town we live in.

Linda Clemenzi, Vero Beach

Chinese nudging us toward similar downfall to Qing Dynasty's?

Your article on the fentanyl crisis is interesting and it raises a question: How does that drug get into our country?

It is reported to come in illegally from Mexico. Coca and marijuana are grown in Latin America, but fentanyl and the opium that is used to manufacture it are not. Where do these opiates come from?

Over a century ago, England had such an appetite for Chinese tea, silks and porcelain that it ran a trade deficit with China. The Chinese were not interested in what the British had to offer, and trade was severely restricted.

The British observed the ruling Qing Dynasty to be weak and decaying due to unsustainable debt, accumulation of lavish wealth at the top, a restless peasantry, public immorality and corruption. Sound familiar?

China was rotting from within, so the British decided to give it a little shove in that direction. The British East India Co. grew huge quantities of opium on its plantations in India. British East India imported it into China, restoring England’s trade balance and turning China into a nation of opium addicts. Of course, the Chinese rulers objected. Two wars with England in 1840 and 1860 called the Opium Wars gave England the trade advantage. A series of internal revolts led to the collapse of dynastic rule in China in 1912.

The Chinese are reputed to be students of history with long memories. Could the Chinese be observing the same trends in American culture that led to the downfall of the Qing Dynasty? Are they now giving us a little shove?

Jim Fogel, Hobe Sound

Professor gets it wrong when comparing LBJ, Trump eras

R. Bruce Anderson's “Youth looking for a vision.” He seems to be an ideologue who is incapable of conceding the tiniest point of disagreement.

He glorified President Lyndon Johnson through the words of Doris Kearns.

I was one of those “youths” growing up during Doris Kearns Goodwin’s fantasized references.

Anderson went on to say that the youth of today have no interest in politics, yet his disdain for Donald Trump is irrational when it comes to their survival.

Why? Because next time Anderson is teaching, he should take a close look at his students.

Have these students take a look to their left. Then have them take a look to their right.

• One of the two very likely would shortly be dead back in those romanticized times.

• If not dead, than crippled for life.

• Agent Orange cancer early on. Compliments of Dupont.

• Mental breakdown of shellshock that would never be overcome.

• Lifetime of drug dependency initiated with Vietnam coping.

Now all things being equal, let’s look at Anderson's warped assessment of President Trump.

Same lesson. Students look to their left and look to their right.

Zero deaths and no wars under Trump. Anderson, however, does teach us a valuable lesson. Any historical reference should be taken with a grain of salt. After all, the dead and victims of tyranny never do get their stories told.

Anderson can rationalize all he wants through historical hogwash .

The numbers don’t lie. Only charlatan purveyors of government elitist fiction do.

Peter Degen, Port St. Lucie

Are you an American? What kind of society do you want to leave?

Are you afraid in today's atmosphere of conflict? Be afraid. We are looking at the denigration of our society. Say or do anything you like as long as "the party'’ survives.

Swear in church? Fly our precious American flag any way you like? Have Supreme Court justices, who are blatantly playing political politics, blaming adverse actions on the wives? Celebrate crass, untrue character assassinations?

This former president has opened Pandora’s box, spewing out the worst kind of garbage. All for his gain while caring nothing for the people he pretends to want to protect, pretending that he really cares about turning around our godless society that ignores our founders' fight for separation of church and state.

It seems there is nothing off limits as long as we support "our side."

And what side are you on? Are you a Republican? Are you a Democrat? Or are you an American ― an American who wants to restore peace and dignity in this United States while being an example for other countries to follow? A shining light in this crazy world?

If you want to preserve our freedom of choice and become an American we can be proud of, then help us become the dignified, respected society we once were.

Open your eyes to what’s happening, not just to our political parties, but to the society you live in and the society you want to leave to your children and grandchildren.

Mary Kay Oliver, Jensen Beach

Lots of questions about presidential debate

Be ready for a “Candy Crowley” moment on steroids during the presidential debate. I am not at all in favor of CNN and its extremely liberal moderators hosting this debate and haven’t decided yet if I’ll watch. Too stressful.

I have a sick feeling Joe Biden’s unelected handlers would never let him anywhere near that podium unless some hanky-panky had been preplanned.

Raise their hands, under oath, they have not received questions or other information, equipment, shots or pills prior to the debate.

Joan Hall, Vero Beach

Lots of reasons to support Trump since old Democrats gone

Nicole Russell’s recent column contended Donald Trump is an “awful candidate" because he was convicted of paying “hush” money eight years ago.

First, the trial is one of six that President Joe Biden's administration has seemingly coordinated to embarrass Trump and drain his resources. Second, the trials, according to Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and other prominent attorneys, are flimsy and tried before handpicked judges in anti-Trump jurisdictions.

Such orchestrated trials (as noted by letter writer Barry Godofsky) are being initiated by a radical left-wing Democratic Party that bears little resemblance to the party of JFK (as observed by Patricia Perrone). This Democratic Party doesn’t trust us to make decisions for ourselves. It wants to dictate what cars and stoves we should buy, how to wash our clothes and what unproven vaccine shots are good for us (or else), etc.

Trump is a patriot and can-do leader. He avoided conflicts of interest while in office and proved he can get things done. For example, he cut tax rates for everyone and spurred the economy with no inflation; he shut the border and was building a wall to keep it shut; he rebuilt the military and kept us out of war; he cut red tape, and he made us energy independent.

What has Joe Biden done? He opened the border, stopped work on the wall, overspent us into a 40-year high inflation, hindered business with new regulations, embarrassed us in Afghanistan, slowed economic growth with the Green New Deal, favored Iran over Israel and divided us with woke concepts. And the left has stopped enforcing the law, resulting in widespread crime.

Let’s elect Trump and a Republican House and Senate. Perhaps a sweep will show the new Democrats that we prefer the old ones.

Tom Miller, Vero Beach

Righteous? Honorable? Worth of list including Gandhi, King, etc.?

A recent writer to the editor related an "honorable" list of "righteous" individuals wrongfully convicted with the names Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ.

To this list, the writer would add the traitorous-insurrectionist former president, business fraudster, adulterer and adjudicated sexual abuser.

"Righteous"? "Honorable"? You be the judge.

Edward Sheridan, Vero Beach