There were 15 letters published in Sunday’s Mailbag. Of these, four concerned the head-scratching Naples sanctuary ordinance, one promoted diverse public education curricula, one was anti-gun, and two disparaged Ron DeSantis. But the unofficial winner of today’s Mailbag popularity contest is Donald J. Trump, with seven letters utterly trashing him.
What Florida needs is government, effective government. There are many good letters to the editor today (Sunday), I will just remind you of two. Encouraging you to read others though. 1, “Deaths from firearms,“ asks the question, ”what can we do to prevent our children and grandchildren from being a death statistic from firearms?” 2. “Remedy at ballot box” answers the question, if America’s democracy is to survive the white nationalist party of cruelty, hate and voter fraud (guns and violence ) must be destroyed.
There is no doubt this dominant party is bad for Florida, citizens get left out and we are all waiting for help. We need our local governments to act.
Guest columnist Senator Rick Scott speaks out for citrus growers, who he says need help, and he criticizes the federal government’s response. But there is no mention of all the help the federal government has given Florida, and to at least notice all the help available to Florida in the infrastructure act, and the inflation reduction act and other housing and education and transportation funding which our white supremacist government has denied the people of Florida.
Lewis Robinson, Fort Myers
God help us! Now we’ve heard from Newt Gingrich, a third member of the three wives club along with Trump and Giuliani. Newt says that you can’t look at Trump as a candidate, but as the leader of a movement. Newt in all his wisdom says that Trump is simply a figure unlike anyone else in the Republican Party. Isn’t that the truth!
It sounds like the kind of movement that you need to lie yourself into. God help us!
Roger W. Quagliano, Estero
Editorials as news Some time ago our local paper eliminated editorials. Worry not, they are still with us, all over the news section. An example follows.
The Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, is working on a plan to improve the efficiency and control of our unelected bureaucracy. This bureaucracy is running much of our government, writing regulations which should be the job of Congress and often undermining our elected officials. It continues to grow with each new project and continues to spend more money on projects no longer needed. And as recently as a few months ago, as many as 25% of these employees were still working from home with little or no supervision, though the COVID emergency had ended.
The Naples Daily News calls this “gutting” the government. It is really a plan to take a new look at how the government is run, improve its efficiency and provide a way for the next administration to improve things. It is a long overdue look at civil service and update it from when it was last written in Jimmy Carter days. The paper suggests that 50,000 federal workers may lose their jobs out of the several million presently employed. Hardly gutting.
The plan would be available to any new president, who may or may not be Donald Trump. That may be why our paper is afraid of a program the country needs so badly.
Richard Krieger, North Naples
Riding the Trump train A frequent writer to the press boasts his credentials with Med after his name and then blusters on singing his praises of Donald Trump and legitimizing his devious behavior.One would expect that any individual with enough brain substance to get through the curriculum required for that degree would have enough sense to not get ensnared in that train of thought.It makes one wonder what kind of school we are talking about, a correspondence school perhaps or the defunct Trump University.
Fred Jodice, North Fort Myers
Medicare and drug prices Up until now, the United States has been alone as the only major country where the government did not negotiate or regulate medicine prices; instead it allowed companies to set whatever prices they believe the market will bear. The Biden administration has now announced the first ten drugs whose prices it will negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for about 65 million Medicare recipients.
Since drug products often are the difference between life and death, the market will bear high prices, prices which often force consumers into poverty. A Rand study found that drug prices average two and a half times higher in the U.S. than in 32 other countries. For name brand drugs, U.S. prices were three and a half times more. Drug companies in the U.S. have raised prices relentlessly for decades while manipulating the patent system to delay competition from lower-priced generics.
In 2022, Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act which permits the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices the government will pay under Medicare. Pharmaceutical companies are suing to stop the law. It should be noted that the government negotiates prices for every other element which Medicare covers of the health care system, including rates for doctors, other providers, and hospitals. It’s time for pharmaceuticals to catch up. This plan is a key part of Bidenomics, Joe Biden’s economic initiative for growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up — not the top down. It has worked before and it will work again because health and health care are universal rights, except when it comes to women. But that’s another issue and one for women to resolve.
Sally Lam, Naples
