People of faith should be appalled
Florida’s Senate Bill 1808 and its counterpart, House Bill 1355, cover a variety of proposed measures the bill calls immigration enforcement. What these bills actually do is limit the ability of anyone seeking to help immigrants, including children. Chief among these “helpers” are faith-based organizations.
Organizations like Church World Services and the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops have expressed opposition to the bills. Church World Service called the bills “harmful and immoral” and “an affront to religious freedom and our moral and compassionate call to serve the vulnerable.”
Along with these bills, recently Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order that, in effect, directs the state’s Department of Children and Families not to renew licenses for foster families or agencies that serve immigrant children who are unaccompanied minors.
Any person of faith should be appalled at these overt measures to attack faith principles of helping the least among us. DeSantis is a bully cut out of the same cloth as Vladimir Putin. To think that he is a possible presidential candidate makes me wonder how we don’t see through his deplorable self-interest.
Patricia Hoffman, Punta Gorda
What happened to planning ahead?
Whatever happened to long-range contingency plans in the U.S.? Neither the government nor big business plans ahead more than the next quarter or year. COVID and China have disrupted our supply chains because we have focused on saving money by importing elsewhere and destroying our manufacturing system. Russia has disrupted our oil supply because we are so focused on climate change that we ignore the possibility of future disruption due to war or weather. Our health care system is falling apart because we have not planned for the need to encourage more people to become physicians and health care providers. If we don’t start planning ahead, America will end up like all the other failed civilizations of the past.
Kenneth Wetcher, Naples
Misguided oil policy
Here is a local twist on a global crisis: Gas at the local Wawa was $4.27 a day ago. Today it has gone up 7 cents. So, the very people we pretend to care about, middle class and below, have seen their budgets get impaled by the policies of the Biden administration. The elites such as Mr. Colbert, from “The Late Show,” state they will gladly pay $1 more for gas. Ha, Ha, Mr. Colbert, you drive a $100,000 Tesla bought with a subsidy of $12,000 paid by Uncle Sam. So, to put it in perspective, a person making $15,000,000 a year will gladly pay more for gas. What a guy, what a sacrifice.
The Bidens think our world will be more green if we let the likes of Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabi and Venezuela sell us more oil. I thought it was a global market and it does not care where it is drilled. So, why not drill on the very soil we live on, work on, and protect?
So be prepared to pay more for food, beauty and cosmetics, building products, fertilizers, bottles, cans, cars, school supplies, houses, vacations, and see interest rates rise so the impact on housing in Southwest Florida will take a nose dive.
Jack Holt, Cape Coral
Bring back Trump to fix oil policy, economy
When President Trump left office, we were finally energy independent. Then Biden took over. He shut down the Keystone pipeline and drilling on federal land and started to buy 7 percent of our oil from Russia. Russian tankers take three weeks to a month or more to arrive and unload. From the Middle East it takes from one to two months to get here plus another day to unload, which could be one to three days after it arrives. The average oil tanker burns about 2,625 gallons of diesel fuel per hour. Each of those gallons generate 23 pounds of CO2 so a tanker hauling oil to the USA creates about 58,757.5 pounds of CO2 per hour. That equates to 27.7 million tons of CO2 per tanker for every trip made.
Carmakers are reducing our carbon footprint every year. Oil traveling to the refineries through safe pipes are producing jobs and affordable energy for Americans. Our production standards are far safer than the rest of the OPEC members.
Why are we buying crude oil from unfriendly foreign entities to haul over the ocean that has such a huge negative impact on the environment? Why help finance a war by an enemy being waged against an ally?
I think we should call our former narcissistic, bragging, egotistic, but efficient president back to office to replace the bungling, inept, crooked, lying one we have now, to get this economy back to where it was going when Trump left.
Barbara Patton, North Fort Myers
My right to use hurricane shutters
The hurricane shutter ordinance debacle is frightening. When these councilmen pay my taxes, then they can have more say in how I use my personal property. We paid hard-earned money for hurricane shutters for home protection from a storm. We also knew that if we went away on vacation we had a bit more theft protection by closing our shutters. What better way to deter theft than preventing someone from entering your home? No one has the right to tell me I cannot close my shutters that I paid for. This is not about safety as we are being told. Did any of us receive any numbers about how many firemen were injured or died because of hurricane shutters? NOPE! I can almost guarantee no one died from dealing with a hurricane shutter in a fire. Firemen are fully trained and equipped with top-of-the-line tools to rip through shutters without issue. What about steel front doors? A shutter would be easier to break through in a fire than a steel door. If safety is the issue, then will hurricane-proof windows have to be removed because they are nearly unbreakable? This is about “looks.” Too many folks on the council are concerned about how a neighborhood looks with shutters up. We have lost enough liberty already. It is MY home, my shutters, my right to use them. And my use does NOT harm anyone else, or damage anyone else’s property.
Rennie Cubberley, Cape Coral
Oil, climate change and war
Will someone please explain to AOC and Biden that climate change will be much better off if our oil is obtained locally because transporting millions of barrels of oil thousands of miles will consume millions of gallons of oil, greatly contributing to climate change. And will someone please explain to AOC and Biden that climate change is not our greatest existential threat. Our greatest existential threat is the Fourth Reich that will result from the third world war now being planned by Putin and Xi. Preparation for the third world war should be our only focus.
Eugene Adiutori, Naples
Nikki Haley can be a successful leader
I am looking forward to 2024 presidential candidate offerings where all Americans can unite behind a woman of color. Not because her attributes qualify her as a woman of color but because she has the abilities to be a successful leader. She has displayed the required leadership skills both in national and international forums. She has displayed the intestinal fortitude to command the respect of her male peers.
I enthusiastically encourage all Americans to support the candidacy of Nikki Haley for president in 2024.
Larry Boggio, North Fort Myers
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