
August 8, 2018
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My husband and I dined at our favorite restaurant last Saturday night. We hadn’t been there since my free steak on my birthday in early March. None of the waitresses or customers were wearing masks. We asked our waitress WHY no one was wearing a mask, and she told us that neither her manager nor the clientele wanted them to wear them. I told her that we won’t be back until the virus is over.

Regarding — Schools plan to return kids to classes soon. Our schools need to take a proactive stance on education and realize this pandemic is not going away anytime soon. Pretending it will is fantasy. Let’s get real and do some long-range worst-case scenario planning; and hope for the best. Consider these suggestions:

This month, Arizona reached a momentous milestone: The number of COVID-19 cases in the state surpassed the number for the entire country of Canada. Why should we measure our pandemic response to that of Canada? It’s an opportunity to step back from the in-the-weeds arguments and look at a comparison that is both simple and relevant.

I was saddened to see “Black Lives Matter. Really?” printed on the day of John Lewis’ final memorial in Atlanta. I saw this day honoring him as an opportunity to acknowledge all that is true and real about systemic and structural racism in this country and the legacy of making “good trouble.”

The Prescott Daily Courier took the lead in their July 14 editorial “Help face and conquer racism among us.” It was a shocked and powerful reaction to a stream of hatred and bigotry that bubbled to the surface from a posting on a local community Facebook page. The Courier editorial staff is to be commended for their immediate and forceful condemnation.

I’ve never considered myself racist. To me, everybody was the same. Not anymore. The BLM mob mentality of destroying our country and our history solves absolutely nothing, and has set them back 100 years. Such behavior demonstrates that they are, and are doing, exactly what they are protesting against.

Bernie Cygan, in his “Poor Decisions” letter, agrees that pre-planning was our downfall regarding the coronavirus pandemic. However, he wants to blame the states who had the largest number of deaths instead of blaming the one man who could have saved tens of thousands of lives by admitting in February that there was a pandemic coming.

The Daily Courier reporter Cindy Barks reported (“Coronavirus expected to have long-term impacts on Prescott’s finances”) that during its voting meeting back in April, the Prescott City Council received a report from its budget and Finance Director Mark Woodfill that the Prescott’s budget is likely to be significantly impacted by loss of sales tax revenues due to public compliance with governmental COVID-19 pandemic directives.

A short reply to Michael Peters’ letter that we can decide “where and when to wear facial masks. “— Thomas Paine’s “Give me liberty or give me death”— was to convince a convention to deliver Virginia troops for the Revolutionary War. That’s a totally different context than deciding to wear facial masks.

The average worker in our country has to work more than a month to make the same amount of money that a CEO makes in an hour. These are the kinds of statements that we read about concerning income inequality. But these are also facts about income inequality that we might not consider.

It is built into the Arizona Constitution that the citizens of this state be allowed to bring initiatives to the ballot. Our legislators decided they wanted to make it as hard as they could for citizens to do this so they passed a law requiring that all petitions for citizen initiatives must be notarized.

In response to Glen Helm’s letter, “Fear of History,” regarding socialism, let me just say that not only do most countries have some form of social programs but of the top 10 happiest, healthiest, countries in the world, (according to The United Nations World Happiness Report) eight of them are Socialist: Austria, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, and Finland.

John Stossel’s column of March 27 was so bizarre. The reason South Korea handled the virus so well was simply the fact that the government was prepared for it with strict containment measures early on and stockpiling of supplies. Healthcare professionals made recommendations that were heeded by the government leaders who then took action.

Recently, Ron Tatar submitted a response to the March 17 letter from Linda Lutes. Ms. Lutes’ letter gave some reasons for the people who protested against Trump at the courthouse plaza, notably his petty jealousies, his ignorance regarding governance, and how he spreads hate around liberally.

What kind of country are we anyway? We give huge tax cuts to the wealthy who, instead of using them to create jobs or, let alone, train people to do the jobs, they hire already trained people from other countries. And Wall Street is thriving — unlike so many lower-wage U.S. citizens.

If Mr. Trump is as “honest” as he repeatedly claims, why can’t we see his tax returns? If Mr. Trump has “nothing to hide” and “done nothing wrong” why is he obstructing Congress by ordering his minions not to testify? By the way, if you or I defied a subpoena, we would be in jail for contempt.

Editor: Although Congress rarely accomplishes anything because of partisanship, a House committee has now done something significant by delineating two distinct classes of government officials, heroes and cowards. This has nothing to do with being Republicans or Democrats, but has everything to do with being courageous and ethical.

Editor: It is quite ironic that Trump refers to anyone in government who is against him as the Deep State. Recently he has inferred that the whistleblower and anyone in the administration who spoke to him/her is a traitor and/or spy. Trump even made a reference about how we used to deal with spies and traitors in the past.

Editor: Jim Kilbourne (letter, Aug. 22) tells us that he does not “understand the hatred those on the far left have for our president.” For starters, Mr. Kilbourne, there are a great many of us who believe that your president is a man who disparages and dehumanizes his opponents and anyone who disagrees with him.