Friday’s Letters to the Editor

Restoring education

EDITOR: The future of our country depends on how we educate future generations. I was fortunate to benefit from an excellent public education system in California in the 1950s, which enabled me to graduate from an Ivy League university. Things have changed a lot since then. We struggle to obtain adequate funding to support schools and pay teachers a reasonable wage. Cost of living increases have made it difficult or impossible for teachers to live near where they work. School curricula have changed to emphasize scoring well on standardized tests rather than promoting creativity, critical thinking or individuality.

Students today deal with more violence, depression, exposure to drugs and distractions from the media. To compound the problem, there are political forces that want to ban books, revise history and punish teachers who think outside these constraints. This latter is Taliban mentality.

Students in the U.S. tend to have less stringent requirements and less homework than in other countries. The obvious outcome from all of this is that this country will fall behind in most areas of international competition. To prosper, we need to produce a generation of critical thinking, creative and productive adults.

LELAND DAVIS

Santa Rosa

Autocratic leaders

EDITOR: Thank you for publishing Bret Stephens’ June 1 column (“Turkey’s election is a warning about Trump”). This is the best concise explanation for a topic that has amazed and puzzled me for years, written by a respected (true) conservative columnist. The autocratic leader he addresses, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, has much in common with other autocrats today and in recent times, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Narenda Modi in India and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to name a few. Their qualities often include bravado and constant lying, and their leadership is often inept, incompetent and corrupt, all with the endgame of staying in power as long as possible. These leaders have failed their countries in many ways and made the lives of their citizens worse. And yet they remain wildly popular among a large percentage of the population and continue to wield amazing political strength.

DWIGHT DALEY

Santa Rosa

Merck’s lawsuit

EDITOR: I think Andy Borowitz is one of the finest satirists writing today. His short, pithy jabs at famous figures and news events point out their ridiculousness in a few very well thought out words. So when I saw Wednesday’s story about Merck suing the federal government over a plan to negotiate Medicare drug prices, calling the program a sham equivalent to “extortion,” I thought that this piece of obvious Borowitzian satire should have been properly credited. The concept of Merck calling an attempt to rein in the greed of Big Pharma extortion is really a howler.

DR. ALLAN GARFIELD

Santa Rosa

Power and disparities

EDITOR: The most accurate definition of power is the ability to convince others that a world favoring the rich, not the rest of us, is the only option. This relies on convincing us that it does favor us, even when it doesn’t. Thus, income disparity increases unchecked through bailouts, tax cuts and privatization.

The May 30 Business page was a case in point. The article on the debt ceiling mentions tightly restrained spending growth (“Cuts unlikely to hurt economy”) but never mentions cuts in social services nor any humans who will be hurt. Humans are never mentioned, only “markets,” and as long as markets are protected, so are the wealthy. The agreement is “unlikely to inflict … lasting damage” to them. We don’t count.

This sets us up for the article on teen employment (“Teen labor in demand”), which primes us for erosion of protection of children in the workplace. People’s refusal to work in jobs that can’t support them and their families is not met by providing jobs with decent pay, but by making it easier to exploit children.

This faltering, exploitative economic system will require more sacrifices over time. Eventually, those who think themselves safe may find otherwise. Where it will end, nobody knows.

SUSAN COLLIER LAMONT

Santa Rosa

Impound the planes

EDITOR: A suggestion regarding the migrants flown from Texas to Sacramento: Impound the airplane as a possible crime scene (“Newsom: DeSantis ‘small, pathetic,’ ” June 6). Make sure all of the suspicions are fully resolved, then require a full safety inspection to ensure the plane’s airworthiness. Finally, make sure the company is charged all applicable ramp and storage fees. This should probably take a minimum of a month or two. Do this every time such a transport occurs. That would at least slow down this hideous practice and make the companies that enable this think twice.

STEVE HAEFFELE

Santa Rosa

You can send letters to the editor to letters@pressdemocrat.com.