Thursday’s Letters to the Editor

Canceled insurance

EDITOR: Can’t something be done by state regulators or the federal government about insurers pulling out of states when they find it unprofitable due to disasters? The possibility of disaster is the reason they have customers in the first place.

People depend on their insurance companies to follow through on specific promises made to them when disaster strikes, and there is an implication that the company will continue to stand by them. Many customers pay premiums for decades, and even if they never filed a claim they’re being abandoned with no recourse. It’s like all that money going down the drain. Worse, many can’t get new coverage, and they become vulnerable and financially liable for any loss. How many people can afford to rebuild using their own resources?

A few years ago, when we lived in California, our insurance company pulled the rug out from under us when wildfires consumed the state. We hadn’t filed a claim over many decades. Our insurance agent couldn’t find us coverage, but fortunately we left the state about a month later, right when the coverage lapsed.

Look at the profits insurance companies make and tell me that they need to abandon customers in entire states, sometimes multiple states.

KAREN COOPER

Hilo, Hawaii

Left with bad times

EDITOR: We’re in bad times. In my opinion, the left is responsible. The hippie movement of the 1960s was the genesis of the obliteration of our morals — “free love,” “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.” The concept of living together without benefit of marriage was promoted by the Hollywood left. The familiar cliché was “it’s just a piece of paper,” referring to a marriage certificate. As these trends became popular, social service departments ballooned. There were many out-of-wedlock pregnancies.

Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, was responsible for the Great Society and families breaking up, leaving children without fathers in the home — a huge societal impact.

The left’s women's movement’s credo was that a woman “could do it all.” “She could bring home the bacon, and she could fry it up in a pan,” insinuating a man was not needed and beginning the berating of the concept of a housewife.

The introduction of smartphones and social media by the left’s tech industry has been dismal. Adults and children alike have been suckered into a lackluster world and huge waste of time.

Lastly, our schools are unrecognizable as institutions of learning anymore. Teachers unions and curricula are hard left and deserving of intense scrutiny.

BOBBI REESER

Santa Rosa

Sticking with woke

EDITOR: There’s been a lot of noise about “woke.” Woke is awake, aware. The opposite is asleep, unaware. I’ll stick with woke, rather than sleepy, unconscious ignorance any day.

T.R. YEAKEL

Geyserville

Distressing events

EDITOR: Israel is at a critical existential crossroad, embroiled in a historic political and social crisis. However, as Jewish descendants of Holocaust survivors, we feel it’s incumbent upon us to speak out about distressing events in Israel. In particular, recent atrocities perpetrated by Jewish settlers, with complicity of the Israeli government, police force and military demand condemnation.

After the murder of four Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, hundreds of settlers invaded Palestinian towns in the West Bank to mete out collective punishment, burning homes and cars, shooting at random and instilling terror in the hearts of innocent residents. Calling those violent raids “pogroms” seems appropriate and, given Jewish history, ironic.

Jewish settler harassment of Palestinians is not new. The recent escalation of violence aligns with the far right-wing government’s broader agenda of settlement expansion, deepening the occupation.

For a half year, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been in the streets demanding a halt to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial coup. Without key judiciary powers, Israel is closer to being a dictatorship.

STEVE EINSTEIN

and RHONDA FINDLING

Sebastopol

The wine, not the label

EDITOR: It seems as if our friends in the millennial generation find a direct correlation between the quality of a product and the fancy label and cute name of the product (“Missing the mark,” July 12). If this applies to wine, then the $8 bottle with the fancy label and funny name is far superior to old, tired wine brands with stodgy names and labels such as Chateau Petrus and Chateau Lafite Rothschild. Wake up, millennials, and smell the bouquet of a fine cabernet sauvignon. You will soon find yourself pouring that overpriced vodka down the drain and enjoying fine wines.

BRIAN AABEL

Rohnert Park

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