Tuesday’s Letters to the Editor

Lincoln’s admonition

EDITOR: By a majority of popular and electoral votes the presidency has been decided. Here are some words from President Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address for all Americans to remember:

“A majority held in restraint by constitutional check and limitation, and always changing of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible. So that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism, in some form, is all that is left.”

KEVIN PARSONS

Forestville

Arbitrary closures

EDITOR: I have to agree with Suzanne Cochran (“Shutting small businesses,” Letters, Monday) that it makes no sense to shut down businesses that go overboard to follow instructions and clean everything between customers — this would include outdoor dining — and yet leave everything open, such as markets and department stores, that let people wander around and touch everything without anyone cleaning up after them.

WILLIAM (BILL) MILLARD

Santa Rosa

Incompetence and fraud

EDITOR: On Dec. 12, buried at the bottom of Page B3, was an article that deserves much more attention than it is receiving from politicians, the press and the public: “Prosecutors: Man bought Maserati with virus unemployment money scammed from state.”

Another waste of public money due to the ineptitude of the state Employment Development Department and its inability to efficiently dole out and monitor the vast amounts of money allocated to it under the federal government’s CARES Act.

Felons and thieves are able to perpetrate fraud by filing names of death row inmates to secure unemployment benefit debit cards, which could total $2 billion — complete incompetence by the EDD and a squandering of public money that should have gone to those in distress due to COVID-19.

Hard-core fraudsters have been able to abscond with billions of public dollars over a period of several months during Gov. Gavin Newsom’s tenure. State government under Newsom failed to prepare properly, allowing this fraud to occur. Newsom must establish systems to prevent the squandering of public money before it occurs again and again.

RICHARD LAMBERT

Sonoma

GOP complicity

EDITOR: Without a doubt, Donald Trump has come to dominate every aspect of the Republican Party. By way of tantrums, blustering and bullying, he has remade the party in his own image.

More troubling, the GOP is now a post-democratic party that expresses contempt for institutions that once defined our country: our courts and the rule of law, our electoral process, the free press and local, state and federal governments. This contempt is married to a perverse nationalism that embraces bigotry, rejects science and fact-based inquiry and nurtures rage and cruelty.

If this were not enough, the party seems eager to heap adulation and praise upon the incompetent and depraved autocrat who is their unquestioned leader. The GOP’s support for the Trump campaign’s preposterous and seditious attempt to overturn November’s election is clear proof of the Republican Party’s transmutation from political party to political cult.

BRIAN GEAGAN

Healdsburg

Plant the right trees

EDITOR: George Fowler is to be commended for calling attention to the importance of planting trees to reduce carbon dioxide in our environment (“A trillion trees to save the Earth,” Close to Home,” Dec. 13). However, his recommendation of the empress splendor tree in our fire-ravaged California landscapes is questionable.

The empress splendor, Paulownia tomentosa, is native to China and Japan where it grows in climates that have considerable rainfall during the summer months. Paulownia are fast-growing trees when they have sufficient moisture, which isn’t available in our dry California summer environment. It also has been deemed an invasive species in some East Coast states where it has overwhelmed native species.

So let’s by all means work diligently to replant our fire-ravaged California wilderness areas with trees and flora that will be compatible in our challenging environment.

JIM BRAY

Santa Rosa

A threat to democracy

EDITOR: While I’m relieved that the Supreme Court quickly rejected the Texas attorney general’s absurd lawsuit, which sought to void the votes of millions of citizens in four swing states to flip the election to Donald Trump by manipulating those states’ electors, I’m distressed that the suit was joined by 17 other states’ attorneys general.

I’m particularly concerned that 126 Republican members of Congress signed on to this fiasco. Their silence since the election has been cowardly and pathetic, but this action is alarming. While many of them represent red states, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, and several other California Republicans joined this effort to subvert an election that by every measure was proved fair and legitimate.

These officials swore to uphold and defend the Constitution, not a president. This priority of party loyalty over sworn duty to our country, this brazen attempt to ignore the certified results of an election that really wasn’t close, is shameful, embarrassing and dangerous.

As long as we have the anachronism that is the Electoral College in place, such behavior truly is a threat to our democracy.

DWIGHT DALEY

Santa Rosa

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