Letters to the editor

To send in your letters, please e-mail them to [email protected], or mail them to The Sarasota Observer, 1517 State Street, Sarasota, 34236. The Sarasota Observer gives priority to letters of local interest and about local issues. The Observer will print all letters to the editor if it feels they are of general interest, but only if the letter is signed and the author’s street address and phone number are given. The editor reserves the right to condense letters.

+ People love blaming others for their actions
Dear Editor:
I read Rod Thomson’s columns pretty much every week he writes in The Sarasota Observer. Thank you for being a voice of reason and normalcy.

We need more normal people, such as yourself, to be vocal.

When I read last week’s article of the race issues in Newtown, I thought: “What a crock!”

Everyone loves blaming everyone else for his own actions and/or misfortunes. It’s always someone else’s fault that I did what I did.

Bravo to Thomson for his candidness and common sense. I have a suggestion, actually a request: He should run for a spot on the Sarasota City Commission. The commissioners go round and round without getting anything accomplished. If Thomson were on the commission, good things might actually get done around here.

Keep up the great work.

Buki Kodra
Sarasota

+ Thanks for expressing what many feel
Dear Editor:
I enjoyed reading Rod Thomson’s “My View” in the May 6 edition. Thank you for expressing what many of us feel.  

I am often referred to as an “angry white male” for simply wanting existing laws enforced and harsher penalties to deter crime. Not long ago in America, death was the sentence for counterfeiting.

Having come from nothing, I also agree with your scariest quote of the week. Many legal immigrants in this country are here having fled their socialist homelands for opportunity that our government is taking away each day.  

Keep up the fight, and thanks again.

John L. Hawkins
Sarasota

+ The Pines of Sarasota is a rare facility
Dear Editor:
If you have any disability and require physical therapy or occupational therapy, inpatient or outpatient services, I personally can tell you The Pines is where you need to be.

I have multiple sclerosis and have been to other recommended facilities in Sarasota and the rewards are better at the Pines. To give an example of my experience at other facilities, I was told, “Don’t get your hopes up.” At The Pines, I was encouraged to hear, “You could walk out of here.” The positive attitude and sincere caring and kindness of the staff shown to the patients do make a world of difference.

I recommend the Pines of Sarasota with complete confidence. They are a rare find.

Helene Drake
Sarasota

+ The commission is out of step with community
Dear Editor:
I had almost given up any hope of The Sarasota Observer’s conservative stance siding with the notion of the real issues facing a small community government like Sarasota.

But lo and behold, you published your editorial last week on the mooring field. I applaud you for taking the position to sell the mooring field and only hope your readership and the voters of this community keep it in mind next time they are standing in front of the ballot box.

The heart of your opinion is like the sound of ice cubes hitting an empty glass: “Why would the City Commission … want to be in the mooring field business? Or the parking garage/retail business? Or the stadium and performing-arts hall management business? Or the tennis court and golf course business? City government isn’t an expert at any of these.”

I might add why would city government want to be in the management of a film sound-stage business? The commission can’t seem to stop filling the lifeboat with ideas destined to sink it.

Your wonderfully expressive operative sentence is: “So now the city commissioners are all twisted over what to do.” This speaks to the collective myopic visions of a commission so out of step with the community and the economic realities.

How is it these issues are repeated over and over by the city commissioners’ misguided intentions? They are so distracted by peripheral issues that their eyes are constantly off the future needs of this community.

Finally, thank you for summing it up with the sushi knife: “Quit proving again and again what we all know: Government can’t and shouldn’t run a business.”

Don Guy
Sarasota

+ Politicians are only pandering for votes
Dear Editor:
It is very interesting to see which national financial firms and individuals are being pilloried by Congress and much of the national media.

It’s not the “feckless dolts” (as described by Daniel Gross in The New York Times Book Review) whose miserably bad management destroyed Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Mortgage. It’s not the officers and directors of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, whose government-sponsored lending practices played a major role in the financial crisis, who have cost taxpayers $300 billion (and counting) and who were lavishly paid and indemnified against lawsuits by the Congress. It’s not the management of General Motors, whose incompetence decimated its market share and wiped out its shareholders and bondholders and which (in a nifty sleight of hand) has “repaid in full” its $50 billion in government loans for just $6.7 billion. And it’s certainly not Congress itself, which has mandated lending to non-creditworthy borrowers for several decades.

No, Congress and the press are flailing the big banks and Goldman Sachs, which have repaid their TARP loans with interest, apparently for the mortal sin of being smart and/or profitable!

These Wall Street executives are clearly not saints. But have we really come to a point in America where failure is celebrated and success is punished?

Most of our politicians are not so stupid that they don’t know these facts. But they obviously think we voters are too stupid to understand their asinine populist games.

How long will we continue to abide these politicians, who care only about pandering for votes, while ignoring our dependence on foreign oil and our staggering national debt?

Archie Urciuoli
Sarasota