Tampa Bay Rays are a worthy community asset | Letters

A community asset

Will the Tampa Bay Rays new stadium attract big name concerts and college bowl games? | Column, May 5

It sure would be nice if our local paper would realize the Tampa Bay Rays are an asset to the community instead of continually raising “what if’s.” The Rays have donated millions of dollars and people hours over the years to the underserved population in this area, and now they’re held out as some organization just looking to just make a buck, which any corporate entity needs to do. The Rays did not create the mess that was the decimation of the Historic Gas Plant District, and there has never been an organization like the Rays that has devoted so much blood, sweat and tears with its proposal to help right the ship that went wrong in the past.

Douglas Hansen, St. Petersburg

What’s in a name?

Texas group shaped Florida law | May 6

“Homelessness-industrial complex” is how a conservative think tank characterizes the problem of homelessness? My head nearly exploded when I read that absurd Orwellian characterization. What’s next, the “starvation-industrial complex”? First, we allow private equity and hedge funds to buy up huge swaths of affordable housing, drive up prices, raise rents and allow properties to deteriorate, and then we blame their victims? This is a cruel shell game. Now our elected officials are part of the scam, helping to vilify the victims while protecting the guilty. Let’s be honest with ourselves. The same forces causing soaring housing costs are also behind rising food, insurance and health care costs. They explain the deterioration of once-great companies like Boeing and Abbott Labs (infant formula). When profit is the sole measure of success, everything else suffers. Squelching competition with mergers, illegally extending patents, buying back stocks to inflate prices and deferring maintenance hurts all of us. We need to wake up and place the blame where it belongs: greed.

Diane Love, St. Petersburg

The new math

Trump’s “Gestapo” remark about Biden is his latest Nazi reference | May 6

“These people are running a Gestapo administration,” the former president is reported to have told GOP donors at Mar-a-Lago last weekend. “It’s the only way they’re going to win.” It’s as if the reality of his repelling many lifelong Republicans, myself included, with his hostile takeover of a once-great and principled political party, coupled with pretty much the entirety of the opposition party, couldn’t possibly add up to enough numbers to defeat him. I am quite certain that, deep down in his narcissistic personality, he really believes that. We will see.

Terry R. Arnold, Treasure Island

Today’s protesters

Biden: Order must prevail | May 3

America has a proud history of public protest, not only by the young. Some were highly instrumental in obtaining civil rights for women and Black Americans, while others (Vietnam) resulted in Richard Nixon’s becoming president and an additional seven years of war. Varying levels of civil disobedience and sometimes violence existed. But protesters using Cadillac Escalades to block bridges and camping in new tents? This was new. Campus protesters who aren’t students sometimes outnumbering those enrolled? Also new. Claiming not just sympathy but allegiance to a terrorist organization and replacing the American flag with one for a country which does not exist (and may never if chaos reigns)? Again, new. Chanting “River to sea, Palestine shall be free” elides the original “Water to water, Palestine shall be Arab” and misapprehends Gaza under Hamas before Israel’s gruesomely prompted policing. Disruptions shuttered entire institutions and directly threatened individuals. Yes, new. But the key distinctions are these. Today’s internet generation — accustomed to anonymous bullying — wear masks, carry umbrellas and won’t admit nonbelievers to their encampments, let alone dialogue with them. Today’s protesters practice civil disobedience while demanding that civil authorities be banned from campus. Today’s entitled generation (student loan forgiveness among other signs) insists on personal amnesty first. We have yet to see a sign asking Hamas to free the hostages and lay down its arms before the U.S. demands Israel’s further forbearance. The consequences for Jan. 6 protesters have been many, swift and severe. I urge the journalists to keep tabs. That would be different, too.

Pat Byrne, Seminole

I left the party

Not the party of Lincoln anymore

I quit the party of Lincoln after Jan. 6, 2021, but decided I wanted my party back. Not the Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis version, but the Republican Party of competently run and “leave the locals alone” governing that is lost on the current crop of corporate stooges and MAGA loyalists ruining the state today. There are a lot of honest Republicans and no-party affiliates who absolutely will not vote for the former president, or our former governor and now-Sen.Rick Scott. I’m sick of the chaos and deliberate dysfunction in the current Florida Republican leadership and plan to vote against all these awful people, and I know I’m not alone.

Brian Valsavage, St. Petersburg

Fix problems first

Turnover, shortages, calls for help | May 5

The Hillsborough County School District wants taxpayers to bail out their poor financial planning that seems to carry on from one crisis to the next. Bad budgeting needs to be corrected before raising our taxes. From where I stand, it’s a hard “no” for raising our millage rate.

Eugene L. Wells, Tampa

Off the rails

City officials discuss high-speed rail to Tampa | May 8

Who is going to ride the train? The usual thinking is that there will be high ridership based on the congestion on I-4. Obviously. if we run a train right down the I-4 median, the liberated drivers will flock to the ticket counter. But is that true?

I suspect that the majority of the drivers are getting on and off at intermediate points between Tampa and Orlando, going from home to work or work to home, going from home to school or shopping, and back, etc. I’m certain that no rail service will be able to serve these people and they’ll continue to use the highway.

But won’t tourists visiting Disney, Sea World and Universal also want to visit Tampa? Why would they? What’s the draw that’s worth the inconvenience that comes with rail travel? Drive to the station, park your car for a fee, buy tickets, get off the train at the other end and find some ground transportation for a fee, then reverse the process to get back to your starting point. Really? I don’t think so. It’s a pipe dream.

John S.V. Weiss, Spring Hill

Kids deserve care

589K Fla. kids lose insurance | May 4

Readers should look again at the lead story in Saturday’s Tampa Bay Times and ask themselves, is this really the thing we stand for? A government, elected by us, is denying health care to more than a half-million children, and in my mind, that is immoral. Our Republican governor and Legislature, who have it within their power to end this disaster, simply stand by and watch the rationing of health care — for that is what it is, the same rationing that conservative Republicans warned about if Obamacare became law — with the president of the Florida Senate callously saying, in effect, well, there aren’t enough doctors and facilities to serve everybody, so we’ll just drop the poor out of the system.

Stephen Phillips, St. Petersburg

Weed out the bad guys

Legalized marijuana will create a safer market in Florida | Column, May 3

Right now, when someone wants to buy weed without a medical card, it is possible. But somewhere along the line it involves guns, violence and cartels. It involves danger and real consequences. People have and will continue to smoke pot regardless of legalization. Legalizing cannabis will make things safer and more realistic. Also, that major money will be pumped into the hands of law-abiding citizens and away from the bad guys.

Jan McVey, St. Petersburg

His day in court

Judge in Trump docs case cancels May trial date | May 8

Federal district judge Aileen Cannon’s indefinite postponement of former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case constitutes a travesty of justice in my view. While removal of a federal judge for cause is near impossible, Special Counsel Jack Smith is left with no other recourse but to seek such a change if the case is to be heard anytime soon. Taken together with the Supreme Court’s slow-walking of Trump’s claim of immunity for crimes committed while in office related to his actions in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the credibility of the federal justice system has rarely fallen into such disrepute. It appears that only local prosecutors in New York and Georgia may be able to sustain the motto, “No man is above the law,” even “Teflon Don.”

Fred Kalhammer, Sun City Center