Letters to the Editor: Make UK students go virtual so public school kids can return to class

Open the schools

If Fayette County cannot get out of the COVID red zone and this is likely due to University of Kentucky students, then why isn’t this city making college kids go virtual in the hopes of dropping COVID numbers and thereby making it a better situation for younger kids to attend school. No one has to babysit college kids. If they can’t make good choices regarding the pandemic, then let them go home, learn virtually, and continue on with their partying and pandemic ignorance. This city needs to prioritize public school opening. Parents are having to stay home from work, kids are sitting in parking lots for WiFi, and many are suffering socially/mentally. The largest group suffering from a closed system is the public school children and their families. I think kids are safer in a controlled area with attention to pandemic protocols than in a large store with minimal protocols, yet stores are open and schools closed. Something has to be done and done soon to get public schools open, and if there is a portion of the population that is contributing heavily to the COVID numbers, then address that population and make them make sacrifices instead of innocent children.

Teri Neal, Lexington

Kentucky tales

After reading Herald-Leader opinion columnist Linda Blackford’s engrossing feature on the Marion Miley murder, I could not help but think how wonderful a book on great Kentucky murders and scandals would be. The Solomon Sharp Kentucky tragedy! The miseries of the Todd family! Who really killed Governor Goebel! Hatfields and McCoys! Belle Brezing’s taste in interior decorating! Al Capone’s secret hideout at the Seelbach Hotel! Point shaving by the 52-53 Kentucky basketball team! George Ratterman drugged and placed in bed with a lady named April Flowers to sabotage his run for sheriff of Newport in 1961! Drew Thornton’s failed attempt to become a professional skydiver! Kato Kaelin’s 15 minutes of fame as a Derby guest! Of course, any such book would have to stop late in the 20th century to avoid litigation and revelation. Surely the list of potential publishers and publicists is as long as Pinocchio’s nose.

Estill C. Pennington, Paris

Fair vaccine plan

As economies reopen, people resume working, despite COVID-19’s devastating effects. The desperation for a COVID-19 vaccine is tangible, and, when one is manufactured, its equitable distribution would ensure all people’s health, especially those most impacted by COVID-19 — poor and marginalized communities. Congress can assist this effort by including equitable vaccine measures in future COVID-19 bills.

I’m asking that Kentucky senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul support increased domestic and global accessibility to the COVID-19 vaccine. Future COVID-19 bills should restore fair pricing requirements on taxpayer-funded medicines. The dissolution of that clause intended to promote scientific research. However, the purpose of that expanded research is less if people cannot access its results (vaccines and medicines). Additionally, future bills should enter all taxpayer-funded COVID-19 medicines into a global patent pool. American participation in the WHO’s patent pool will increase vulnerable countries’ access to COVID-19 medical products, catalyzing a global path past the pandemic. Finally, future COVID-19 bills should include “exceptional circumstance” in all taxpayer-funded COVID-19 research grants, allowing the government to exert public ownership to ensure equitable access. The first steps to healing in this painful time come from the equitable distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Kevli Sheth, Danville

Real protection

A vow to protect people with preexisting conditions is not enough. That protection must come without exorbitant insurance premiums or huge deductibles on coverage.

Douglas S. Andersen, Lexington

Health test

I understand people are strongly pro-life. Most people are. But I am worried about their lives if they get sick. I have Medicare, and feel secure that I won’t go bankrupt or be out on the street if I get sick and have a preexisting condition. But people under age 65 who have Affordable Care Act (ACA) or job related heathcare should be aware that President Donald Trump is now in court to take away the ACA entirely. He has promised for a year to come up with a new and much better plan. It’s been four years, and where is that plan? Many people have lost their jobs and their healthcare due to COVID-19. The ACA is their only hope. Yes, it needs improving, but Sen. Mitch McConnell and Trump are definitely not interested in their healthcare.

McConnell has done absolutely nothing as king of the Senate but approve judges. If that is people’s No. 1 issue, then I guess they should reward Mitch. But I am hoping their health and that of their family might be more important, especially in this pandemic.

People need to rethink their devotion to Trump and McConnell and consider their health and welfare. Trump and McConnell obviously don’t.

Judy Harvey, Lexington

Solar crossroad

Recent legislation (SB100) gave our Public Service Commission the chance to shape the fate of the rooftop solar industry in Kentucky. Each utility can now ask to end the simple policy that credits solar owners 1 to 1 for energy fed to the grid. Kentucky Power is the first utility to propose an alternative scheme. The PSC’s decision here will set a precedent for other cases, and significantly impact Kentucky’s just transition to clean energy.

Kentucky Power’s plan greatly undervalues excess energy fed to the grid that helps meet costly peak demand. It ignores documented solar benefits to the utilities, the grid, climate, and health. Their plan will make solar far less affordable, likely killing the local rooftop industry when Kentucky badly needs these good-paying jobs.

Utility claims of cost shifting to non-solar customers in Kentucky are unsupported. But monopoly utility profits depend on increased energy sales and infrastructure investments. Thus while customer-owned solar, and energy efficiency, serve the public interest, they conflict with utility interests. Tell the PSC to rule in favor of the public interest and to protect affordability, public health, equitable energy choice, and climate stability. Submit comments to psc.info@ky.gov and cite case number 2020-00174.

Catherine Clement, Lexington

Elect judges

Why not go all the way? Make the judges run for office, responsible to the voters as politicians are; force them to tell us how they will vote on Roe vs. Wade, etc.

Make all justices resign at the end of the term of the president who appointed them, the way ambassadors and other political appointees do.

Or, better yet, demand Congress exercise its powers under Article 1, Section 8, and Article 3, Section 2 to put beyond court jurisdiction challenges to congressional legislative powers, as Britain and many other liberal democracies do.

You don’t like the law? Challenge it at the ballot box, not the courthouse.

Rule by judicial oligarchies should be no more acceptable than rule by economic ones.

The Constitution gives the voters, the Congress, and the president a say in what is constitutional; to the courts none.

Following the Constitution and not the court makes us both constitutional and democratic.

Willis Sutter, Lexington

Acknowledge racism

I am a lifelong Republican and an alumnus of the Citizen’s Police Academy. I greatly appreciate the effort and the attitude of many of our police officers. However, campaign ads featuring my lily-white Republican legislators and lily-white law enforcement officers belie the claims that law enforcement is race neutral. We will not solve issues of systemic racism by ignoring them. Thus, I will be supporting Democratic candidates who recognize the problem rather than Republican candidates who not only refuse to acknowledge the problem but also denigrate good people who want to correct it.

Lee Edgerton, Lexington

Mitch’s priorities

I wonder if anyone has noticed how quickly Sen. Mitch McConnell is arranging to confirm a new Supreme Court justice. He has abandoned the stimulus package for Kentuckians which he let languish for months. This is indicative of where his allegiance lies, and it is not with us.

Cheryl Keenan, Lexington

Had to say it

President Donald Trump has backed me into a corner and now I must come out fighting going against what I was taught when I was growing up, which is basically that if you can’t say something nice about somebody, just don’t say it all.

First, he wrecked the Environmental Protection Agency by putting a wolf in to protect the chicken house. A coal administrator will not have the best interests of the environment at heart. Second, he floated an idea to make the Affordable Care Act better. Show me the proof. The ACA has saved my life. Third, he called veterans “losers and suckers”. Even though I am not a veteran, when I stood where you made that ugly phrase, all I wanted to do was just cry at what the Allies had to do to break through the German defenses in northern France.

Todd Lemley, Nonesuch

False choice

Barbara Ellerbrook, membership chair of the National Federation of Republican Women, called me a “socialist” because I intend to vote against Sen. Mitch McConnell, President Donald Trump and white male Republicans.

After working for a then-moderate Republican Party, I became a Democrat, then progressive: In terms Ellerbrook throws around, I guess her party’s regressive.

I have encouraged Ellerbrook to free women to run for office themselves instead of slavishly working to elect the same old, same old GOP white males — these women can rebuild the Republican Party from the ashes of a burned-out power ‘n prosperity party.

Ellerbrook says the choice is simple: “freedom of choice or socialism.” Talk about that freedom of choice to women whose bodies are controlled by her male legislators, to parents whose kids are taught in school to hide from gun slingers or are killed, crippled by flesh-tearing assault bullets, to parents forcibly separated from their babies, to families with preexisting conditions whose affordable healthcare is up for grabs.

No. The choice is an echo from a barbarian past we thought we’d passed ... dictatorship or democracy.

Ramona Rush, Lexington