Letters: SOS for restaurants. Legislators should set a better example on COVID-19.
Poor examples
I am appalled by the reactions of our legislators during COVID-19. Rather than being public servants, they have chosen politics over the health of Kentuckians. They should be providing an example of what the White House and infectious disease doctors tell us to do. They should be doing what many Kentuckians are doing and they should not be encouraging others to ignore mandates. I am tired of their negativity and their refusal to wear masks, social distance, and limit contact with others. Now is the time for every good legislator to come to the aid of this commonwealth. Kentucky lives should be their highest priority.
Jo Kane, Lexington
True culprits
I have nothing but sympathy for restaurants and other businesses having a hard time. I try to support what I can currently afford. But to all the people who say that these restrictions are ruining the businesses, you need to direct your anger at the legislators who keep giving bailouts to businesses instead of directly to American citizens.
Sen. Mitch McConnell pushed through a new Supreme Court justice instead of more COVID-19 relief. Rep. Andy Barr keeps yelling at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not supporting his bill that only helps business owners. We need to shut down, which means that people need to temporarily stay home and not work. Giving money to businesses instead of citizens will only cause more infections and deaths.
Seriously, this isn’t hard. Experts have said that two weeks of constant quarantine could have curtailed the infection rates. Instead, President Donald Trump, supported by the entire GOP (either explicitly or through silence) made this a matter of identity politics. Don’t direct your anger at local politicians or public school officials. Direct your anger at Trump and McConnell and Barr. These are the people to call, write, and protest. They are the ones with blood on their hands.
Bronson O’Quinn, Lexington
Death knell
On behalf of all restaurants operating in Kentucky, we implore Gov. Andy Beshear to reverse the decision to halt indoor dining. This ban will result in the closure of many restaurants that have struggled to keep their businesses open during this pandemic.
• Many restaurants do not have outdoor seating while others are unable to utilize such space during fall and winter Delivery and carryout options offer minimal revenue to establishments that are forced to incur additional expenses to provide this service.
•The amount of revenue generated during the holiday season provides financial security for the first quarter of the following year, which for many businesses is the slowest time of year.
• Many restaurants have already absorbed a 30% increase in expenditures to hire, staff and train additional employees, as well as pre-ordered food and supplies for this holiday season.
• Thousands of restaurant employees across the state will be unemployed before the holidays. Currently, the unemployment system owes benefits to workers from previous closings. New claims will create an additional burden, further delaying payments.
On behalf of all restaurant owners, employees and vendors across Kentucky, it is our hope that he will reverse the decision to close down our industry.
Michaela Holmes, restaurant consultant, KRC Hospitality, LLCBowling Green
Think of us
I am writing in response to recent reports from people feeling the face mask requirement is a violation of their rights or that they are healthy and if they get COVID-19 they will survive. They need to stop thinking about themselves and remember the thousands of us that have been locked inside a nursing home and have not been able to visit our spouses, children, grandchildren, or in some cases, our parents.
The holidays are coming up and because people are so selfish we are going to be alone. The longer people protest, party and gather in large groups, the lonelier we are going to get.
If you had a loved one in a nursing home or hospital and could witness what I see and feel every day you might think twice before you go out to a bar or party without a mask.
Life is hard enough at 56 being confined to a nursing home but to miss your mother’s, brothers’ and grandson’s birthday as well as your youth pastor’s funeral, is extreme. Then to celebrate your 16th wedding anniversary with your husband sitting on a stool outside your window and talking to you on the phone is beyond words.
Lisa Shaheen, Elizabethtown
Any solutions?
Kentucky House Speaker David Osborne wasted no time criticizing Gov. Andy Beshear for the governor’s new recommendations to fight the escalating COVID-19 virus that is now running rampant throughout the state. So Mr. Osborne, what are your suggestions to fight this pandemic? That’s right, you have none. You’re a Republican. You only criticize.
Bob Sutton, Springfield
Nix the insults
Even in the wake of President Donald Trump’s defeat, Tres Watson resorts to the president’s trademark inflammatory rhetoric, starting with argument by insult. Gov. Andy Beshear, Watson says in a recent op-ed in the Herald-Leader, is a milquetoast. Well, if so, he’s a milquetoast wrestling a partially hostile populace through a pandemic that’s destroying the lives and livelihoods of the very people opposing his efforts to control it; and he is, moreover, showing his face four days a week to explain his actions and take whatever questions can be thrown at him. Buying into shows of “strength” like blustering, bullying and boasting is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place.
Watson, meanwhile, sees fit to take a victory lap for the party that just lost the White House. That brand of politics — complete with triumphalism about the races his party won, great scorn for the opposition, and exaggerated praise for the winners — is unquestionably part of what caused that loss.
Kentucky may indeed remain red for a while, but perhaps when the norm-breaking, rule-flouting hyperpartisanship of the past four years is behind us, we’ll do so with some growing appreciation for the self-restraint and fair-mindedness Americans used to cherish.
Lela Stromenger, Lexington
Restaurant SOS
It was heartbreaking to read the recent op-ed in the Herald-Leader from the Coalition of Local Restaurants. We must save our restaurants in Lexington and other places. My husband and I have enjoyed visiting different restaurants in the area all summer and fall and plan to continue this winter. We make it a point not to go to franchise restaurants but to locally owned and operated ones. I encourage everyone to dig a little deeper in your pockets and go to these wonderful restaurants that are listed. There are 60 in the coalition which you can find in saverestaurants.com. We feel perfectly safe when we eat out. The owners and employees are so eager for everything to be just right. I suggest that older people, like my husband and I, eat out on Monday through Thursday. They will find lots of space, have a great meal, and feel good about helping our local economy.
Mary Leah R. Atkinson, Lexington
Support ‘Nutcracker’
COVID-19 has forced arts organizations across the globe to rethink the way they operate.
The Lexington Ballet was granted permission in March (under a very strict protocol ) to use the Lexington Opera House and film “The Nutcracker”, a holiday tradition presented in December since 1974.
With COVID-19 cases reaching record numbers in our community, the ballet school now has gone virtual for a second time since the pandemic began.
We will continue to present high quality professional performances and forge and educate future dancers and dance lovers because that is our mission.
We are passionate about it because we know the arts can lift the soul.
In these difficult moments society has to rescue its best values. I sincerely think we represent one of them.
Support this unprecedented effort by bringing “The Nutcracker” to your home in December.
Please follow this link: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/lbcnutcracker
Luis Dominguez, artistic director, Lexington Ballet
AG falters again
After failing to deliver justice for Breonna Taylor, the Attorney General’s Office has failed Kentuckians once again.
The office is meant to protect us and intervene in utility rate cases on our behalf. However, it must be difficult for Attorney General Daniel Cameron to represent customers when nearly $70,000 of his campaign contributions came from a pool of monopoly utility companies.
One of them, the Kentucky Power Company, currently has a case before the Public Service Commission. The utility wants a 25% increase on fixed electricity rates, a 25% rate increase on electricity usage rates, and a complete dismantling of solar net metering. Not only has Cameron’s office failed to speak out against these significant rate increases, but it has agreed with Kentucky Power’s proposal to gut rooftop solar. This move is in direct opposition to the hundreds of comments submitted in last year’s net metering administrative case. On top of all that, Kentucky Power is not being asked to provide customers options that would allow them to respond to such rate hikes. Energy efficiency services that were once common in Kentucky, have been cut in recent years, leaving folks without many options during a global crisis.
The Attorney General’s Office of Ratepayer Intervention must be held accountable.
Rachel Norton, Lexington
Principal unfit
As a citizen, I was appalled to learn about the contentious and insensitive personal Facebook post by Mike Hale, principal of Winburn Middle School, in which he suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic is somehow a false crisis created by President Donald trump’s opponents. His words appeared the same week that Kentucky recorded its highest weekly number of cases (12,421), when 1,102 people in the state were hospitalized — 279 in ICU and 148 on ventilators — and a total of 101 residents of Lexington had died from the virus, including Ruthie Martínez, one of his own teachers at Winburn. As an educator, I was saddened to see that Mr. Hale’s use of the English language is no more enlightened than his politics or science: “... Only the major cities in this great union controls the country...” His apology, in which he does little to denounce the factious substance of his post, is doubly redundant and barely more literate: “... I meant no ill will or ill intent...” Given the evidence reported in the Herald-Leader, Mr. Hale would appear to be unfit to serve as an administrator or teacher in our schools.
Edward Stanton, Lexington
Heel, not heal
The party of love and tolerance (Democrats) seems to harbor a lot of hatred and intolerance toward Republicans, evidenced by Leonard Pitts Jr.’s column that recently ran in the Herald-Leader. According to Pitts, Biden was “elected on a promise to heal,” while President Donald Trump’s voters chose “lies, lawlessness, bigotry and ignorance” and ultimately evil over good. Other recent rhetoric has similarly called for healing while simultaneously insulting Trump voters. Given that opposing Trump is considered “patriotic,” while nearly any dissent against Obama was “racist” and criticism of Biden is “divisive,” Trump voters could be forgiven for sensing a double standard and for resenting calls to eagerly unite and to simply forget that we are perpetually despised and insulted by Democrats. This newfound desire for reconciliation rings hollow when Democrats spent the past four years calling Trump’s election illegitimate and saying things like “not my president.” There wasn’t much unity or reconciliation then, so I wonder why is it now incumbent on Republicans to fall in line when the same was not requisite for Democrats under a Republican president. These contradictions make it seem like perhaps the goal is not for our nation to “heal,” but for Trump’s 72 million voters to “heel.”
Stephanie Mason, Danville
Unnecessary lecture
While reading the op-ed by Leonard Pitts Jr. demanding a “moral reckoning” of America, I’m reminded of my wise old mother’s words about getting too big for your britches. According to dictionary.com, this idiom alludes to becoming so swollen with conceit that one’s pants no longer fit.
With the assistance of her walker, not her morals, my mother stood in line in 2008 to cast a vote for Barack Obama. Not the popular choice at the time in rural Kentucky, her’s was a vote against an American war hero and senator from Arizona. Her vote was proof, although only “high school educated” and living in the country, she was choosing not to live in the past. In her 84 years, she was never inspired by fear and resentment, as are, according to Mr. Pitts, so many Americans.
The election is in the past. President Trump was defeated. Most Americans want to move forward, celebrate a victory, and heal the divide of our country. Another lengthy laundry list of the administration’s mistakes need not be penned. We don’t look to be lectured by the media regarding our morals and how enough is not really enough. We have witnessed enough chaos, lawlessness, and bigotry to last a lifetime. Mr. Pitts’ words are not the words we hear from President-elect Joe Biden. It is not the language of our former first lady, Michelle Obama, who confidently stated, “When they take the low road, we take the high road.”
Melissa L. Sullivan, Lexington
Step up
Sen. Mitch McConnell is correct that the president has a right to relief in the courts if he has actually been wronged in this election. It’s also true that the president does not have a right to use our court system to harass, intimidate, bully, or slander the various states or the president-elect just because the outcome was not what he preferred.
So far the states’ transparent and nonpartisan processes show there’s nothing inherently corrupt or illegal in voting by mail or in following established procedures to assure every vote is counted. Our system works.
President Donald Trump will continue to shout unfounded accusations and lies as long as he has an audience and can ingeniously raise funds, but it’s time to turn off the smoke machine, focus on facts, and draw this to a close.
McConnell and his colleagues need to bring pressure on the president just as Kentucky legislators did when the Gov. Matt Bevin’s administration raised unfounded charges after his gubernatorial loss.
The Trump campaign must make and prove a credible case for misdeeds, or face reality. The longer legal processes drag on, the more harmful it will be for our country.
Dave Forman, Midway