Your Letters for March 7, 2025

Overwhelmed with shame

I am horrified and ashamed of the way our guest, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was treated at the White House last week. The “spiders” invited the “fly” into our “parlor” and then, true bullies that they are, they sucker punched him, talking over him, shouting at him, attempting to shame him for the way he was dressed, and claiming that he hadn’t even thanked them for they have done for him!

They should be thanking him as a true patriotic hero who is not only defending his country, but potentially all democracies, from grasping oligarchs. They even called him a dictator—talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

By turning our back on Ukraine and withdrawing from NATO and WHO, we are rapidly becoming isolated from our allies and losing our mutual protections. I am overwhelmed with shame and disgust for our Republican “leadership” and for those who either don’t or won’t call them out for what is happening. This whole scenario was played out decades ago in Germany — don’t forget how that turned out.

Sandra Jacobs

St. Joseph

More significant than we think

One pennies are no longer minted, what will we do? There will no longer be pennies to find to bring us good luck and we won’t be able to ask someone “a penny for your thoughts.”

How important a role does the penny play in our economy? Just for fun, I went through some old receipts: $21.51, $22.47, $16.08, $18.88. Assuming that each of these purchases would be rounded upwards to $21.55, $22.50, $16.10 and $18.90 this would increase these four purchases by a total of $0.11. Say four purchases were made each day for 30 days. This would come to an increase of $3.30; $3.30 for 12 months would come to $39.60. The U.S. has around 271 million adults. 271 million times $39.60 amounts to $10,731,600,000 increase on purchases per year due to the demise of the penny. Maybe the penny is more significant than we think!

Peggy Bloss

St. Joseph

It’s time to go

It never ceases to amaze me how public officials make the big bucks and yet thumb their nose to the people who page their wages. The people of St. Joseph have clearly voted down a bond for a two-school system. Yet, the Superintendent and his band of administrators say we don’t’ care what you want, we are going to shove another bond election down your throat and if you don’t pass this one, we will proceed with a two-school system anyway. As one of your employers, I think it is time for the new and present superintendent to find another city who share your views.

I want to make sure I understand the rationale of this superintendent. If the bond fails, we are going to proceed with making Benton a middle school which was not good enough for a high school and in the process will need money for improvements for the middle school. This shifting of dollars didn’t fly on the last bond issue, so now we are going ot use a decrease in population of students to support the two-school theory. Will a merge of students better educate our youth? If this delusion succeeds, I suppose the classes will then become too big for an effective education, so, we will need to proceed with another bond election for two new schools.

For several years, the school administration has been playing who is on first. Let me make a suggestion, can we spend more time educating our students so they compete in society instead of pushing a desire for new walls and bussing our kids around the city to meet some bureaucratic desire for a two-school system?

Let’s go or you need to go.

Richard Sharp

St. Joseph