Letters to the Editor: Feb. 10, 2006

Daily dose of comment and insight from our readers.

The Naples Daily News welcomes letters of up to 250 words. We reserve the right to reject letters or edit for clarity, brevity, good taste and accuracy, and to prevent libel. No poetry, attacks on private individuals, or letter-writing campaigns, please. Writers should limit submissions to one letter every two weeks. Include a phone number and make certain you have signed your letter. Letters can also be submitted via e-mail at letters@naplesnews.com.

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People have spoken

Editor, Daily News:

The overwhelming votes for Bill Willkomm, Penny Taylor and Gary Price prove that annexation was the No. 1 priority in Tuesday’s city of Naples election.

The voters expect this City Council to represent them on this issue when it’s brought to the limelight again, which is probably “just around the corner.”

Joan D. Conroy/Naples

Glad company

Editor, Daily News:

Dr. Allen Malnak stated in his letter that “those scientists who claim that intelligent design is a science which has discovered that cell structure requires design, are minuscule in number compared to the thousands of scientists who disagree.” I don’t have time to do a research paper on the number of scientists through the ages who believed in intelligent design, but, historically, most of the great scientists believed in intelligent design.

Here’s a short list:

Physics: Newton, Faraday, Maxwell and Kelvin

Chemistry: Boyle, Dalton, Pascal and Ramsay.

Biology: Ray, Linnaeus, Mendel and Pasteur.

Geology: Steno, Woodward, Brewster and Agassia.

Astronomy: Kepler, Gallileo, Herschel and Mounder.

The doctor also speaks of academics.

Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines “Academic: n. One who belonged to the school, or adhered to, the philosophy of Socrates and Plato. The latter is considered as the founder of the academic philosophy of Greece. He taught that matter is eternal and infinite, but without form, refractory, and tending to disorder; and that there is an intelligent cause, the author of spiritual being, and of the material world. Plato (427-347 B.C.E.) was one of the most important thinkers and writers in the history of Western culture.”

Plato contended that there was an “intelligent cause” for matter changing from its “natural tendency to disorder” into form and organization.

I’ll let you make up your mind who’s right.

Probably only eternity will reveal the truth.

Jerry Rutherford/Naples

How embarrassing

Editor, Daily News:

Mr. President, please accept the apologies of my family and friends who saw you being treated so shabbily by some of the speakers at Coretta Scott King’s funeral in Atlanta.

To us you were a martyr to remain and listen to the most disrespectful and despicable comments ever uttered to a president of the United States.

As a member of the President’s Prayer Group, I hoped and prayed all our members petitioned for your patience during this ordeal and that you one day accept and receive the love and respect you truly deserve and that this country has for you.

Hilary and Irene Smentek and family/Naples

Sad commentary

Editor, Daily News:

Reading about Collier County School Board member Dick Bruce almost breaking out in tears upon hearing of Nick Ballo’s brother dropping out of school because of the redesigned high school schedule makes one wonder how many lives were really touched because of the obviously gross display of egotism the School Board presented.

It appears the members wanted to leave a legacy of having maintained the school system within budget regardless of the consequences. In doing so, they put up barriers to students and teachers that will have repercussions far into the future of their educational resumes.

They forgot their primary goal of the betterment of each student and to assist the teachers in obtaining the best end product possible in the Collier school system. They should have followed the footsteps of Naples’ first lady, Myra Daniels, or our esteemed sheriff, Don Hunter, in pursuing the raising of $4 million instead of taking the easy way out and sadly taking a terrible toll on our children.

We had open meetings where we warned you of the consequences of trying to fix what wasn’t broken. We had your word that you would give it further looking into. Hah! You had it already cast in steel. You were going forth no matter what!

Now you want sympathy and forgiveness.

You sure won’t get mine, and I hope the rest of you Collier County residents feel the same way.

School Board, you get an F in common sense and caring, and I want you to stand up and go face the corner of the room — all of you!

As Donald Trump would say, “You’re fired!”

Richard Lilien/Naples

They start with C

Editor, Daily News:

Corruption. Corruption. Corruption. Thy name is Collier County!

Please read Jeff Lytle’s column in last Sunday’s edition of the Daily News.

Corruption is endemic in Collier County.

It is exposed in its most blatant form with the Riviera Golf Estates/affordable housing crisis.

Corruption. Corruption. Corruption.

Gil Erlichman/Naples

Let’s tighten the rules

Editor, Daily News:

Thank you for publishing the letter titled “Grow up and calm down,” as it needed to be said.

Even with the windows closed and air conditioning and TV on you can still hear the roar of motorcycles.

If you are outside, all conversation has to cease until they pass and if you are near a stop sign or light you get both the deafening sound and the fumes.

Only in the upscale communities do they erect sound barriers at all taxpayers’ expense.

As gasoline gets more expensive we are going to see more motorcycles and the rules should be enforced for them as they are for cars.

I also enjoyed the letter headlined “Put up or pipe down.” Islamic people do not know what they are missing.

Thanks again.

Mary M. Grubb/Naples

Let’s rumble

Editor, Daily News:

Re: Tuesday’s stupid letter.

I would be more than willing to put quiet mufflers on my Harley, as soon as the law is changed and any motorist who kills a biker gets a mandatory life sentence.

Every time I ride my wife’s Honda, which is very quiet, I get cut off. SUVs turn in front of me and act like I am invisible. When I ride my Harley, this does not happen. The only difference is the Harley is louder.

And it gets 45 miles per gallon, unlike the two-ton weapons people who write anti-motorcycle letters drive.

I value my life more than your ability to sleep until 11 a.m.

Russ Sharbaugh/Naples

Show the bigger picture

Editor, Daily News:

I was extremely disturbed with the story about a “possible sexual assault” at a private school in Tuesday’s paper. Two things gave me pause:

First, why would this incident be newsworthy when there are similar incidents reported all over the county in any given month? Is it because this happened at a Catholic school? The article states that at this point it is not even clear that the incident was a sexual assault, so why are we hearing about it before the facts are in?

Second, I think it’s important for readers to know that in this day and age, our no-tolerance policies involve the police in many areas that would not otherwise be considered crimes. The article states two 12-year-olds were involved. This could have involved anything from inappropriate touching to a mutually consensual act, but the age of the students would make it illegal. Or it could have been much more serious; again, the facts are not in.

On this point, though, it needs to be said that there are inappropriate behaviors occurring in middle schools all over Collier County. My own children have walked in on other students in the bathrooms engaging in sexual acts.

The story should not have been about an isolated incident in a Catholic school, but rather should address the larger issue of why younger and younger children are being involved, many times by choice, many times not, in these sexual activities.

Carrie Miller/Naples

Step backward? No way

Editor, Daily News:

Letter-writer Nancy Shuster wonders if the purchase of the Cleveland Clinic in Naples by the public company, Health Management Associates, will result in a push for profit instead of service.

She hopes that the sale of the clinic will not be a step backward for the Naples community.

I feel it will be a step forward.

It is obvious that the Cleveland Clinic in Naples has always pushed for profit. I was formerly employed there. Doctors’ salaries and bonuses were based on productivity, which was how fast patients were seen.

Fifteen-minute patient visits were made mandatory. That discouraged addressing all of a patient’s problems at one visit. It also discouraged listening. Patients need physicians to listen — it’s therapeutic.

New patient visits were preferred over follow-up visits. They were more remunerative and generated expensive ancillary testing. It was often difficult for established patients to be seen in timely fashion.

Look at the advertisements. There was more of an emphasis on eliminating wrinkles and spider veins and getting new knees, rather than developing a strong cardiovascular program. Pretty faces won over strong hearts.

Profit and good service are not mutually exclusive. I feel and hope that the new leadership in Health Management Associates will result in the patients and community getting the service they truly deserve. I hope they will not make the same mistakes of the old leadership.

Mark R. Goldstein, M.D./Naples

Take that, Mr. Burns

Editor, Daily News:

How wrong can John Burns be about fellow letter-writers Jane Varner and John Riccio. They are two intelligent, good people, who like myself and countless others care deeply about the harm that has been done to the peace and security of our wonderful country.

Does he think about the grieving families of more than 2,200 soldiers who have died and the 20,000 and more wounded, believing they were defending our coun try? No, Mr. Burns would rather be blinded to the truth by his misguided admiration of an incompetent president who has spent countless billions of dollars on a senseless war which has accomplished nothing but slaughter of our troops and innocent Iraqis.

Incidentally, President Clinton’s actions were personal problems and did not cause countless, needless deaths and misery by starting a tragic war.

Strong leadership? Does flying around the country wasting fuel and spending so much time at his Crawford, Texas, ranch show strong leadership? Does he avoid the Oval Office because he knows he’s not worthy?

Mr. Burns’ insults are totally out of line.

He should be the one to wake up and see what is happening to our country. Wake up to the truth, and stop watching Fox News.

Genevieve DeLisle/Naples

Show me

Editor, Daily News:

Where in Collier County Manager Jim Mudd’s job description does it state that he is to assist and promote developers as he has at Riviera Golf Estates?

It’s time the commissioners gave him a new job description a la Donald Trump: You’re fired!

Bill and Diane Taylor Kersten/Naples

Not a good fit

Editor, Daily News:

For those who may not understand the implications of inserting another community within the Riviera Golf Estates, or any other, perhaps this might help.

Suppose somehow you were faced with someone wanting to insert another heart or another liver into your chest or abdominal cavity. Might sound like a good idea at first, but then there is the question of whether it can fit in there among all those other organs — really crammed in, creating stress from compression and friction as they seek their own space for expansion of need.

Then there’s the problem of function — each organ independently performing according to its own needs seems a good idea, too, until you realize that there is suddenly a competition for that function.

Two sets of heartbeats, each trying to send a single, fixed volume of blood circulating about the body. Talk about palpitations!

Or, in the case of another liver, now two sets of filters and two producers of bile to add to the digestive system. Wow!

Or not. The function of one is in sympathy with the body. The introduction of another would result in a redundancy that would begin to pick away at the body’s own resources as overachievement would result, and that wouldn’t be useful or effective to sustaining life.

Point is, when something works fine, because it was designed to, adding to it or modifying it to achieve another end will prove detrimental to the whole, and by my analogy the body would soon die.

Let’s not let that happen to that wonderful community.

Bob Murray/President, East Naples Civic Association; East Naples

Let’s watch where we’re going

Editor, Daily News:

Your Feb. 1 editorial notes the knowledge of Collier County Commissioner Jim Coletta doesn’t seem to be accurate as to traffic flows pertaining to the roadways of Golden Gate Estates.

The Vanderbilt Beach Road Extension study as presented and if implemented will ruin the quality of life for many residents.

I agree that roads need to be built. The buildout of the existing infrastructure of the Estates would provide a proper foundation on which to build. If the east-west corridors are of importance, then why did an existing right of way between 12th Avenue Northwest and 14th Avenue Northwest become abandoned in recent years?

The traffic studies presently being conducted on Vanderbilt Beach Road, in my opinion, because of present conditions, will result in faulty calculations.

If the studies are set up on southbound Collier Boulevard south of Golden Gate Boulevard, the results will verify the traffic load is south, which would necessitate north-south construction — the Wilson Boulevard project that has already been approved in 2000.

Complete Golden Gate Boulevard in conjunction with Collier Boulevard.

As for east-west traffic, White Boulevard should be addressed. It would also connect with Wilson, which would alleviate congestion on Golden Gate Boulevard.

In this brief synopsis there would be no need to extend Vanderbilt through existing, established, quiet neighborhoods of the Estates.

I would appreciate an answer as to why the buildout of the existing infrastructure is pushed aside for the proposals of “new” roads.

Patrick Leon/Golden Gate Estates

One more time?

Editor, Daily News:

On a very cold Saturday night, I was lucky enough to experience a wonderful concert at Cambier Park. The Flamingos were fantastic.

It was so cold that everyone was bundled up — even the female singer donned coat over her outfit — but I was happy she had something to put on because she was making me even colder.

I want to thank the city of Naples for sponsoring last Saturday’s free concert and I hope that next time the weather cooperates a little more. I hope we can bring the Flamingos back as they were truly great and professional, despite the small crowd and blustery evening.

Thank you again, city of Naples and Parks and Recreation, for a great evening.

Mary Brown/Naples

No, yes?

Editor, Daily News:

If you’re a moderate Democrat and are wondering where your party went, just look to the left — the faaaaar left.

Your party is now the party of Kennedy, Kerry, Clinton, Schumer and Dean, et al.

They have become the party of no:

No to tax cuts.

No to tort reform.

No to medical malpractice reform.

No to the Patriot Act.

No to eavesdropping on terrorists.

No to victory in Iraq.

No to an energy policy.

No to oil drilling in Alaska.

No to judicial nominations.

The strategy is just “no,” without any solutions. The Grinch stole Christmas and the left has stolen bipartisanship.

Take your party back, Dems. It’s getting boring winning every election.

J.N. Miranda/Naples

The American way?

Editor, Daily News:

Thanks to letter-writer George F. Muller for bringing to our attention the error in the use of the word “lay.”

His letter of Feb. 4 says “to lay” connotes action; “to lie,” inaction.

Not so. I say “to lie,” meaning to not tell the truth, also connotes action.

What about all the misuse of “it’s” (meaning it is) and “its” (showing ownership)?

How often we see the articles “a” and “an” misused. If a word begins with a vowel or a consonant that sounds like a vowel, we should use “an” — for example, “an honest appraisal.”

It comes as no surprise that many British citizens call ours not the English language but the American language.

Dee Donnelly/Naples

Seeing red

Editor, Daily News:

Re: Letter about older women and white slacks.

I wear white slacks almost exclusively — size 16.

They are to cover my butt, not to get a couple of tourists’ approval.

Get a life!

Reva Scott/Naples