Here’s what scares me

DeSantis signs bill banning homeless people from parks, public spaces | March 20

Gov. Ron DeSantis uses scary words like “plagued” and “accosted” to describe interaction with our homeless. I live in downtown St. Petersburg and encounter homeless people daily and have never been accosted or plagued or felt threatened. However, I fear for my life when I read that a man was shot at a dog park and a family man was shot during a road rage incident. I think this is just another example of the governor using prejudiced scare tactics rather than finding solutions.

Eileen Stafford, St. Petersburg

Not what they planned

Man accused of hate crime in fatal West Tampa dog park shooting to remain jailed until trial | March 19

The recent alleged hate crime at a West Tampa dog park is disturbing on many levels. It started as a feud between two individuals and ended with one of them dead from gunshots, and the other incarcerated, accused of murder. There was history between the two: one a gay man, and the other someone who engaged in taunts and harassment of the gay man. There’s never a satisfactory resolution when a death is involved, but we’ll get more clarity based on the outcome of the trial. One thing is certain, however, and that is the death in this tragedy is the direct result of too many firearms in our society. We can say that there may be a death if firearms are not involved in a dispute, but that a death is more probable when they are. I find it hard to believe this is what the framers had in mind when they crafted the Second Amendment.

Jon Crawfurd, Gulfport

It’s no accident

Once Tampa public housing, Encore is fully occupied. Where are the shops? | March 20

Tampa Bay Times journalist Sue Carlton rightly praises the mixed income Encore development, which is creating a vibrant residential community in the heart of Tampa. The neighborhood remains, however, devoid of many retail options. The reason? Encore seems “oddly isolated,” she writes.

Encore’s isolation is not, however, odd. It’s the outcome of decades of planning policies that intentionally isolated Tampa’s historic African American community. It’s no accident that two interstates cut the area off from the rest of the city. It’s not coincidence that the Ybor City and Channelside areas are nearby, yet not accessible. This lack of connection to the rest of the city, an outcome of the racist policies of an earlier era, makes it difficult to establish thriving retail.

Encore’s developers have done an outstanding job creating a residential community with the highest design standards. Restitching the urban fabric to connect this area to the rest of the city, through road redesign and more robust transit, however, will require a citywide effort.

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Elizabeth Strom, Tampa

It’s an investment

Biden made a claim about cutting the deficit | PolitiFact, March 17

In Sunday’s Perspective section, a PolitiFact article by Louis Jacobson talks about how much credit President Joe Biden should (or should not) get for the claim that he’s reduced the federal deficit by $1 trillion. I think we need to put some of that deficit in context: Biden policies such as the American Rescue Plan, the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure act all cost significant money, and a lot of the cost will initially be added to the national debt, but in the end we are getting some much-needed return on our investment: new roads, bridges, internet, clean water pipes, growth of small businesses, increased job growth, etc. This is money well spent, in my opinion.

David Small, Clearwater

Hold them accountable

Election 2024

The U.S. Constitution provides oversight of the executive branch that is an important congressional check on the president’s power, and a balance against the president’s discretion in implementing laws and making regulations. All legislative power is vested in Congress, meaning that it is the only part of the government that can make new laws or change existing laws, and the Senate has the sole power to confirm many of the president’s appointments, including the justices of the Supreme Court. If Congress takes its responsibility seriously, this means that no president should be able to act without accountability for public health and welfare. Today’s Congress has devoted so much energy to its internal power struggle that it has enacted almost no meaningful legislation for the people it is sworn to serve. As we must hold the former president accountable, we must also hold members of Congress accountable by our “down ballot” votes, replacing politically motivated allegiances to any presidential candidate who seeks office solely for his own power and protection. We can use those votes to promote bipartisanship and the many issues that must be addressed by legislative action. We should vote to salvage our Constitution and to hold not just a president, but every member of Congress accountable.

Brian Walkowiak, St. Petersburg

Wah-wah, Wall Street

The average bonus on Wall Street last year was $176,500. That’s down slightly from 2022. | March 20

I don’t feel for those Wall Street employees who had their annual bonus slashed by a whopping 2% on average to $176,500. When the average American household only has a little over $62,000 in savings and the federal minimum wage is stuck at $7.25 per hour, I find it very hard to feel any empathy for these Wall Street types losing a few bucks.

David Burg, Tampa

Sailing into perfect storm

PolitiFact in the Sunday Perspective section

The Perspective section publishing several PolitiFact analyses shows we are in an election year where lies, misrepresentations and disinformation join misuse of technology to threaten what many think is a weakened democracy. Current divisions and hatreds were not so apparent during the Eisenhower and Reagan administrations, though each had historical issues that exist today. What is so striking to me is that, bottom line, the political turmoil rests squarely on the anger, hatred and fear of so many individuals and groups. Americans have short-changed moderation on too many important issues. If we keep trending in that direction, I fear we will be sailing into a perfect storm.

James Gillespie, St. Petersburg

No free lunch

Building boom little help | March 15

I’m impatiently waiting for deeper thinking about the idea of affordable housing. Rare is the politician who doesn’t pander to the middle and working class about their plan to legislate and rule their way out of this issue. Yet they never deliver because they don’t understand economics. The American public is too distracted by first-world problems like social media vitriol to ever understand and demand a sustainable fix. Summarized, quoting the late economist Milton Friedman, “Inflation is always a monetary phenomenon.” True inflation is the creation of currency and credit, not increase in cost. But we leave all our thinking to people whose only goal is winning elections. Populism. The death of the dollar is real. Ninety percent of its value has been quietly, yet savagely, eviscerated since we left the gold standard 53 years ago. Surely the policies of former President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden have been terribly inflationary, but even the GOP’s savior, Donald Trump, never saw a dollar he didn’t think looked better diluted. He publicly railed at the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates too low for far too long — a real estate and stock market investor mindset. But none of our mountainous social programs could be funded without taxes and the creation of new dollars and new credit. We’ve made reality of pie-in-the-sky programs that could only be paid for with conjured dollars and credit. There are no free lunches. We’re paying every penny.

Jason Barrera, Oldsmar