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Articles by Michael Mount
Letter: Responsible Congressional Elections
We have a corrupt election system for congressional representatives. Between gerrymandered districts and district representatives who have been bought and paid for by wealthy donors funding their campaign, there are few districts that are truly competitive. We need independent commissions to establish congressional districts and eliminate gerrymandering in any form. Limits should be placed on donations to a reasonable amount and should be given only by people who live in the congressional district.
Letter: Norway's wealth
Today, Norway is richer than the United States in per-capita wealth thanks to its discovery of oil and gas in the Norwegian controlled Continental Shelf. Norway manages their oil and gas by acting as owner through a national energy company and transferring profits into a sovereign wealth fund for long-term security. This wealth fund is currently worth $2.2 trillion which is invested in stocks throughout the world.
Letter: Egregious ICE behavior
Trump is correct regarding increased violence in America. Unfortunately, it is ICE that is increasing the violence wherever they are deployed. The tragedy in Minneapolis with the death of Renee Good underscores why. An ICE agent ran up to her car yelling “Get out of the f****** car”. Agent Ross, the ICE agent who shot Renee Good, said “F****** b****”, after he shot three times killing her. There is no indication of any ICE agent trying to defuse the situation before this happened.
Letter: Gun statistics?
Re: Ruffled Feathers. We have more guns than we have people. Guns therefore are readily accessible to any moron who feels they have an issue to solve. The U.S. has by far the highest death rate of any nation from gun violence, including children and adults. It seems the author can’t connect the dots between our high gun ownership and our high death rate. We allow civilian ownership of semi-automatic military weapons designed to maximize killing.
Letter: Income disparity consequences
How did the rich get so rich? In short because they do not pay their fair share of taxes. In the early 1960s we were the richest nation in the world and with some exceptions all society benefited. We also had income tax brackets which increased the tax paid on each segment of income as one made more money. The highest rate was 90%. Over the years, Congress passed laws that effectively reduced taxes by shielding certain income from being taxed, reducing the number and size of the tax brackets, etc.
Letter: Free market?
In the late 1700s, Adam Smith wrote “Wealth of Nations” which stressed the importance of the market economy to the growth of society’s wealth. It was predicated on non-interference of the free market, which promoted competition. The net worth of our society today is $160 trillion. It is not evenly distributed. The top 1% of our population has 31% of the wealth, or $49 trillion including 756 mostly multi-billionaires. The bottom 50% has less than $4 trillion.
Letter: Legislating ignorance
Re: AZ Legislature Oks bill to make teachers liable for ‘antisemitism’. What this bill will do is destroy our schools by glorifying ignorance and making teachers liable for any statement they make that touches on Jewish people. I could think of hundreds of true statements that are not antisemitic about the war between Israelis and the Palestinian people which could be misconstrued by ignorance as antisemitic.
Letter: Trump national emergency?
Trump reposted an outlandish conspiracy theory on Truth Social that said Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced by a robot clone. It was written by a conspiracy theorist with an unbalanced mind. So why repost it? Trump also has a history of lying about the fairness of our elections and taking unlawful actions to change results. Do you remember the fake electors in 2020 and the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol?
Letter: Trump unchecked
President Trump is a brilliant leader. He knows everything about anything. Just ask him. He claims winning three presidential elections and is angling to run for a fourth time despite what the Constitution says. He has unwavering support from all his appointees who have pledged total fealty to him. So we have a president who knows everything with an incompetent cabinet of yes people.
Letter: Tariffs and economy
Re: Tariffs Torpedo Markets, 4 April. Trump tariffs will probably cause a worldwide recession, as did the Smoot-Hawley tariffs which extended the depression of the 1930s. What was not discussed in the article was that Trump has no understanding of why trade imbalances exist. The Trump method of calculating other countries so-called tariffs is nonsense.
Letter: FDR/recession
I would like to comment on two letters to the editor that were in the March 26 edition. One letter referred to FDR as a Democratic dictator who served more terms then allowed. His facts are wrong. There were no term limits until changed under Truman when Congress mandated the two-term limit. FDR was no dictator. He was elected 4 times by the American people. Regarding the letter citing the definition of a recession, and that any predictions are premature.
Letter: Climate change
In the 1970s, President Carter installed solar panels at the White House and told the American people we had to reduce our use of fossil fuels because of climate change. The following figures are from NOAA showing the cost of damage from 1980 to 2019 and an estimate for 2020 to 2029 due to storms, fires, pollution, etc., brought about by global warming: 1980-1989: $219 billion 1990-1999: $334 billion 2000-2009: $620 billion 2010-2019: $993 billion 2020-2029: estimated > $2 trillion.
Letter: Trump appointee Hegseth
Mr. Trump seems bent on the destruction of our country. Incredibly, he won the election with people who ignored his lies, his empty sound-bite promises, and lack of any real policy to judge what is to come. We now have an indication of that by his desire to pack his government with people who are clearly incompetent and dangerous. Take Pete Hegseth, an alcoholic, who has been accused of rape. His skimpy military record clearly shows he lacks experience to run the Department of Defense.
Letter: Trump Tariffs
Re: 10 September Debate. Trump holds an advantage in people’s perception that he would the better candidate for making decisions on our economy. Really?? In the debate, he made the statement that his tariffs on China caused China to pay billions of dollars to the U.S. government. But that statement is flat wrong. China paid nothing. Who does pay the tariffs that he levied on Chinese goods? It is American business.
Letter: Netanyahu is the wrong person to lead Israel
Netanyahu is the wrong person to lead Israel. He is under indictment for breach of trust, accepting bribes and fraud. It is in his interest to keep the war going. His direction for massive bombing of homes, hospitals and schools, killing over 40,000 civilians is atrocious and not worthy of a country whose people experienced the holocaust. It has led to failed negotiations impacting the hostages and any discussion that could lead to an end of hostilities.
Letter: Support vs Awareness of Biden Policies
According to the New York Times reporting on polls done by YouGov and Blueprint, some of Biden’s most popular policies have little awareness among people who support them.
Letter: Fixing Societal Problems
Our society is stressed. Income inequality, global warming, inadequate health care, discrimination, inflation, immigration, illegal drug use, skyrocketing deficits, represent some of the problems that we as a society need to solve if we are to survive. We have the resources to do exactly that. However, the problems need to be addressed jointly by all since no group has all the answers.
Letter: Cellphone use in class
Re: Schools grapple with cellphone use in class: The idiocy of allowing cellphone use in class is beyond comprehension. We as a nation need to support bans on cell phone use in the classroom everywhere. We should not wonder why schools are failing to teach the basics such as mathematics, English, American History, etc. We should support our teachers to teach without interference by imposing stupidity from the outside by both political parties and to properly fund teachers everywhere.
Letter: Support for Military?
I don’t understand how any military veteran can support Donald Trump. During his presidency, he called those who died in defense of their country suckers and losers. By extension, in his view, anyone who serves in the military must be suckers and losers since they are there to defend our country. His disdain for those who died in battle was plain to see when he failed to attend a memorial for WWI servicemen at a U.S. cemetery in France “because of rain”.
Letter: Immigration Problems
A majority of the GOP support building more of the border wall to stop illegal immigration. To those Republicans I pose the following question: If you lived in a country where your family faces threats to their existence, would you do nothing and wait for the inevitable? Or would you take action and emigrate to allow your family to survive? Migration is only going to increase, given those threats throughout the world. A wall is not going to stop migration.
Letter: Supreme Court Decision
My understanding is that if you operate a public business, then you should serve the public. That is a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Prior to its passage, there was widespread discrimination against Hispanics, Blacks, Jews, etc. by businesses who refused to serve them throughout the United States. Now we are regressing.
Pledge of Allegiance
I was raised on a pledge that did not include the phrase "under God". To my understanding, it was added to differentiate our country from that of the godless Communist countries. But was it proper? We practice discrimination affecting large numbers of people. We repress those who have little or no voice in government. We have an ungodly amount of gun violence. We have huge disparities in income impacting the ability of millions of people to pay for rent, medicines, and/or food. And the list goes on.
Wage/Price spiral
Re: Understanding economics (13 January letter to the editor). The letter writer understands one-half of the wage/price spiral in that greater demand causes prices to rise. The Federal Reserve raises interest rates to cause a decrease in demand, eventually causing lower prices.
Trump's Support for Putin
Our former president called Putin, a "genius" after his invasion of Ukraine. He subsequently bragged about his deep and enduring bond with Putin. Had he won the 2020 election, Russia might have prevailed. Mr. Trump would have further weakened NATO and taken no action to support Ukraine. Indeed, it would not surprise me if he would have given military support to Russia. Thank God Biden was elected and took actions to support Ukraine. NATO is stronger, with positive support from the United States.
Letter: Population growth and border walls
In 1960, the world population was 3 billion. This year the world population will surpass 8 billion. Consider the impacts on 'migration' which is propelled by repressive governments, war, crime, lack of economic security, all made worse by a growing population. Some think that border walls are the answer to keeping migrants out. Unfortunately, they do not address the causal factors of migration which will only increase with climate change.
Letter: NRA, GOP and the 2nd Amendment
The GOP and the NRA are intent on increasing the number of guns in the US. What they don’t say is that our nation has the highest gun death rate among wealthy countries simply because of the huge number of guns we have. They misuse the 2nd Amendment saying it gives a citizen the right to own guns. It does not. The second part of the Amendment is predicated on the first part.
50 Years Ago in The Journal of Pediatrics
Strauss RG, McAdams AJ. Arthritis, aspirin, and coma. J Pediatr 1970;77:156-63. Strauss and McAdams reported a 22-month-old girl who presented with fever, encephalopathy, hepatomegaly, and metabolic acidosis after the initiation of high-dose aspirin for juvenile arthritis. She ultimately developed intracranial hypertension and died. Her autopsy revealed noninflammatory brain edema and fatty infiltration of the liver.
Letter: Article II of the Constitution
Letter: Article II of the Constitution Article II: A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. That militia is required by the Constitution to supplement the regular military in an emergency. When Article II was written we had no militia to augment the small standing army necessary to defend our fledgling country. We relied on ordinary armed citizens. Today, that is unnecessary.
THE BIG FIVE PERSONALITY DIMENSIONS AND JOB PERFORMANCE: A META‐ANALYSIS
Both authors contributed equally to this study. We would like to thank Frank Schmidt, Ralph Alexander, Paul Costa, Mike Judiesch, Wendy Dunn, and Jacob Sines for thoughtful comments about the article and some of the data analyses. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Mike Judiesch, Wendy Dunn, Eric Neumann, Val Arnold, and Duane Thompson in categorizing the personality scales.
My Year on a Shrinking Island
Michael Mount | Longreads | Month 2019 | 25 minutes (6,236 words) The home I moved into was not what you might associate with Martha’s Vineyard: it wasn’t a sweeping palatial estate near the ocean with views of crispy white foam. It was a simple shingled house tucked far in the woods, sitting in a rustic subdivision near a graveyard and just beyond the commercial centers of the Island, with power lines cutting an artery through its backyard.
Crime Lab Design
Advances in Technology, Increased Scrutiny, and Developing Techniques Demand a Specific Design Response Design requirements for forensic laboratories are unique and unlike those for other laboratory types. While forensic labs share certain features with academic, research, and other laboratories, the composition of these elements and the addition of other characteristics make these facilities an uncommon challenge.
City worker should be commended - The Galveston County Daily News: Letters To Editor
Posted: Tuesday, February 2, 2016 12:00 am City worker should be commended By MICHAEL MOUNT galvnews.com I lost my iPhone this past Sunday. For the sake of brevity, Ishmael Ruiz, a city of Galveston employee, found my phone on the seawall and drove from his house after work to return my phone to my father (I was busy dropping off my son to his mother.) It is apparent to me that this man has a moral turpitude you rarely find in individuals in this day and age. This man should be commended.
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