Rogue Phillips
Rep. Dean Phillips, where have you been all along (“Joe foe outlines his plan,” Dec. 26)?
We have been pouring billions of dollars into underserved communities for generations, but to what end? Many of those communities are still underserved.
Either someone needs to come up with a different strategy, or this endless cycle of expensive yet unsuccessful programs will continue through future generations. Certainly discussing the possibility of reparations paid to the descendants of slaves will appeal to certain progressive voters. Still, Phillips will have to do better than that if he wants to compete against President Biden.
Mitchell Schwefel, Barnegat, NJ
Crime context
Michelle Esquenazi claims that New York is being destroyed by the misguided policies of progressive justice reformers, but violent crime in the Big Apple is lower than the early 2000s (“Policy fails endanger us all,” PostOpinion, Dec. 28).
Many New York residential neighborhoods feel safe, including my own, and hundreds of thousands take mass transit every day without incident. Tourists continue to flock to the city in substantial numbers.
Crime is to be expected in a city with a population numbering in the millions, and the misguided policies that have led to its recent rise still need to be addressed. However, the last thing we need is the doomsaying that occurs every time a crime is committed.
Dennis Middlebrooks, Brooklyn
Mich. vs. Colo.
It is notable that the Michigan Supreme Court reached the opposite decision of Colorado’s (“Mich. Trump bid fix fails,” Dec. 28).
The court concluded that the charge of engaging in an insurrection does not disqualify former President Donald Trump from appearing on the Michigan ballot next year.
Given Trump’s penchant for inciting violence within his ranks of supporters, I wonder if the Michigan justices’ decision was in any way colored by concern for their personal safety.
Oren Spiegler, Peters Township, Penn.
Sound advice
Carol Swain’s op-ed is naïve (“A bit of advice Gay should copy,” Dec. 25).
She has somehow forgotten that US schools and neighborhoods were intentionally racially-exclusionary for decades. Racial steering, vast racial segregation and restrictive zoning were the rules of our nation. Likewise, colleges and universities towed the color-line. Kept out of prestigious universities on account of their race, blacks went to the historically black colleges. They had scant chances of entrance to first-class public or private institutions.
Only after the riotous 1960s and ’70s did American schools begin opening their doors to blacks, and only in modest, token numbers. Civil rights protests and laws ultimately broke the back of wide-scale academic resistance to desegregation, but left the larger task of total societal desegregation to our collective goodwill. Swain forgets how our society has been scarred by race segregation. Those wounds still need to be affirmatively remedied.
Michael Meyers, Manhattan
Biden bonanza
So the leader of the free world went on a holiday (“A free and easy holiday,” Dec. 28)?
On top of that, the people lending Biden the house are his donors. Their house is usually listed on the rental company Vrbo. No doubt the owners will capitalize on Biden’s stay.
Chris Plate, Waterloo
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