Letters on dog movie, DeVos, Trump, GOP hypocrisy

Glad Warren is taking a stand

I want to thank and commend Bill Warren for his action in pulling the movie “A Dog’s Purpose” from his theaters due to concerns about possible animal abuse (Jan. 20 Business). Rumors that arise on movie sets and gain traction in the media tend to have substance to them.

Like Warren, I’m a movie lover, and I’m also an animal lover. In my mind, animals being mistreated in the pursuit of entertainment are victims of nothing short of snuff-film mentality.

Anyone who has ever worked for a veterinarian or an animal shelter can tell you that the majority of animal abuse cases stem not from willful behavior but from ignorance. Yet we live in an age and a part of the world where lack of education and enlightenment is not a credible justification in issues of abuse, whether it’s to animals or to humans. Ignorance is no longer a believable excuse, and greed never was.

It’s refreshing to see a businessman putting civilized behavior over profit. And anyone who criticizes Warren is not someone I want to be sitting next to anyway.

DeVos unqualified

The evidence of how important public schools are to this country is irrefutable. Yet Congress may be poised to confirm someone who may be the least qualified of President Trump’s Cabinet nominees – Betsy DeVos.

A local school district will invest a great deal of energy and expense to identify the best-suited person for the superintendent position, guaranteed to be experienced in various levels of teaching and administration. Yet Trump chose an individual who has never attended a public school, has never taught or held any leadership position in public schools, has elected to have her children attend private schools, and who espouses a preference for charter schools and ill-advised vouchers for school choice.

Advocates and practitioners within public schools have never assumed a casual attitude about improving the present status. Evidence of continuing initiatives to modify curriculum, instruction and management to assure positive change is omnipresent. That said, public school educators will be far more energetically responsive to ideas that come from an education secretary who speaks from a history of personal experiences within their revered profession.

In sum, there must be at least one educator within most school districts countrywide better qualified for this incredibly important position than DeVos.

Pilots, presidents

Last time I got on an airplane, I realized that I did not know the pilot. Was he any good? Was he very bad? I didn’t know. But I did know I did not want him to fail, because if he failed, all of us did.

It is truly sad to see people who want to see our new president fail – and they have never given him a chance.

There are no winners in a plane crash, or in a divided country.

GOP hypocrisy

It is hard for me to believe that the Republicans have the audacity to ask the Democrats to work with them and President Trump, after eight years of refusing to work with President Obama on anything.

This started at the very beginning of his presidency and concluded with their refusal to even have a hearing on the president’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

Now fast forward to the present. After the contentious election, and tweets going back and forth, Rep. John L. Lewis, D-Ga., announced that he did not believe in the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency. Incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus responded that it was irresponsible “to question the legitimacy of the next United States president.”

Priebus conveniently forgot that conservatives, led by Trump, spent years questioning Obama’s eligibility to be president, suggesting that he was not born in the United States. For the Republicans to entreat the Democrats to work with them in the sake of unity is pure hypocrisy.

This story was originally published January 24, 2017 at 5:03 AM with the headline "Letters on dog movie, DeVos, Trump, GOP hypocrisy."