Newport Daily News
·4 min read
Don't give what longtime Newporters say more weight
I am writing to express my deep concern and disgust regarding the continual use by some parties within Newport of a person’s recent resident status as a means to diminish their viewpoints or thoughts. This type of thinking is fundamentally un-American. We should not be using someone’s duration of residency to determine the value of their contributions.
Anyone who chooses to call Newport their home and invests time and energy in attempting to make it a better place deserves a seat at the table, regardless of how long they have lived here or their personal wealth. I grew up in Newport, and can trace my family back in the area over 200 years. Should this give my viewpoints more importance? No, this should not give me more importance than someone who has lived here for 1, 5, or 10 years. This is a country of immigrants, and this type of thinking is not democratic. It creates divisions within our community.
We can look at multiple examples in history to see how blaming the “others” works out for a community. We are better than this. We should focus on the validity of the proposals, whatever they may be, rather than the length of time someone has lived here.
Timothy McCarthy, Newport
Stop burdening Newport residents
Once again Mark Aramli has decided to come after residents who have actually lived in Newport for an extensive period of time, he now wants us to produce tax returns to get a parking sticker. Asinine. Here’s a thought Mark, go after the people who don’t live here year-round and tax them to death, coming from New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut the homes here are cheap compared to what’s available where they come from so they can more than afford to pay dearly for the privilege of having a second home here in Newport.
You need to get your priorities straight, I’m not the only one who’s had enough of you and your incessant need to burden Newport taxpayers.
Citizens of Newport, please vote Aramli and Xay out come election time, nothing good will come from them holding a seat on the City Council.
Hans Bogaars, Newport
Response to Trump is greatest threat to democracy
What the Democrats are attempting in this presidential election, with their strong-armed ouster of Joe Biden and last-minute parachuting in of Kamala Harris, is breathtaking in its audacity, and is at once both a perversion and subversion of American democracy.
Only the ignorant or dishonest would deny that Harris is vapid, vacuous, and unserious. It has become overtly obvious that Harris lacks political heft and intellectual gravitas, and has proven herself to be an uninspiring, unlikable, and ineffective candidate. For those who need further convincing, consider her disastrous candidacy during the 2020 campaign, in which she never caught fire and was forced to drop out before the Iowa caucus, having failed to amass even a single vote. Put bluntly, Democrats neither liked nor wanted her. Since then, Harris has done little to nothing to warrant any reversals of opinion.
To be sure, Harris will be the beneficiary of a fawning and obsequious media which already seems hell-bent on elevating her to even more cartoonish levels than they did Robert Mueller, who was routinely treated in hagiographic fashion during the insanity surrounding the Russian collusion hoax. Whether this heavy-handed assist from the unethically biased and largely dishonest media will be enough to push Harris over the finish line remains to be seen, but in a race expected to be decided by a razor-thin margin, it is distinctly possible.
If nothing else, in the wake of this ostensible coup by our friends on the left, it's time once and for all to dispense with the risible narrative that Democrats are champions and defenders of American democracy. Nothing could be further from the truth, as consistently evinced by their behavior during the Trump years. In fact, with each passing day it has become increasingly clearer that the greatest threats to our democracy have come not from the rise of Donald Trump, but rather the response to it.
Michael J. DiStefano, Jamestown
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Letters: Don't give what longtime Newporters say more weight
