Are Sweetwater mobile park owners villains, or are tenant demands unreasonable? | Opinion

Eviction condemned

Re: the Dec. 31 story, “‘I have nothing’: How a mass eviction left retired, disabled Miamians homeless.” Shame on CREI Holdings for what it did to residents in the Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park. People lost their entire life savings.

And shame on the courts, finding in favor of the organization instead of protecting the residents and their homes. They should settle the appeal and give the people enough money to find affordable housing and live out their retirement in comfort. Let’s show some empathy for our residents.

Ina Kushner-Rentzer,

North Miami Beach

Eviction was right

The owners of Sweetwater’s Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park were not obligated to give residents anything. Park residents should have taken the $14,000 that was offered at the beginning. They were tenants, not owners of the land.

Owners of any type of income property, no matter where in the world, are not in the charity business; they are landlords. If a rental apartment building sold and was being demolished, it would be the same scenario.

Lillian Harrison,

Miami

Public education

Public schools are under attack, not because they have failed but because they remain a truly democratic institution. They serve every child regardless of disability, language, income, or circumstance. The evidence is undeniable.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos did not need a voucher and U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not need a private academy. Both graduated from Palmetto Senior High School.

Instead of strengthening this system, powerful interests are dismantling it to consolidate influence, including two of our own school board members. Public land, public dollars and public authority are transferring to private hands, financed by billionaires like Ken Griffin.

School Board members Roberto J. Alonso and Mary Blanco voted to give away a $300 million parcel to a billionaire who owns 800 acres in Doral. Now, they wield influence over charter expansion.

Public schools are accountable to voters and serve every child. They cannot exclude students or game enrollment.

Will our leaders defend public education? Will School Board Chair Mari Tere Rojas call for an ethics inquiry into these conflicts of interest?

When we dismantle public education, we are not just weakening schools. We are eroding democracy itself.

Michele Drucker,

Miami

Unchecked, unbalanced

John T. Bennett’s Dec. 16 online article, “Trump to cap unprecedented year that skirted Congress, tested court system,” highlights the symptoms of our national illness but not the cause. He instead quoted U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, that the House and Senate together are “…supposed to provide a check and balance on an out-of-control executive branch.”

The U.S. Constitution provides for three — not two — branches of government to provide those checks and balances. Jeffries blamed the Supreme Court for not controlling Trump’s Executive Branch excesses, yet, it’s the Legislative Branch that has failed to “cross the aisle” to reach compromise. Since at least 2008, Republicans and Democrats have failed to work together to solve our major problems, ranging from immigration to undeclared wars to uncontrolled deficit spending.

As President Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Anthony Parrish,

Coconut Grove

Safety rules

Florida passed new laws, effective Jan. 1, to improve safety on all new rail crossing construction. All of these new safety features are needed along the whole route of Brightline’s high-speed train, from Miami to Orlando.

These new safety standards should be used to upgrade not only all the existing parts in Florida, but also should apply nationally to high-speed trains like Brightline West, between California and Nevada, now under construction.

Thomas Stephen Ladomirak,

Fort Pierce

Curse of the bye?

With three of the four College Football Playoff teams receiving a bye this year — and all four receiving a bye last year — failing to make the semifinals, the theory that a bye is the kiss of death due to lack of repeats will be furthered.

Another possibility is that the ranking system is badly flawed. This year and last, lower ranked teams (most spectacularly, the UM Hurricanes) have shown with their play where they should have been ranked. Notre Dame, while seeming just poor losers in the present scheme, are perhaps correct that a better system would have included them.

Conference champions not ranked in the top 16 should probably be excluded to allow teams which are in the top 12, like Notre Dame, to show where they should be ranked where it matters — on the field.

Martin Motes,

Redland

Stopped clock

In 60 seconds, 57 years of exemplary, journalistic integrity and impartiality quietly walked off the set of the CBS newsmagazine show “60 Minutes.” With one compliant editor-in-chief’s decision, the famous stopwatch turned from truth to silence.

This sad and frightening occurrence underscores that a free press isn’t lost all at once; it’s surrendered one pulled story at a time.

Ossie Hanauer,

Miami

Fairer for all

As I watched the recent swearing in of Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected mayor of New York City, I thought of Frances Perkins, the U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was pivotal in creating the Social Security Act. As she pursued bringing to life social safety net programs, she was slandered as a “communist” or a “socialist.”

The term is like a Swiss army knife, a verbal tool used by those seeking to obscure their intent. In Miami unfortunately, it is used as a bludgeon by local and national demagogues. The division in our country exists, in part, due to enormous economic division in our society. People like Mamdani, in the spirit of Perkins, are working to make our world a little fairer and a little less hurtful.

Social Security, derided as being “socialistic” when it first rolled out, has proven, over time, to make lives better. Few now would be okay with its elimination. We all need to keep in mind that not every individual seeking to make our country a little fairer, a little better, is cut from the same cloth as Fidel Castro or Nicolás Maduro.

Sid Kaskey,

South Miami

Don’t be fooled

In Dec. 28 op-ed, “An ugly slogan continues to wreak havoc on Jewish people,” the authors seek to discredit phrases such as “Zionism is racism” and “Palestinianism,” claiming they target Jewish people.

The entire argument omits the fact that Zionism is a political movement largely driven by non-Jews — so-called “Christian Zionists” — who outnumber Jews (by some estimates, more than 5 to 1), including groups linked to far-right fundamentalist John Hagee, the Trump movement and their allies.

As to the group’s ties to racism: if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, perhaps it is a duck?

Katherine Shehadeh,

Coral Gables

Cold heart

President Donald Trump recently said he didn’t want thick blood pouring through his heart.

Given his comments after the death of film director Rob Reiner and his wife, and his recent comment regarding the passing of Tatiana Schlossberg, John F. Kennedy’s granddaughter, he needn’t worry. Only ice passes through his heart.

Glenn Huberman,

Miami

Heavenly happening

While the earth spins on its axis at more than 1,000 miles per hour and orbits around the sun at 67,000 MPH, and our solar system orbits around the center of our galaxy at more than 514,000 MPH, and our galaxy hurtles through the universe at about 1.2 million MPH, rest assured that stone crabs are still tasty with mustard sauce.

A happy and safe New Year to all!

Robert E. Panoff,

Pinecrest