Readers write: Standards for hearings, humanity and nature
Letters to the editor for the March 6, 2017 weekly magazine.
A rooftop is covered with solar panels at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Feb. 14, 2017, in New York.
Mark Lennihan/AP
Standards for hearings
I’m concerned that a pattern is emerging, in which ultrarich people are not held to the same standards of accountability and ethics as other people.
I thought the US presidential election was an uprising that expressed the frustrations of the working class. Now confirmation hearings are being held without background checks and financial disclosure because the candidates’ interests are too complicated because of their level of wealth. That is not acceptable.
Extreme wealth is not a free pass in a democratic society.
We cannot have two standards: one for the ultrarich and one for the rest of us, particularly in a new government that promised a fair shake for working people.
No matter how wealthy these people are, they are being hired by we, the people, as our public servants; we are owed their respect and their transparent commitment to serve all the people.
I have not seen this issue brought to the fore, and I think it’s an important one for The Christian Science Monitor to address.
Thank you for the work you do on behalf of a fair and just society.
Risa Mickenberg
New York
Humanity and nature
In the Nov. 14 Upfront column, John Yemma presented yet another insightful and balanced view, this time on energy and climate change. But the description of the climate debate as between environment and economy stood out as discordant.
Pitting the environment, or nature, against our economic assumptions concedes to a Western civilization mandate to subdue nature for humankind’s benefit – a losing battle, as we may well see.
The message from nature through science mandates economies that mesh with nature’s will. Other species have had to adapt to nature or perish. So must we.
Michael Cook
Manzanita, Ore.