Letters to the Editor | March 14, 2024

The New Jersey Legislature recently voted to advance a measure that would gut transparency laws, claiming that the current law places undue burdens on local governments and threatens the privacy of individuals. That’s a difficult problem to solve. Yet, back in January, it found no difficulty in giving itself a 67% pay raise. We send legislators to Trenton not to create problems, but to solve them. Perhaps they should earn that raise by finding cost-effective methods to provide more public insight into the operation of government entities instead of harping on the problems that are involved in doing so.

Steve Stern, Mount Laurel

The father of a U.S. Marine killed in the 2021 Kabul airport bombing was arrested for disrupting President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, from which he was escorted out by security. However, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was not only allowed to stay in her seat, from where she tried and failed to throw the president off balance by shrieking juvenile catcalls, but she blatantly violated decorum with her ridiculous attire in support of Donald Trump — or, as President Biden called him throughout his gritty, hard-hitting address, his predecessor. Greene is the one who should have been ejected and arrested, not a Gold Star father whose son gave his life for the country that Greene and her fraudulent ilk are so keenly intent on dividing beyond repair.

Vin Morabito, Scranton, vinmorabito8@gmail.com

A letter writer is upset with “fair-weather Republicans” who promised to support the Republican nominee in order to participate in debates but now refuse to endorse the presumptive nominee. Donald Trump rejected that agreement. Reciprocity should mean there is no requirement to support the one who refused to sign the agreement. Further, should a promise outweigh principles, integrity, and honor? While Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll before the debates, only afterward did he disregard the jury verdict and continue to defame her. He has since been found liable for civil fraud in the hundreds of millions of dollars. These findings could reasonably have changed the minds of Chris Christie, Asa Hutchinson, and Nikki Haley. More importantly, when did morality change its meaning from behaving ethically to honoring a promise to a presidential candidate who ignores the courts and civil law? The letter writer should reassess.

Kenneth Gorelick, Wayne

I’m writing in response to a letter bemoaning the fact that Nikki Haley didn’t endorse Donald Trump when she withdrew as a GOP presidential candidate. According to the letter writer, Haley’s failure was also that of Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, who signed a pledge to support the eventual nominee as a requirement to participate in the debates. That failure was supposedly detrimental to uniting Republicans. Both men signed the pledge but said from the outset that they didn’t take it seriously because neither of them believed the former president should be the next president. They wanted to be on the debate stage to represent traditional Republican values.

On the other hand, Haley did what she did for most of her campaign: she hedged. Had she been true to her stated beliefs, she would have stated clearly that she was not going to endorse Trump. Contrast this with Trump, who said before the 2016 election that if he weren’t the GOP nominee, he would run as a third-party candidate, and in 2023 refused to debate because he didn’t feel the need. Christie and Hutchinson are true Republicans. Haley tried to be. They are not MAGA Republicans or Trumpians. There is a clear distinction. If words really matter, then perhaps the writer should listen to Trump. His words and actions are the reasons Democrats have won and not three people who didn’t honor a pre-debate pledge.

Nancy Case, Havertown

Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 200 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.