Wants Monroe County to have mask mandate
Monroe County Mayor Ingram: Your choice to close county business offices to protect employees from exposure to COVID-19 in the workplace seems somewhat hypocritical as you steadfastly refuse to impose local mandates in the interest of protecting all of us. Earlier this year, I observed lack of enforcement of the mask mandate posted on the front doors of the county building while transferring auto tags.
The Mitch Ingram Monroe County mayor Facebook page continues to feature multiple posts promoting misinformation, exaggeration and conspiracy theories about COVID-19. To allow these types of fabrication to remain on your page appears to indicate a lack of responsible oversight by an elected official, not unlike the lack of enforcement mentioned above.
How many more people in Monroe County must die of COVID-19 before you institute a county-wide mask mandate?
Bradley Grower
Ironsburg, Tennessee
Looking forward to Biden serving
Oh, how wonderful. President-to-be Biden is a breath of fresh air. He's not greedy for his own gain, and he has compassion and expertise to lead this country to recover from four years of tweeting.
Mike Bodine
East Ridge
Lawsuit against Google harmful to businesses
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III recently filed an overzealous lawsuit against Google seeking to break up the company. The lawsuit was reportedly led by former Obama administration official Jonathan Sallet, a Washington insider who simply does not understand Tennessee's concerns. Should Slatery really be supporting a lawsuit spearheaded by someone who represents D.C. interests and wants to use government to suppress free enterprise? The answer is a resounding no.
Instead, Tennessee should be supporting tech companies that have helped small businesses keep their doors open throughout the pandemic. Big tech provides family-owned businesses with digital tools like online sales and video conferencing. Thousands of Tennessee businesses rely on these tools during this time of social distance. Slatery threatens to upends these tools; he should reconsider his decision and withdraw from the lawsuit against Google.
Andrew Guffee
No problem to call president a liar
I suspect that editorial columns on the Times Free Press "right side" editorial page originating from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette are opinions written or approved by the conservative owner of both well-run papers. I write about the Dec. 15 column "Lying in Wait" that takes NPR and The New York Times (and others) to task for calling the president a liar. Well, he is a liar. He lies flagrantly, frequently, and, according to his friends and family, often just for fun.
His lies are divisive and dangerous; the worst of them regarding the pandemic and the election. His denials of the seriousness and his failure of leadership during the pandemic cost many lives (who knows how many?). His insistence that he won the election has caused our local congressional representatives and state attorney general to debase themselves; worse, he has inflamed and influenced some of the darker elements of our society (who say they believe him) into taking reckless and destructive actions.
The "mainstream media" calling the president a liar is a problem? It should have started much earlier and been more frequent.
Byron Chapin
Hixson