Letters to the Editor: GOP truth and lies, Horsemania vandals, and student debt relief.

Vandalized art

As an artist participant in Horsemania 2022, I can say it’s an honor for artists to contribute to Lexington’s most celebrated and visible event. The horse represents all we cherish as Central Kentuckians. LexArts, local businesses, and artists come together to promote Lexington and spotlight our creativity and uniqueness.

Early Saturday morning my artwork, “Athens of the West,” sponsored by Athenian Grill, was vandalized to a degree it can no longer be displayed. The damage was hurtful and disappointing. The resources provided by LexArts and local sponsors, as well as the creative labor given by artists are lost due to lack of public respect.

Tremendous energy was given to align sponsors and artists to make Lexington a destination for culture. Initiatives surrounding Town Branch, Rupp Arena, and LexArts are efforts to beautify our city. Each is a cultural moment that should be protected and respected because they set the tone for Lexington’s future.

The damage to the horses is upsetting, but this is a teachable moment to spotlight public art. I want people to respect public art and to treat the displays in downtown Lexington as a museum without walls.

Lexington loves artists and artists love community.

Sarah Heller, Lexington

Volleyball school

What’s all the fuss about University of Kentucky Coaches John Calipari and Mark Stoops fighting? Are they throwing rocks at each other’s windows? Stop giving this subject news space! Anyway, they are both wrong — UK isn’t a football school, it isn’t a basketball school. No, it’s a VOLLEYBALL school!

Esther Murphy, Lexington

Criminal responsibility

Former President Donald Trump is unquestionably guilty of the crime of taking documents that he was not allowed to possess under the auspices of the espionage act. His defensive arguments range from the bizarre to the ridiculous. None of it is sticking, and he and his minions are now realizing just how much trouble he is truly in. They have now resorted to threats (issued on Fox News, Newsmax, & other outlets) saying that if Trump is indicted and arrested his cult will rise up and engage in an insurrection amounting to civil war.

While I don’t really think that is going to happen this threat must not stop the lawful prosecution of justice. Remember that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “No person is above the law.”

To roll over and capitulate to this rabid mob would seal the end of our democracy. What if President Lincoln had refused to move against the Confederacy because they might attack, and someone might get hurt? We would be a very different country today.

That is the juncture at which we find ourselves today.

Jim Porter, Danville

Referee shortage

I watched a LEX18 news segment on August 19, about a shortage of referees for sports. The coordinator for the referees stated a major factor for the referees quitting was unruly students, parents, instructors and coaches. The coordinator was diplomatic, but incorrect. The problem is not the students, parents, instructors or coaches. It is the lack of control by the governing organizations.

If a student player becomes too vocal, remove or suspend him or her. If it is a private club, remove or suspend the player. If a parent becomes abusive, ban them from the field, or gym, or whatever. Do the same for Instructors and coaches.

Any private organization or any school that allows wealth, power, influence or player skills to factor into the response deserves to have less experiences referees or, in the worst case, canceled games because of a lack of referees.

This is not a referee or umpire problem. It is a backbone problem or, more colloquially stated, a lack of guts.

Ben Patton, Berea

Price gouging

Gas stations in Corbin are now selling regular gas as low as $2.99 per gallon, according to Gas Buddy. So why are Shell, BP and Marathon stations still charging their Lexington customers $3.69? That’s 70 cents higher!

It’s blatant price gouging, and these greedy companies are raking in record profits. We need an Attorney General in Kentucky who isn’t afraid to call out Big Oil for their price gouging. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron is refusing to stand up for Kentucky consumers. He is completely worthless as our Attorney General.

Dave Cooper, Lexington

Republican lies

Republicans on all levels of government have converged behind the Big Lie instead of publicly denouncing the disgraced twice-impeached former President Donald Trump who instigated overthrow of our government.

Instead of being in prison on charges of “five counts of manslaughter on Jan. 6 by recklessly causing the unintended deaths of others,” as lawyer/commentator Barb McQuade says is possible, Trump continues his “Big Lie” rallies.

Republicans, led by Kentucky’s too-long obstructionist U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, have packed/captured the Supreme Court that now is taking away human and civil rights for which all of us (other than white, propertied men) fought since the inception of our country: abortion rights are just the beginning.

Republican state legislatures are passing restrictive voting laws to handpick election deniers for offices. They don’t care what majority Americans want: climate change confrontation, gun safety, immigration reform, affordable medicine, funded public education, etc.

With elections from November to 2024 presidential, we taxpaying public citizens have to register, know changes in election law, then VOTE to dismantle, destroy the current authoritarian Republican Party.

There’s only one Republican left standing with standing to rebuild the Republican Party: Liz Cheney.

Ramona Rush, Lexington

Republican truth

U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) lost her Wyoming primary and House seat because she told the truth. But Cheney won the hearts of a country that shows honor and respect to our Constitution over party. Will voters in Wyoming be able to erase their shame, and live down their historic backstabbing of a patriot woman whose family is rooted in their land? Liz Cheney did the right thing. Wyoming voters did not. Worse, they put a target on the back of any person who will not obey.

The 2020 election was honest and free of fraud. The Jan 6th Committee revealed a choreographed insurrection under the baton of an angry, desperate president who got fired. Former President Donald Trump’s flagrant acts against the “peaceful transition of power” caused death and destruction at the Capital while revealing his total indifference to the crime. He, in fact, was the real thief. There is one “verified” honest statement Trump made in his four years in office - yelling and fighting with his secret service in the limo on Jan. 6th, demanding to go to “my people” marching on the Capital, Trump clarified, “I’m the F...ing President!”

Truth, when we least expect it.

Judy Rembacki, Georgetown

Paul’s misinformation

Speaking before University of Louisville medical school students in 2013, Senator Rand Paul crowed that while in medical school he deliberately used misinformation to undermine classmates’ performance on tests to make himself look better in graduation rankings. He bragged that there’s power in misinformation.

Throughout his political career he’s frequently issued misinformation stories. In the past few days, his latest whopper without any evidence is that the FBI “may have planted” evidence in document boxes seized from Mar-a-Lago.

Fabricators are sadly habitual creatures. Since Senator Paul used misinformation strategies in medical school, and he’s employed misinformation fabrications serving as Kentucky’s junior senator, what about the times in-between? “Thou shall not bear false witness.” I guess that this biblical commandment for Senator Paul is just a fuzzy suggestion.

Everyone, please register and vote in November. Honest governance is critical to our democracy’s survival. We don’t need someone in Washington who has a new weekly distortion about something that’s not happening in the world. We need someone interested in old fashioned American honesty in which we can believe and trust.

Gene Lockhart, Lexington

Document questions

How many of nation’s presidents took boxes of highly classified documents, documents that were never supposed to leave the White House? I can’t think of anyone but former President Donald Trump, who is nuttier than a fruitcake on steroids. Why did he take those classified documents? This whole entire situation is as serious as a coronary bi-pass, and congressional Republican are trying to make it seem as though Trump just took some towels home from some fancy 5-star resort.

Yolanda Averette, Lexington

Loan forgiveness

How can Senate Majority Leader U.S. Rep. Mitch McConnell declare President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness “astonishingly unfair”? McConnell has been the prostitute (no offense to prostitutes) of deadly Big Tobacco for decades.

He spent millions of taxpayer’s dollars paying warehouses to store tainted tobacco. Fox News reported (on January 13, 2015) that after the 1999 Kentucky droughts, “Fearing financial ruin for his state’s tobacco farmers, McConnell authored a bill to bail them out, forgiving farmers hundreds of millions of dollars in loans.”

Isn’t it corporate welfare that Big Tobacco has no product liability while taxpayers endure billions of annual medical care costs? The token collected tobacco tax is a joke toward the real product cost.

Mike Sawyer, Denver, Col. (the writer notes he is fatherless due to tobacco since 1964)

Student loans

It is only jealousy that condemns the good fortune of others as being unfair. Likewise it is a failure to understand that an improvement for others, is too an improvement for all. The jealous squalor at the bottom and demand no one rise above them... those that love one another rise to the pinnacle and press on to further heights.

A jealous culture cynically devours itself and forbids its children’s growth that excels beyond themselves and grovels in its own perpetuated despair.

A culture that possesses a courageous heart without jealousy brings forth abundance and progress that ascends to the ever-distant reaches that fulfill all aspirations.

I will not be a part of a jealous culture... one that has no courage to cheer its children on to a better place than where that passing culture has stood.

Robert Moreland, Lexington