Maryland Democrats are telling energy lies

Thanks to The Baltimore Sun and FOX45 for the coverage of how our Democratic leadership is lying about why they couldn’t face our energy needs earlier (“Too much political finger-pointing over soaring utility rates,” Feb. 10). They knew about the demand new information technology needed and they knew that we were not producing enough energy.

This might be excused as valor for protecting our planet if the science wasn’t questionable and Gov. Wes Moore’s other decisions weren’t poor. While he says he is saving the planet with shutting down our energy production, he is working for electric cars. The batteries are produced in China where they are made with the sweat of child labor and by the energy of polluting coal-fired systems!

As he is doing with his budget and the raising of fees, aka taxes, Moore is talking out of both sides of his mouth and saying nothing about the sleight of hand he is doing in the name of serving us. For a better future of all the people and places of Maryland, I believe we need a person of less manipulation of facts, less smoothness, more real leadership and less secret goals.

I beg The Sun and FOX45, as we approach the next election, to please give us a clear picture of all those who lied to us about our energy needs and production.

— The Rev. Michael T. Buttner, Bel Air

Gender on passports hardly a pressing issue

Armstrong Williams seems to be stretching a bit to find more things to applaud President Donald Trump with as goes after Joe Biden’s stance on gender identification on passports (“Armstrong Williams: Trump offers needed course correction to Biden’s migrant document policy,” Feb. 8).

Only 18 countries worldwide allow “X” to indicate gender on their paperwork and approximately only 51% of United States citizens have a valid passport. His column is fraught with stoking fear that these identifying as X and then entering the country will, of course, be terrorists. I have a hard time remembering the last time it was someone who was trans or pretending to be trans who shot up a school, church or military base and let us not forget 9/11.

Trump’s edict is just to pander to his base who just cannot seem to let people who do not look like them alone. Why did Williams not write about Elon Musk? Trump just watches as Musk devote himself to deriding our democracy, viewing our private information and dismantling every institution that keeps our country going. Sorry, Armstrong Williams, but you need, as they say, a new “shtick.”

— Diane Marie Pearson, Havre de Grace

Trump seeks to revive racial discrimination

Oh my gosh, it has finally dawned on this old white guy what is actually happening in our country. Apparently, President Donald Trump’s “DEI” initiative is code word for “it’s OK to racially discriminate against minorities who dare to live and work in this country” (“Google scraps its diversity hiring goals as it complies with Trump’s new government contractor rules,” Feb. 5).

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), the agency responsible for enforcing equal employment laws among federal contractors, has been disbanded by Trump’s executive order. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was investigating many firms for workplace discrimination including Tesla’s Fremont, California manufacturing facility. Black employees “have routinely endured racial abuse, pervasive stereotyping, and hostility as well as epithets such as variations of the N-word,'” according to the EEOC.

Trump’s order repealed the 1965 executive order that created the OFCCP, deeming it an “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiative. I’m honestly not sure which is worse — Trump’s executive order or the inability of Congress to actually pass legislation codifying the agency that protects American citizens from discrimination in the workplace.

— Andrew Green, Nottingham

US seems headed to a paramilitary era

It is disturbing to see that some people are representing themselves as “official” and sometimes uniformed authorities, including ICE, to enforce what they perceive as lawful oppression (“‘It’s hard to sleep’: Possible ICE visits at schools, churches terrify local immigrants,” Feb. 1).

This harkens back to the paramilitary Blackshirts in Italy and the Ku Klux Klan in this country. I fear that it is intensifying the already deep divisions between friends and neighbors which makes it problematic to have a unified and informed resistance to the overall lawbreaking that is going at the core of our political system.

Would such a posse be willing to try to arrest members of Congress who are complicit in the damage being done to our democratic system? I doubt it.

— Gilbert Bliss, Freeland