Brightline was doomed from the start

Brightline is a simple idea whose execution was never going to work. A high-speed train from Miami to Orlando. But where exactly does it go? (“Brightline admits ‘substantial doubt’ it can avoid insolvency,” May 5)

Does it get the customer to locations of value? Can Brightline passengers walk to their ultimate destination after exiting the train facing  the heat, humidity and rain that is Florida?

Can they move around their destination city easily and at less expense without their own vehicle once they get there?

Evidently and ultimately the answer was no.

— Peter Stephens, Orlando

Overheated summer reflects Florida’s future

It’s been sunny and warm, with a cool breeze. April and May’s weather seems Edenic, as if Florida is luring us forward towards the burning abyss of July, August, September and at least the first half of October. There is nothing really funny about a Florida summer except that people stay every year and live through it. But the sweltering, sticky, oppressive facepalm of summer doesn’t make the other seasons more palatable.

Instead, prior to and after summer, we dread what’s to come: dead grass, slick, sweaty skin, dank humidity that calls forth reptiles, hurricanes that topple trees onto the roofs of cars or send them like torpedoes through picture windows of houses.

Although violated by carpetbaggers and turned into an ecological brothel for tourists, Florida still has some preserved land (that politicians are always trying to turn into golf courses), some protected wildlife, some unpolluted rivers, streams, lakes. Not many. But some. Lake Apopka was actually restored.

Floridians seem intent, however, on creating their own personal version of hellfire.

Summers in Florida would not be so hot if lawmakers were not so greedy; developers not so persistent; if land and wildlife weren’t paved for roads, parking lots and housing developments. Our governor made a deal with a fertilizer company to pave some Polk County roads with radioactive waste, phosphogypsum, a cancer causing chemical, which the media called “controversial.”

Lethally lethargic, Florida summers rob us of the will to care.

— Elizabeth Randall, Lake Mary

ACA was a political failure

The Sentinel’s Sunday headline reads “Millions dropping health insurance.”  As the New York Times article included, “Congress failed to extend the generous subsidies that had become a defining feature of the Affordable Care Act.”

Let us recall how President Barack Obama sold the ACA:

1. The ACA would not add a dime to the deficit.

2. The trillion-dollar cost of the ACA would be covered by implementing cost savings in Medicare, eliminating Medicare and Medicaid fraud; a new long-term care plan which Medicare recipients would be eager to buy, and more.

3. He claimed the average eligible family would save $2,500 per year in the health insurance costs.

The reality: A large number of ACA recipients receive “generous” subsidies from the taxpayer — a direct contradiction to Obama’s often-repeated promise.

Question: What do you get when you mix medical care with politics? Answer: Politics.

— Robert Anderson, Winter Park

Jolly has right priorities

One can hope that the recent pro-Fishback op-ed author Thomas Shank (“Choose your gubernatorial candidate wisely,” April 24) is right that we might witness the “reality of a Jolly administration” come November. David Jolly strikes me, having met with and heard him, as both authoritative and humble. No weird backstories or scandals. His worst “sin” is conscionably quitting the GOP Trump cult to become a Democrat. His straightforward plans can work to solve mainstream (nonpartisan) stressor issues we all face. Respected Floridians like former Republican state senator Paula Dockery, Democrat Gwen Graham, Parkland father-activist Fred Guttenberg, Orange County Tax Appraiser Amy Mercado, state senator Shervin Jones and newly elected Palm Beach rep Emily Gregory all back David Jolly.

In this retiree state with much smarts and experience but sorely values-twisted by years of lopsided Republican rule under Govs. Scott and DeSantis, voters don’t need more blows to our rights, natural lands and quality of life. Rather, someone to address sea rise; insurance/housing costs; growth management; wildlife imperilment; citizen-unfriendly, lobbyist-penned laws; starved public schools; undemocratic targeting of trans and non-white people and women; abandonment of medical science; gun violence; and corruption. All tall tasks, since the octopus-like Republican apparatus behind these pathologies entrenched over decades.

But Jolly’s fit. He’s a good age — early 50s — with youthful verve, lawyerly and U.S. House creds and a native’s knowledge of our state’s history; he seems refreshingly un-smug, unbigoted and grudge-free. We need both maturity and energy in the governor’s office to pivot Florida from MAGA’s five-alarm disastrous playbook.

— Rebecca Eagan, Winter Park

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