Editorials – Page 2 – Everett Leader Herald

Everyone should be fired

Our colossal failure in Afghanistan makes us laughing stocks to the world.

The world’s greatest power defeated by gun-toting, woman-hating, sandal-wearing violent Islamic ignoramus’ is a pathetic happening for us as a nation.

We should be ashamed we spent so much time there – and for what?

To create a western-style democracy out of a medieval cesspool in a place where the Taliban cut off hands and arms, feet, and heads to remind everyone just who is in charge.

The real crime is that we were led down this path by “experts.”

Our generals were crap. Our national security and intelligence experts were crap. Everything we did was crap, and we should have known this before spending $1 trillion in that primitive state.

Returning Integrity to the mayor’s office

We do not use the term “Kickback Carlo” lightly.

It is a term, a nickname if you will, that describes the mayor perfectly.

The mayor demands to be paid for whatever he does as the mayor, and for things he does as a private citizen because he is the mayor.

He has blurred the line between public service and municipal corruption.

One of the chief misfortunes of the city of Everett is that, for the most part, the mayor is ruling over honest people. One of the chief misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowardly.

What do we mean?

Honest people find it impossible to stand up to the mayor because he is so dishonest. He’s a bully. It is hard to stand up to a bully surrounded by the loyal bullies on his payroll.

About the alleged kickbacks…the mayor has conflated the notion that if he approves a development in the city, the developer owes him something in kind for receiving the city’s approval as though he had done the developer a favor.

This is part of the mayor’s essence. Many in Everett have accepted it as a way of life here.

Just as many are now busy rejecting such bad behavior.

Teachers’ Union endorses the mayor

We respect teachers. We respect the administration of the school system. We respect especially the free flow of ideas, and we even respect the recent vote of the local schoolteachers union endorsing the mayor’s re-election.

While we respect this decision, we absolutely disagree with it.

Also, we suspect the rank and file didn’t have much to do with this endorsement.

Rather, it was likely something conceived by the leadership and sold as the right thing to do to gain the mayor’s acquiescence to an upcoming contract.

At its worst, the union’s endorsement of the mayor is the endorsement of a fraud.

The mayor does not care about public school education any more than he cares about integrity and intuitive intelligence.

This is a mayor who has proudly said he never passed a library he didn’t want to step into.

He doesn’t read books. He knows nothing about the English language. He understands precious little about what it takes to teach, to lead educators, to maneuver the state education hierarchy, and to provide for more than 7,000 Everett Public School students.

Get vaccinated or get sick

Unbelievably enough, enough, getting vaccinated or not get- ting vaccinated is a very simple matrix.

Those who get vaccinated or not getting vaccinated run almost no risk of catching the virus, of being hospitalized, of getting very sick and dying.

The need for everyone to be vaccinated is absolutely necessary to reduce the risk of the virus maintaining its foothold in our lives and our economic and health and well-being.

Two days ago, while speaking with a young woman I know who is 24, I asked her how she was feeling.

A telling look at the voter list

If everyone registered to vote here came out on Primary Day, 23,000 votes would be cast.

City Clerk Sergio Cornelio has estimated the September Primary Day vote to be 5,200 at largest.

If it rains, that vote will shrink just a bit.

Without a governor’s or presidential race, Primary Day voting numbers are destined to be terrible.

There is no big upside to this vote for any of the candidates running for mayor.

This includes the mayor, especially.

The trick for everyone running for mayor this time around is to get out their vote. This is to say, everyone running has a base. That base must be unified and that base must be reached and everyone must come out on Primary Day.

How will Primary Day end up on September 21?

With three candidates there are essentially three separate but equal races.

To a greater degree than any of us like to believe, the voting list this year is different from two years ago.