Regarding the recent Press editorial, “Our View: Public benefits fraud too acceptable — common and weakly punished”:

I feel the state of New Jersey, with all the corruption, incompetence, lack of integrity and greed, has reached the level of a third-world country.

Leonora E. Pierce Haslett

Northfield

Prefer a cartoon critical of Christian Republicans

Regarding a recent cartoon that suggested Democrats typically want a list of progressive government actions:

As a somewhat conservative Democrat, I find it offensive and of course presumptive that all those “outcomes” are what “we” want.

Why not reverse the cartoon and have the couple say they want the following: We want everything we ever worked for, let everybody else get their own whether they can or not, we want every benefit we get (Social Security and Medicare), the environment? Who cares, we need to make money from it — and close the borders, except for workers who perform menial work of rich people: farmwork, housecleaning and child care. And when the pollster asks if they are Republicans, they could say, “Do you need to ask, we are Christians and Republicans!”

If Jesus would only give the temple money lender and rich vendors a pass, and yet take more from the poor. Would he pass by the sick and tell them to cure themselves, would he invite the children to see all his kingdom, then turn them over to work in the fields?

Susan Slaughter

Somers Point

A.C. helped business

I am both a resident and investor in the 6th Ward of Atlantic City. For the last five months, I have been trying to get a dead tree removed from the sidewalk in front of one of the buildings that I am redeveloping on Dover Avenue. When Councilman Jesse Kurtz got officer Jerard Ingenito involved in the effort, it happened within two days to the joy of myself and all the neighbors on the block who were scared it was going to come down on one of their cars or their children.

What I had been trying to accomplish for over five months, Kurtz and Ingenito accomplished in two days. It is so nice to have them helping out in the neighborhoods and in in this particular situation.

Ed Curran

Atlantic City

19th c. view of journalism

John Swinton, an editorial writer for the New York Sun in the early 1880s, made a most revealing statement as he was about to leave to start his own newspaper. At a press dinner, Swinton declared, “There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before 24 hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an ‘independent press’! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes.”

I think fake news is nothing new.

Charles Gregg Sr.

Bridgeton

Storm chart a nonstory

Every time I turned on CNN recently, the Trump-Alabama controversy appeared. How a nonstory deserved so much attention is an indictment against “the most trusted name in news.” As Hurricane Dorian headed toward Florida, some projections had it entering the Gulf of Mexico. Had it followed that projected path, gulf states would have been threatened, as hurricanes, like golf balls, seem to have a mind of their own.

Spawned in the South Atlantic, they are influenced by the rotation of the Earth, water temperature, wind, humidity and even the jet stream, so to say Alabama was safe was a fallacy.

Robert J. Caroccio Sr.

Ocean City