Sen. McConnell wants our memory of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to go away. It shouldn’t.

Jan. 6 commission

Regarding “Republican leaders line up against Capitol riot inquiry,” (May 20):

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s efforts to oppose a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is an admission that Republicans want our collective memory of that day to go away.

McConnell’s objection muddies the waters. Congress’ investigation ought not focus on catching intruders or on the missteps by police and the National Guard. Jan. 6 was an historic breakdown in our democracy.

It revealed complicity among elected officials, including the president, against our electoral and judicial institutions. These are no small matters that we simply need to move on from.

Jan. 6 revealed distorted values in the core of congressional Republicans who objected to 2020 election results. Now, that distortion has spread to their majority, which thinks that keeping their power is more important than understanding the internal threat to our democracy, and answering that threat.

Congressional Republicans don’t want an investigation that can reveal that they are the threat.

Don Clement, Greenville

Voter suppression

“Stop the Steal” was a rallying cry of Republicans trying to cast doubt on Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory.

The Democrats should appropriate the “Stop the Steal” slogan for there is a very real voting-rights steal underway.

It is being perpetrated by Republican-controlled legislatures and states across the land. Its elements area a myriad of targeted voter suppression efforts, gerrymandering, and even efforts to strip selected local election boards of their powers and vest those powers in the GOP-controlled legislatures.

Via the 2020 election and the perilous defeat of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists the country narrowly averted a plunge into a very dark place. The Republican legislative actions indicate a lack of faith in a properly functioning democracy, so, unfortunately, the dark place still beckons.

Thomas McKee, Cary

Budget priorities

Regarding “Sky-high military spending needs to be reined in,” (May 17 Opinion):

This op-ed concerning runaway military spending cites the ”opportunity cost” of a Defense Department budget that’s 95 times the budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also notes that President Biden’s proposed defense budget includes $30 billion for new nuclear weapons.

Have we learned nothing from the past 14 months of pandemic?

While such enormous sums are spent on nuclear weapons which everyone hopes will never be used, a foe called COVID-19 has shown our country’s health care sector to be embarrassingly unprepared.

Lyle Adley-Warrick, Raleigh

Durham tax hikes

Regarding “Durham city manager proposes new public safety measures, property tax increase,” (May 14) and related articles:

Durham taxpayers are not a cash register for the Durham City Council and Durham County commissioners to tap anytime they want to spend more money. The city and county boards must learn to live within their means. They cannot fund whatever programs they would like and give all the raises and bonuses they want.

Cut proposed spending so that property tax increases are no more than a combined 2% for city residents.

Barbara Jacobs, Durham

Abortion, the GOP

It is possible for reasonable people to disagree on whether abortion should be legal or easily available? I believe it should be legal, but I can understand how others believe otherwise. It’s not a crazy point of view, just one I disagree with.

What is crazy is how the Republican Party, which supposedly stands for small government, believes that the government should be the one who decides whether or not a woman can get an abortion.

This interference into a woman’s most personal decision is not the essence of small government, but rather the way that the Republicans have marketed themselves to evangelical and other religious voters over the past several decades. It is the height of hypocrisy to say “the government should stay out of people’s lives except when we say it shouldn’t”.

Steve Kutay, Raleigh

COVID vaccines

The NC Bioscience Organization is disappointed that the Biden administration supports waiving critical intellectual property protections for U.S. COVID-19 vaccines.

This decision, known as a TRIPS waiver, breaks faith with American innovators, punishes our life sciences industry, and will delay the delivery of COVID vaccines around the globe.

The president should follow through on his pledge to make the U.S. the world’s “arsenal of vaccines.” This policy leads in the opposite direction.

Intellectual property protections are the lifeblood any industry driven by innovation. North Carolina, home to many early stage and biopharmaceutical manufacturing companies, could see a particularly severe impact.

We urge the president to protect American companies and avoid setting a precedent that undermines the entire U.S. innovation economy.

Laura Gunter, Durham

Executive vice president, NCBIO