Letters: Caitlyn Jenner didn't lie as Dolezal did

Columnist Neil Steinberg poses the question, if we can accept a man becoming a woman, why can’t we accept a white person becoming black? Socially there is no reason for us not to. It’s a free country, you can be whoever you want to be. But intrinsically, a woman born to a man’s body is a quirk of nature, and the courageous decision to undergo a physical transformation in front of family and friends, and in the case of Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner the entire world, is not for the faint of heart. Whereas when a white Rachael Dolezal, born to white parents, makes a conscious decision to fool and lie to school administrators and the NAACP by darkening her skin a bit and curling her hair, it is not courageous at all. It is self-serving and deceitful, her intentions truly only known to herself, but to the rest of us it smacks as conniving. Should we accept her as we do Jenner, simply because she wants to be black? Why not. But the manner in which she chose to do it was to lie, Bruce Jenner never misled anyone in his intention to become Caitlyn.

Scot Sinclair, Gurnee

Fleeced by Wall Street financiers

[Chicago’s borrowing package] isn’t kicking the can down the road, this is just stupid. Borrowing at junk bond rates results in adding hundreds of millions of dollars to the eventual tax bill. Refusing to tax at the appropriate rate to balance the budget, refusing to save and address the accrued liabilities for pension payments, infrastructure problems, hundreds of millions of dollars to move some elevated lines for a flyover, the Chinese may be able to do it for one-tenth the cost. Losing hundreds of millions on complex financial derivative contracts. Chicago gets fleeced by the financial sharpies on Wall Street. Outrageous pension deals bankrupt the state and City of Chicago. Now you see why the dim-witted bureaucrats are in City hall and not billionaires on Wall Street.

Thomas Cechner, Lockport

What is Uber sharing exactly?

Could someone please tell me why Uber is always referred to as “ride sharing”? They are a for higher livery service. They have drivers out on the streets trolling around looking to pick up paying customers. What exactly are they sharing?

Meil J. Blum, Glenview

Hammer the feds, not the poor

Why is Illinois still number two on the list of states receiving back less tax money than we send to the federal government? Why are the two neighboring states, always there to poach Illinois businesses, in the middle of that state pack? Shouldn’t our shiny new governor be hammering the Republican-controlled Congress to get more dollars back from the feds to ease our state’s budget woes? Why isn’t he doing that, instead of spending millions trashing state legislators and threatening to “balance” the state budget on the backs of those who can least afford it? I’m incensed that he isn’t incensed about that tax dollar inequity.Gary Fox, Mt Prospect