LETTERS: Preckwinkle taking a courageous stand for better health

As someone who has had a career in finance, I wholeheartedly support Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s far-sighted fiduciary courage.

Leadership requires doing the right thing, the fiscally responsible thing — for our present and for our future. Preckwinkle has shown that leadership; she is to be commended for being a strong and consistent voice of reason.

The county’s new soda tax, discouraging the consumption of sugar, is about improving personal health and the county’s fiscal health. It will fund services that we all know to be essential. And just as we all agree now that smoking cigarettes has far-reaching harmful effects, we are beginning to understand that excessive sugar consumption has harmful effects.

Taking responsibility for our shared future isn’t necessarily fun, but doing the hard right thing makes things better for ourselves and our community.

Amy Stockwell, Decatur

Parents, not Bloomberg

Why is the former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, so invested in the health of people in Chicago? How does this benefit him? I would rather that Bloomberg invest in our neighborhoods, schools, mental health programs, communities, parks, small businesses — and the list goes on and on. I’d welcome that. As to the question posed in Bloomberg’s television ads about who will care for kids and their eating habits, how about us — the parents?

Janette Lopez, Belmont-Cragin

Soda tax a ‘great service’

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has done our community a great service with the soda pop tax. If you are bent out of shape about it, you’re either drinking too much of this garbage or make a lot of money selling it.

Don Anderson, Oak Park

The foolishness of more troops in Afghanistan

So, after President Barack Obama tried to extricate us from the longest war in our history (16 years and counting), President Donald Trump is going to send thousands more American troops to Afghanistan. Never mind the corrupt government, the ineffective Afghan army that ran away — surrendering U.S. equipment to ISIS — various warlords, religious factions that have hated each other for a century. Never mind all that. Let’s spill more blood and squander more money in a futile effort to democratize a country that thwarted the British and Russians attempts before us.

This is another glaring example of the incompetence and lack of proper priorities by our federal government, which is failing to address the issues of healthcare, immigration, infrastructure, education, climate change, tax reform, mounting debt, North Korea nuclear aspirations and Russian White House connections.

Tom Minnerick, Elgin