Editor’s Note: The following letter, sent on May 8, is in response to several Letters to the Editor that appeared in the April 2017 issue of Plumbing & Mechanical. It has been lightly edited for style and clarity.

The ‘deceiver in charge’

I’m catching up the April edition of PM magazine as the “Deceiver in Charge” enters his 107th day in the White House and am appalled that anyone could defend this man’s lack of knowledge and brazen hypocrisy spanning his many conflicts of interest in his businesses, [his] outright lies and lack of foreign affairs knowledge — NAFTA is bad, now good; China is a currency manipulator, now they’re not; he didn’t believe unemployment numbers until now; and the list goes on and on.

To campaign about “draining the swamp” to loading it with the same cronies, to building a wall without ever beginning how to fund it, and now the more we learn about the Putin-Russian influence to get him elected turns my stomach.

To those who wrote in his support, how do you [ignore] your moral compass to give this man a pass because you believe he is pro-business and going to help “your tax rate?” He manipulated the very media he says is bias to get elected. How else to get on the news every day campaigning but to throw out some tweet that gets you coverage?

Sooner or later those of you that voted for this despicable creature will have your own issue thrown back at you. Hopefully you will be able to admit you were lied to and see through his propaganda.

Mike Maples

Synergy

Jackson, Wyo.

Editor’s Note: The following letter is in response to Dan Holohan’s July 2017 column, “The power of a story.” It has been lightly edited for style and clarity.

Busting a gut

Once again it’s a Saturday morning here in Oregon and I find myself busting a gut with your article on storytelling, and again I find myself reading your article to my wife, the Lovely Debbie. 

I finish the part about how you change and embellish the story the guy once told you and how he didn’t even recognize it as his own when she shakes her head and smiles, reminding me of several events over the last 25 years which, she says, originally happened to her, but that I have since changed the facts of, making myself the main character and adding a few details that may not have really occurred. They have now become part of my repertoire of jocularity in social settings.

It’s tough being married to a good-looking woman when you have a poor memory!

Rob Murphy

My Plumber

Rogue River, Ore.

Editor's Note: he following letter is in response to Morris Beschloss’ July 2017 column, “Are brick-and-mortar stores in peril?” It has been lightly edited for style and clarity.

No more partisan politics

Funny, but I assumed PM was about plumbing, heating, etc. Opening the above issue, I encountered the Beschloss piece supposedly on the competition between online and brick-and-mortar suppliers. It really offered little new, but then launched into a diatribe about how just about everything “wrong” in our country was the fault of Obama, or government regulators. Disgusted, I scanned a few more paragraphs and moved on.  

It’s a real stretch to assume that all of us readers are lined up behind this trumpeting hard-right mentality of “government is all bad and former president Obama is to blame for everything.” For any publication to do so is an insult to my intelligence. If you stay aware of current events, even leaders of Mr. Trump’s own party are beginning to express concerns about his grasp of reality.

It’s one thing for [PM columnist Al] Levi to try and make a living by telling all of us how to do our work, but it’s quite a different issue when I’m subjected to the Beschloss hard-right-wing mentality that I’ve rejected many times over, including last November.

Can you please keep the partisan [talk] out of the publication and keep the focus on plumbing and heating?

Robert Henrickson

RLH Renovations

East Nassau, N.Y.