Most don’t approve of Trump
Re: “The 2020 election isn’t going to be close,” April 29 column
According to Hugh Hewittap column, the non-Trump supporters should throw up their hands and give up the election since President Donald Trump is such an upstanding guy with great accomplishments.
Really, Hugh? Yes, the Obama economy is humming along but the only credit Trump should receive is a tax cut that benefits the top 1 percent of the rich, an increase in the national debt and the resurgence of military industrial complex funding that strips funds from health care, Social Security and the safety net.
Trump’s approval rating is at 39 percent; 61 percent of voting Americans realize we need to also focus on affordable health care, sensible environmental policies and bring decency and humanity back to the White House.
Sorry, Hugh, Americans don’t want to give up their basic human rights, civil liberties and democratic values for a few accomplishments that could be achieved by any of the other candidates running for president.
The 2020 election is the most consequential election of my life time. We need to restore credibility, truthfulness and respect to our nation’s moral fabric before it is too late. We need to dump Trump in 2020 for a better America.
Dave Rose, Brighton
Tragic I-70 crash was avoidable
Re: “Four victims who died in Thursday’s 28-car crash … identified,” April 29 online news story
For days I waited to find out who died in the I-70 truck-car inferno and hoped the victims were no one I knew — and they weren’t. But others did: families and friends. For now, and possibly into the future, we’ll know a lot more about the truck driver than the four who died.
To them, rest in peace.
Craig Marshall Smith, Highlands Ranch
It is a rare day that eastbound I-70, between the Chief Hosa overpass and the Denver West overpass, does not have an 18-wheel heavy truck stopped with its brakes on fire. Colorado Department of Transportation signs alert truckers about the steep grade ahead, but these cautions are not adequately heeded.
The deadly April 25 crash, at Denver West, was very predictable and it will happen again unless something is done to slow down the heavy trucks on this steep grade by requiring them to gear down and to stop “riding” their breaks. Requiring heavy trucks to proceed at, say, 35 mph down this 6-mile stretch will cost them only a few minutes of transit time, a minor impact in the grand scheme of things.
The cost of continuing to ignore the problem will be additional deaths and injury, damage to our highway infrastructure, destroyed vehicles, traffic delays, and eventually a serious wildfire along the I-70 corridor. Action is now needed. We must slow the heavy trucks down or forbid them to transit the corridor.
Dana Christensen, Golden
Standards in the trucking industry need to change. I hope in the wake of this tragedy the public will realize why we need these changes.
Driver training is the area lacking the most attention in this industry. Would you let someone with three weeks of training operate on you, or work on your house or car? No? Me either, and we shouldn’t be putting these untrained drivers behind the wheel of a big truck. Forget the “everyone starts somewhere” garbage. We were all rookies at one time but I didn’t get out into the general motoring public until I was competent enough to operate the truck safely.
Truck driver training “schools” and companies that provide training need to be held accountable for who they are giving commercial driver’s licenses to. A major conflict of interest is that driving schools have instructors that are state certified to give students trained a CDL license, which only serves in the best interest of the school. Only the state should be allowed to administer the driving test, as to prevent bias. As it is, some people are just not cut out to drive a big truck.
Kyle Gringeri, Aurora
