More than half the opinion page in Monday’s ADN was taken up with the attorney general’s sorry defense of the governor’s indefensible policy of supporting vaccine skeptics in every manner possible on the grounds it is intended to preserve “the rights of individual Alaskans to make their own health care decisions and preserv(e) state sovereignty.”
The attorney general wrote nothing of the responsibility that these individuals owe to the rest of us. The anti-vaccine campaign wastes resources intended to limit or stop the further spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, yet the attorney general claimed that supporting this anti-social behavior is constitutionally required.
The last item on the same opinion page was a letter pleading for support for determined and efficient measures to collect child support from absent fathers.
If the attorney general would use the resources the state wastes on the anti-vaccine litigation to help collect just a part of the child support ordered but not paid to society’s most defenseless members — single parents and their dependent children — his office would accomplish one of its mandated purposes. I recognize that helping single mothers collect child support has never been even a footnote in the governor’s platform, but one can always wish for better people next year.
— James Johnston
Anchorage
Have something on your mind? Send to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Letters under 200 words have the best chance of being published. Writers should disclose any personal or professional connections with the subjects of their letters. Letters are edited for accuracy, clarity and length.