Why I vote

As November Election Day and soon after, Veterans Day, approaches, my thoughts turn to why I vote.

I have always thought my vote counted for something or someone. Whether it’s to participate in what we call democracy or to honor the memory of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice defending it. I think of my dad at Anzio and my Uncle Ray coming out of a landing craft on D Day. I think about friends whose names are on the wall in Washington, and the countless others on duty far from home and loved ones. As citizens we are obligated to vote, a privilege granted us by all those who have put their lives on the line.

Come November 6, I’ll be privileged to cast my vote for Antonio Delgado and Jen Metzger, Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress and state senator, respectively. I’ve met both of them and believe that when elected they will stand and work for the democracy that honors everyone.

Zeke Boyle

Callicoon, NY 

No President Trump, global warming is not ‘fabulous’

The effects of global warming are not in the far-off future. They are here, exemplified by the increase in wildfires, hurricanes and flooding. According to a recent landmark U.N. climate report, severe consequences are projected to be here as early as 2040, including food shortages, extreme weather and high economic toll. Federal studies have repeatedly been presented to the Trump administration with overwhelming evidence that climate change is real, human-driven and a serious threat. However, they choose to ignore these studies, undo policy and cut research.

The evidence of climate change has become political. Critical legislation collects dust, waiting for an administration to take it seriously. Parents wait and worry about their children’s future. The world waits while its second-largest greenhouse-gas emitter denies the issue, revives the most environmentally harmful fossil fuel—coal—and calls a carbon tax bad for the economy.

But voters have the power to change things. Contrary to what Scott Wagner says, climate change is not caused by body heat or the earth moving closer to the sun. Lou Barletta believes in feeding the nation’s “addiction” to fossil fuels. He disregards global warming and is against regulating greenhouse emissions. Sen. Baker and Rep. Fritz do everything possible to help a landowner/donor minority to frack while ignoring the public’s right to clean air and water, using everything from lawsuits, to biased hearings, to legislation. Not only does fracking jeopardize our natural resources and our recreational economy, but most of the huge rise in global methane emissions in the past decade is from the fossil fuel industry—including natural gas.

To avoid the irreversible consequences of global warming, we must stop supporting politicians who prioritize short-term profits above the public’s welfare, disregard our children’s future and jeopardize our economic and environmental stability. Candidates who address climate change include Cartwright; Casey; Wolf; Baker’s opponent, John Sweeney (Green Party); and Fritz’s opponent, Becky Kinney. Our vote impacts the local and global community, the earth and our future. Choose wisely.

Angela Lauffenburger,

Honesdale, Wayne County For Action

• 1. New York Times, “Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as
• Early as 2040”, 10/7/18
• 2. Washington Post, “In an internal memo, the White House considered whether to
• simply ‘ignore’ federal climate research”, 5/23/18
• 3. State Impact PA, “Wagner keynotes for natural gas advocates in Harrisburg”,
• 3/28/17
• 4. CItizen’s Voice, “Despite varying views, Kanjoski, Barletta agree a lot on energy
• issues”, 10/17/10
• 5. NASA’s Earth Science News, “NASA-led study solves a methane puzzle”, 1/2/18  

Vote as if your life depended on it (it may)

This year a handful of voters in our area may tip the scales in two critically important races that determine which party controls Congress and the state Senate. The congressional race between Antonio Delgado and John Faso is a dead heat. So is the state Senate race between Jen Metzger and Annie Rabbitt. Healthcare is a central concern in both contests.

Elected in 2016, Faso quickly turned his back on the people who put him in office by voting for a bill that would leave tens of thousands of his constituents without health insurance. Now he’s preparing to take an axe to Social Security and Medicare in order to pay for a $1 trillion tax cut for the super rich.

Antonio Delgado grew up in an upstate working-class family. He understands that a single illness can play havoc with family finances. Delgado favors a public option that will give every American access to affordable health insurance—and he’s prepared to take on the pharmaceutical industry, which is the biggest driver of rising healthcare costs.

Healthcare is also on the line in New York State. For years a healthcare-for-all bill has been one vote shy of passage in the state Senate. Jen Metzger will provide that vote; her opponent will not. A Rand Corporation study found that the program Metzger favors will provide New Yorkers with increased patient care while saving taxpayers billions by reducing administrative costs.

Bruce Ferguson

Callicoon Center, NY

Faso or Delgado? It’s about health

After attending the Delgado/Faso debate on October 29 at the Sullivan County Community College, I have made up my mind on who should represent us in the New York 19th Congressional District, and whom I will vote for this November 6.

It simply comes down to health care for me, for my family, and for my friends. Faso voted to gut the Affordable Care Act, which protects all of us who have pre-existing conditions, by replacing it with a complicated health bill that leaves this provision up to the states whether they want it. Delgado will keep us from going back to those days when we were at the mercy of health insurance companies and their outrageously costly premiums. I am voting for Delgado and for the health of my family in the future.   

Nino Nannarone

Smallwood, NY

Beware media bias

I met both John Faso and Annie Rabbit at the Federation of Sportsman’s Clubs of Sullivan County Banquet at the Rockland House in Roscoe, NY, and I will be voting for them as well as Molinaro. Unfortunately, the New York Democrats want to take this state and country in a direction I don’t want to see us go.

This is the first time in U.S. history where the media reports 93% negative news about our President. (You say “that’s because all he does is bad;” ask yourself if you are truly hearing both sides to every story on your news channel or newspaper.) Funny, but the media are the very ones who thrust Trump into the spotlight in a hopes for an easy victory for Hillary. Now they make Trump infamous. I lovingly and respectfully warn you to please turn off the liberal media. Your mind is being poisoned; just look at the lack of news reporting around Cuomo/Albany corruption. Really, two high-level officials are in jail and our governor is not involved? Wake up! The Democrats are not the saviors of New York or America. But Jesus is. Please seek God for wisdom with your voting.

And remember fear is a liar and hate will blind a person from the truth (Jesus).

I tell you the truth (Jesus) will set you free, whether you are a Democrat or Republican.

John “JP” Pasquale

Livingston Manor, NY

Manipulating media

It’s highly unlikely that a president that brags about not reading is much acquainted with Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase that “the medium is the message.” Nonetheless, the president is no doubt an expert at manipulating the TV medium in his messaging. He knows and loves ratings. Thus in these last days before the midterm, he has ramped up his hateful rhetoric at numerous public events with the knowledge that the shameless cable media—Fox, MSNBC and CNN—are also motivated by the same ratings compulsion.

So hour after numbing hour, state TV (Fox) adoringly and exhaustively covers his lies, while the opposition (MSNBC and CNN) similarly blanket covers his every utterance with their justified outrage. The result is that the more salacious and immoral the president’s rhetoric, the more “all Trump” widespread public exposure there is. Before we enshrine any TV commentators with whom we agree, we might consider their motivations. I believe that there are a few good people in TV media, but mostly they are a bunch of wannabe celebrities; similar to “lawyers chasing ambulances.”

To defeat the president’s lie that Middle Eastern terrorists are in the “caravan of migrants” (a white-nationalist phrase) you don’t expose viewers to 25 reps of his lie and 25 more of his vague retraction in a 24-hour period. Instead, if you are earnestly seeking the truth, you might contact Doctors Without Borders, who are traveling with the asylum seekers. They could tell you the facts on the ground. Their spokesmen have written extensively (Desperate Journey Alert magazine, Fall 2018, Vol.19 no.3), explaining many aspects of this phenomenon that could enlighten us all. But that would assume that it is the truth that news outlets seek, rather than prioritizing  becoming the most highly rated cable TV news channel.

For ratings, it is much cheaper, more effective and certainly easier to repeatedly “go to the video clip” and bask in viewer reaction; approval or disapproval—and consequently, too often, the truth may be just another casualty of what is a ratings battle.

John Pace

Honesdale

Wayne County 4 Action 

Metzger clearly the best choice

By now, many of us have had an opportunity to meet Jen Metzger, an energetic, caring community leader. Metzger has shown her respect for voters by her frequent presence visiting towns across Senate 42nd District District towns. Launching her campaign to represent us in Albany, she handily won the Democratic primary. As we head into November’s election, take a look at Jen’s record on women’s health compared to the Republican candidate.

Jen believes a critical component of health care is our right to make our own reproductive decisions. Republican Rabbitt does not.

Jen believes age-appropriate sex health education for teenagers supports healthy life choices. Her opponent does not; she opposed funding for sexual health education programs. Moreover, Rabbitt voted in the New York State Assembly to keep incarcerated women shackled while giving birth.

Metzger’s concern for women’s health is part of her commitment to pass the New York Health Act to assure all New Yorkers universal medical insurance.

We need young families to live and work in our communities. To remain and thrive here they need to be assured of strong health services.

Barbara Nimri Aziz

Colchester, NY 

Enemies of the people

If Donald Trump is an enemy of the people, as many feel, so is John Faso.

A recent UN report frighteningly confirmed that climate change exists, big-time, and that its effects are going to become increasingly life-threatening; witness our record-setting forest fires and hurricanes. Ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists—whose many dire predictions have been coming true for decades—agree. So do most of us.

It’s also widely accepted that human activity is behind much of this; and according to the report, things are deteriorating even more rapidly than we’d feared and we must act immediately to change our ways and stem the tide(s).

Yet on “60 Minutes” this past Sunday, Donald Trump said of climate change, “It’ll change back again” (on its own) and “I don’t know if it’s man-made”—signaling he plans to continue to eviscerate our planet and our environmental policies. Indeed, during the interview, he bragged that he’d instituted “the biggest regulation cuts in history.”

He couldn’t have done it without people like Rep. John Faso, who supports two-thirds of every people-unfriendly environmental decision Trump makes.

Faso’s CD19 opponent, Antonio Delgado, will fight for the planet—for us. He’s written: “It is imperative that we work together to mitigate the factors causing extreme and often unpredictable weather conditions… I will do everything I can to encourage the growth of clean energy jobs in our region by fighting to shift tax credits and subsidies away from the fossil fuel industry to the renewable energy space.”

The philosopher Lin Yutang warned: “When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means the sun is about to set.”

Don’t let Faso, or the small man in whose big shadow he operates, pull down the sun. Listen to your survival instincts, and vote on November 6 for Antonio Delgado, who puts planet over profit. Someday your children (who have the most to lose—everything—if Trump/Faso prevail) will look up toward a still-shining sun, and bless you.

Tom Cherwin

Saugerties, NY