A callous Republican Party

Make no mistake about it. The Republican party was willing to rip hospital, emergency, outpatient, maternity, pediatric, prescription, lab, rehab and mental health services from their TrumpCare healthcare bill leaving a skeletal insurance plan that no-one could possibly afford (all of these services were guaranteed in the Affordable Care Act.) Sadly, our own representative, John Faso, ignored the pleas of most of his district and was ready to vote for this abomination. Mr. Faso had no problem taking $800 billion away from the safety net of Medicaid and putting it right back in the pocket of the very rich.

Plus, there were shenanigans with New York property taxes put in the bill at the last moment.

Please be aware that the Affordable Care Act is not exploding. The Republicans began sabotaging it in 2014 when Marco Rubio and the Republican Congress removed the risk corridor protections that guaranteed insurance companies some extra money for covering those with pre-existing conditions.

The failure of TrumpCare should be a wake-up call to all of us. The Republicans are declaring class warfare and will not stop trying to destroy the Affordable Care Act. Most importantly, our own representative in New York 19 does not represent the will of the people. Please keep reading, writing, studying, protesting and marching to show that America is as strong as the weakest among us and that we will do everything we can to protect them. The Republicans prove time and time again that they just want tax breaks for the wealthy.

JoAnne Omar

Liberty, NY

America takes two steps back

Oh, America, why, for every step forward, must we take two (or more) back? What shame I felt watching Trump behave like a petulant brat beside the new leader of the free world, Angela Merkel. How embarrassing to have yet another climate denier in the White House. Secretary of State Tillerson will snub our NATO allies and instead visit Russia.

I was once told by someone who knows, back during our fight against fracking, “You’re right, fracking ruins groundwater, but Russia will do it anyway, why let them make all the money?” Once Trump lifts the sanctions imposed by their invasion of Ukraine, annexation of Crimea, and cyberwar on us, the world’s richest man—Vladimir Putin—many oligarchs, our secretary of state and cronies are going to get way richer drilling newly ice-free areas in the Arctic and here.

How is it that the Pentagon, NASA, World Bank, World Health Organization and UN, to name a few, along with many laypersons like myself who can read and observe reality, all recognize that climate change is the gravest threat to global security, and yet, here we are?

Team Trump proposes to outrageously cut the EPA and State Department each by 30%, appointed enemies to head them, and has erased climate-change language from whitehouse.gov. I don’t know, maybe we could invest in renewable, local energy production, creating permanent, not temporary jobs while protecting communities from volatile international fossil fuel markets that are ruining our environment and enriching the few at the expense of all? Just an idea. It hurts my pride as an American to know that other nations will lead on this issue while we not only deny but actively accelerate our own demise in a race to the bottom with Russia. I would like to hope we could do better.

Jennifer Young

Bethel, NY

Only Trump can go to single payer

When, 45 years ago, America’s chief anti-Communist Richard Nixon made a legendary diplomatic trip to Communist China and met with renowned anti-capitalist Mao Tse-Dong, we said in praise and awe, “Only Nixon could go to China.” Now, faced with a seemingly intractable healthcare conundrum the cost of which stuns both conservatives and progressives, America’s chief businessman Donald Trump has a similar opportunity for political immortality: Only Trump can go to single-payer.

By eliminating the profit motive from healthcare, as every developed country save the U.S. has done, we as a nation could save several trillion dollars a year in public expenditures and cut individual premiums in half. This estimate is based on the fact that Americans spend twice the global average for medical care, the difference going to corporate profit. New Jersey’s not-for-profit Blue Cross-Blue Shield, for example, showed a $3 billion surplus in 2016—the kind of reserves that single-payer could extend nationally and pass on to people as savings.

Only Trump can do this. It would be a domestic policy triumph, as Nixon’s trip to China was a foreign policy triumph. Trump and other conservatives need only view the human body as infrastructure, not the site of entitlements: our health and well-being function to make America great by allowing Americans to work and think, invent and innovate, start businesses and hire workers, pay bills and borrow money. Our physical well-being is as important as roads, tunnels and bridges, airports and docks. What’s not to like about being healthy and productive?    

Only Trump can go to single payer. Like it or not, it is exactly where we need to go, as it was exactly to China that Communist-fighter Richard Nixon, specifically Nixon, needed to go. Trump needs this. America needs this.

Anthony Splendora

Milford, PA

An ecological disaster in the making

I moved to this beautiful area because I lived in cities all my life. I am old enough to remember the smog in New York City and wishing to breathe clean country air. However, today I see all the progress made in the last 50 years being destroyed by our president.

The repercussions to every American, every citizen of the world, every animal, plant, our entire environment, are huge. We are hearing projections of disastrous (unlivable) climate change in the tropics within 10 years, in this area within 30 years. Oil spills, over-fishing, ocean warming, bees dying, forests being cut down—these are things we can’t ignore, let alone make worse.

They are dismantling all regulations, the EPA itself, gagging the staff (who brilliantly have rogue news sites to keep us informed about NASA, the EPA, etc.) From the Sierra Club: “Agencies are being ordered to ignore the impacts of carbon pollution, begin leasing federal land for coal mining at bargain rates—at taxpayers’ expense!—and, perhaps worst of all, the EPA is being ordered to dismantle its landmark climate protections, the Clean Power Plan.”

We need to join the rest of the world and move forward on climate change issues, not backward. Do the leaders of the plan to dismantle the EPA think their kids and grandkids can eat, drink and breathe money? I encourage all to check out real news, from Audubon, Sierra Club, Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund.

Our own Department of Defense released a report on the security implications of climate change, political instability and billions of climate refugees. Even “the wall” will disrupt animal migrations. Is all this to keep Trump’s Big Oil and Big Bank friends in business? Coal is never coming back, no matter what he says. The world is going to wind, solar and renewables. We are moving backward (in so many ways, but this is about climate), and there is zero time left to lose in this fight to save our planet. 

Debra Schneider 

Milford, PA

Tell them to filibuster Gorsuch

Something we need to be aware of right now because of its absolutely fundamental importance to our efforts toward having a compassionate, caring country is the hearings in the Senate concerning the Trump (our minority president) nomination for the Supreme Court vacancy.

The background is this: for the last year the U.S. Supreme Court has been presiding with eight members rather than nine. Ideologically, the split is four progressive to four conservative judges, which is in the favor of those who are working for a compassionate, caring country on sensitive matters like abortion rights, etc.

Neil Gorsuch, the new nominee, is very conservative, and if approved by the Senate, will shift the balance very much toward a less compassionate body, a body with less heart in its decisions. It looks like the nation would be stuck with a very conservative court for 25 or more years.

The Democrats in the Senate have one way of stop the nomination and that is by filibustering, which is based on a Senate rule requiring at least 60 votes to stop debate and vote on any issue. The Republicans have only 52 votes. I am asking each of you to do us all a favor and contact both Sen. Schumer and Sen. Gillibrand and especially Schumer, the minority leader and the key player in all this, starting today and till the nomination is dead. Simply tell them to filibuster.

I think you see how important this is. We have a long road to travel and it is a pleasure to travel it with you.

Tim Shera

Liberty, NY

[As of press time, Senate Democrats had secured enough votes to filibuster Gorsuch. More action is expected later this week, including the possible exercise of the “nuclear option,” i.e., the elimination of the ability to filibuster Supreme Court nominations, by the majority Republicans. If this is an issue you care about, stay vigilant and let your representatives know what you think.]