Letters to the editor: August 15, 2019

Posted 8/14/19

No rate hike for NYSEG

I can well understand why NYSEG avoided having any Public Hearings in Sullivan County for their proposed outrageous 20%+ rate hike. There might have been a riot. Sullivan …

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Letters to the editor: August 15, 2019

Posted

No rate hike for NYSEG

I can well understand why NYSEG avoided having any Public Hearings in Sullivan County for their proposed outrageous 20%+ rate hike. There might have been a riot. Sullivan County has suffered from poor service and rip-off electric charges and practices for years. In 2018, the electricity was off more than eight times, with two of the outages lasting nine to 14 days, depending on where you lived. It is ironic that as I wrote this protest, our electricity went off. I was able to finish only because last year we finally gave up and installed a costly propane backup generator. With so many service interruptions, we felt we had no other choice. But many of our neighbors are not able to afford this expensive, but essential and in some cases lifesaving alternative power source. Then there is NYSEG’s unethical billing practice of using estimates, not meters, to establish electric usage. Estimates result in monthly charges per light, even if some are not working or otherwise not in use.

Until NYSEG gives up their price-gouging policies and comes into line with other electric companies that actually give assistance to municipalities that try to save electricity by switching to metered, town-owned LED streetlights, NYSEG does not deserve any rate increase whatsoever. They have more than enough rip-off profits from the current system.

Star D. Hesse
Narrowsburg, NY

‘Fetid’ mud at Ten Mile River Access

I’m 75-years old and grew up on the Delaware River. I learned to swim in the Delaware by the time I was 4-years old. I have used the river for swimming, fishing, skipping stones, tubing, canoeing and kayaking, all my life. There are other areas on the river like the Ten Mile River Access. That’s the way nature has made them, live with it. If you don’t like these areas, go somewhere else—say the Hudson River. Leave these areas alone and go somewhere else. Better yet, just stay out of the river altogether. It will be cleaner for the rest of us if you just stay home.

Joe Beirne
Monticello, NY

Wishful thinking

That Donald Trump is a liar and a narcissist, no reasonable person can doubt. As a narcissist, he is the subject around which events revolve. The meaning of those events must conform to the requirements of his perception. The lies emanate from the narcissism. If he needs it to be thus, he says it is, no matter the evidence. To the extent it is truly so in his mind tells where he falls on the scale from childishness to insanity.
Inveterate liars build a structure of lies, and the insertion of truth threatens the structure. So lies are told when they have no seeming purpose and even when the evidence of their untruth is at hand. Objective analysis is precluded. In his case, its place is taken by speaking in superlatives: people are “smartest” or “dumbest,” threats are the “most destructive the world has ever seen,” and he is “the least racist person there ever was.”

As a real estate builder, he was the fulcrum of a whirl of money. And those who wanted to catch some of it ignored his boastful thinking as irrelevant, just a salesman’s pitch. What served him as a realtor he has brought to the presidency. What was money in real estate becomes power for politicians and an admiration of his “cojones” by his base.

Trump is not the first narcissist to gain power. That a strong system of checks and balances has prevented his rise to dictator, so far, is something to be grateful for. But Trump has also exploited the system’s weaknesses, if only by not facing any real consequences. The distance he has come should make us very uncomfortable, and it’s in our better interests to embrace that discomfort.

Roy and Ben Tedoff
Fremont, NY

Thanks Jonathan Charles Fox: remembering Woodstock

I had to write to you after reading your article in The River Reporter on Janis Joplin. I am still smiling as it brought back so many happy memories of Woodstock ‘69.

My boyfriend (now husband) and I also traveled from Brooklyn to White Lake to take part in that magical music festival. We got stuck in the traffic maze and wound up staying in our van. We could still hear the music! I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.

I look forward to reading your articles every week. They always make me smile. I met you several years ago at Bethel Woods. I had come to see Luke Bryan and you were there. I was more excited to meet you than Luke! You were very gracious and took a photo with me. I still have it!

Thanks for sharing your memory of Woodstock. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Ellen Bentivegna
Oakdale, NY

nyseg, ten mile river access, donald trump, janis joplin, woodstock

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