Breaking News

Letters

Clock keeps ticking

In Manhattan, on a wall not far from Times Square, the debt clock ticks higher and higher. After climbing for so many years with no obvious economic fallout, it’s easy to ignore. Indeed, the clock was moved from its location on a busy street corner to a quiet passageway. The reality is that we really don’t have a “debt ceiling.” It’s a political creation with no fundamental economic meaning. No other country has one. But we do need a political solution, and many politicians have been concerned about our growing debt for a long time. They thought they had found the right ...

No family should

Losing a child changes everything. It also made me see how quickly cardiac arrest can take a life — and how unprepared we too often are in those first critical moments. My son Kyri passed away from sudden cardiac arrest while playing a basketball scrimmage. He was joyful, vibrant and full of life. One of 10 children, he stood out from a young age. He would always tell me, “It’ll be okay, don’t worry,” in his warm, calming voice. The day he collapsed, there was confusion. CPR was not started right away, and an automated external defibrillator, or AED, was not immediately ...

Letter right

I find myself in agreement with a letter in the June 12th edition of this newspaper. The letter was about building a data center in our area. There was not one point I found disagreement with. I would add there is a complaint from people who live near operational data centers of a relentless noise, describe as a low humming sound. There are too many variables that have to be address to the populace before we allow more of these data centers to be built. While there is good to come from AI there is negatives that cannot be ignored. It doesn’t help that talk of regulations is being ...

The collapse of shared reality

As America approaches its 250th birthday, we face a crisis deeper than political division: the collapse of a shared reality. A nation cannot function when its people no longer agree on basic facts. Today, false claims spread faster than verified information, and repetition often outweighs proof. The danger is not only the misinformation itself, but what fills the vacuum when truth can no longer hold a country together. A society either lives by a common understanding of reality, or it becomes vulnerable to leaders who impose their own manufactured “facts.” George Orwell warned that ...

It works

All of the major industrialized nations in the world have some iteration of single-payer health care. The cost per capita is on average less than half of what we pay in this country for our care that is rationed by greedy insurance and pharmaceutical companies. The coverage is not “rationed” as was previously described in Veronique de Rugy’s recent column. In Germany you may have to wait a year to have a knee replacement performed, but your hospital stay will be two weeks, not 3 days, and then you will be transferred to a rehabilitation hospital for TWO MONTHS, and it is all ...

You sure about that?

Trump supporters keep justifying HIS WAR with !ran by saying Trump is winning because after his bombing Iran has no Navy or Air Force. I fought, not served, in Vietnam for 31 months in 11 of the 16 campaigns of that war while Trump was dancing in the NYC Gay Bar, As I recall my enemy also did NOT have an Air Force or Navy fighting me. They did, however, have dedicated people. We used B-52s every day attempting to stop 20,000 women carrying supplies on bicycles and never stopped them. If Trump had been with us, maybe he would have learned there is more to war than planes and ...