Thanks for publishing the commentary by Jeff Bust for the Chicago Tribune entitled “A Deplorable Voter Regrets Nothing,” Feb. 9. The thoughts he expressed represent mine and millions of others, including many of your subscribers.
I have some thoughts about the recent election. First, beginning with the primaries, the amount of money spent denigrating opponents was disgraceful and disgusting.
Second, on the Democratic side, big-time politics determined the result. Bernie Sanders never had a chance and should have known it. Although she apologized, Hillary Clinton lost the election with the words “deplorable” and “unredeemable.”
Third, every time there was, or is, a wild, uncontrolled demonstration, it was like a paid ad for Trump. Most Americans are sick and literally tired of these. Lastly, I believe that most people would like the politicization of everything in society to stop so that we can get back to our life of friendship, respect and courtesy with all of our neighbors.
Warren Biebel
Plainfield
No Regrets? Really?
Would it be possible to keep the happy voter Jeff Bust on the line a little longer (“A ‘Deplorable’ Voter Regrets Nothing,” Feb. 9)? Or, would any other satisfied Trump voter respond?
What words or deeds has Trump said or done to make Mr. Bust think local, state or federal budgets will be better balanced for our grandchildren?
Or, more generally, what specifically encourages Mr. Bust that the current administration will make our grandchildren’s world better?
Please, it would be most reassuring to hear more.
John Galton
Hartland
Happy With My Vote
In reply to the “deplorable voter” Jeff Bust’s opinion piece (This ‘Deplorable’ Voter Regrets Nothing,” Feb. 9): Well, I’m weary as well, of political thought that somehow concludes that all government is of evil intent. I work, too — and I also worry about who pays the tab for genocidal wars we in the U.S. perpetrate in the Middle East, and then wonder why groups like al-Qaida and ISIS rise up, all while we can’t find a way to single-payer health care.
I’m a white male in America, as I suspect you are, so I don’t feel as if “my voice has not counted for years.” Try that one out on nonwhites in this country for like the past 400 years. If you’d like to see the national debt paid down, then stop getting your lawmakers to keep cutting taxes and do it. I’ll certainly concede that abortion is a lousy form of birth control, so how about supporting Planned Parenthood and birth control funding to limit it?
I don’t like paying for the largest (by far) military in the world, but I pay my taxes, unlike the president.
I do agree with you, though, it does seem like the outcome of the last election is understood only by people like me, and I am happier with my vote more every day.
Bruce Smith
Lyme
Let’s Respect Each Other
Thank you for your very good article on race relations (“Hartford School Board: No Race Committee” Feb. 10). Paula Nulty is right on when she said diversity means different things to different people.
While we may not agree with people’s beliefs, or find people of a different race make us feel uncomfortable for whatever reason, we can still treat them with respect by giving them the dignity they deserve.
Children can be taught to respect every human life or they can be taught to hate. I like to think our schools are teaching our children to respect each other.
As Paula Nulty pointed out, prejudice doesn’t happen to just one race but to many different races, ethnic, political or religious groups.
Let us all examine our biases and work on them. Respecting each other begins with each one of us.
Marilyn White
White River Junction
Headline Misstated My Point
On Jan. 30, the Valley News printed a letter I wrote. The Valley News also gave that letter the headline “Give Obama No Credit.”
I said no such thing. My letter took exception to two very specific points made in the Jan. 22 collaborative commentary, “Taking the Measure of the Obama Era.” Contrary to Cass Sunstein’s claim that Barack Obama was some kind of “cost-benefit” president, I detailed (with sources) several measures of the extreme cost of the Obama presidency. I cited factcheck.org, which reported that “under Obama the federal debt more than doubled.” I then asked “what and where is the cost-benefit of all that new debt?” That question remains unanswered.
I also presented a counter argument to Mohamed El-Erian’s claim that Obama “created” 15 million jobs. Were the jobs “created” by Obama full-time or part-time? With or without benefits? Were they really new jobs or were they simply replacement jobs, a byproduct of a typical economic cycle?
There may well be some Obama achievements worthy of note, but the specific claims made by Sunstein and El-Erian do not hold up to scrutiny.
The power of your headline is manifest in a recent letter by Matt Cardillo (Feb. 11), in which he chastised me for giving Obama no credit. He misapplied and misquoted George Santayana’s observation that “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” Such a statement completely ignores the content of my letter.
It often happens that those who disagree with me either misunderstand or completely ignore my point, then engage in unrelated commentary sprinkled with an unfounded ad hominem jab.
Dick Tracy
Sharon
Italy’s Piedmont Deserves Attention
The subtitle read: “The Author Discovers Familial Connections in ‘Italia.’ ” As a first generation Italian-American intrigued by the impulse to reclaim an ethnic past, I scanned the article for a sign of that discovery, and I was delighted when my eye caught reference to the Piedmont, my own familial region. (“Exploring Ancestral Grounds,” Sunday Valley News, Feb. 12.)
At last, I expected, some attention would be paid to an important part of Italy that readers of the Valley News know so little about — the region that led the movement to unify the Italian nation; that produces among the finest wines of Europe and can boast of some of the world’s best restaurants; that invites visitors to an array of royal palaces as well as Roman mineral baths in a posh, artsy town; that has preserved the unique stambecchi, the protected herds of ibexes in the Paradiso national park; that offers winding drives through an amplitude of traditional villages, vineyards and Alpine slopes. And, in its capital, Turin: museums of painting; the early Italian development of automobiles and aviation; and, in its architectural icon (the Mole Antonelliana), an exhibition of Italy’s pioneering in motion pictures and television.
Those attracted to a more remote past would enjoy the reassembled medieval town on the bank of the Po, and from many centuries further back, a collection of Egyptology ranked either the world’s best or second best.
But, alas, author John Taylor merely mentions that three ancestors lived in a Piedmont valley in the 1500s, and after wondering whether he walked where they had stepped (without so much as a single word about the walk’s location or what he saw), he duplicates a usual list of tourist sites — none to be found in the Piedmont. (Caution: Anyone looking for “Cinque de Terre,” which he praises twice, is doomed to frustration; he means “Cinque Terre” — Five Lands, not Five of Lands.)
Some years ago, I proposed leading, without pay, a tour of the Piedmont for Dartmouth alumni. The woman in charge scoffed: “It can’t be important or interesting. I’ve never heard of it.” Even though Mr. Taylor’s connection to that area of Italy is half a millennium removed, I’m disappointed it failed to trigger any more curiosity than Dartmouth could muster.
Frank Gado
White River Junction
More About Walls
William Lange’s column “Walls Make Bad Neighbors, Then Fail,” Feb. 1, did not go far enough in discussing the wall between the U.S. and Mexico and the one that Israel is building through Palestine in order to encompass the farmland and aquifers upon which the Palestinians depend, while closing the native population into an increasingly restricted space.
Both walls are built on the basis of racial and ethnic distinctions, both walls are built based on exaggerated fear and the pursuit of “security.” Who can ever be assured of security? For Israel to justify its land-grab of Palestine in the name of security has been a winning strategy vis a vis ill-informed Americans who every year vote billions of dollars for Israel.
That many have suggested Israel’s security would be better served by making peace with its neighbors and returning land obtained by conquest, is not what that country’s right-wing supporters in the U.S. want to hear. Now we have Israeli companies bidding to construct Trump’s border wall.
A look at Israel’s wall that goes through Bethlehem, for instance, 25 feet high with concentration-camplike watchtowers, illustrates the fear-industrial complex promoted by both Israel and the United States. What an example for the world.
Letitia Ufford
Hanover
Bad Ideas in New Hampshire
New Hampshire lawmakers have so many misplaced priorities this year it’s hard to know which are the worst. True, we ask legislators to work essentially for free, continuing the state’s longstanding “get-what-you-pay-for” demonstration. But this is getting ridiculous.
Require corroborating witness testimony for sex assault victims’ charges to be prosecuted? Allowing unlicensed concealed carry, even in the Statehouse, where incompetence and lack of common sense seem rampant?
Now the silly tax policy proposal to penalize owners of fuel-efficient cars. What is really shameful is that this bill has the backing of the Upper Valley’s own Susan Almy, who surely ought to know better. Short of a complete overhaul of the state’s unfair tax code, legislators who want to try and fix the unfairness of the gas tax and transportation infrastructure shortfalls might consider simply taking the information the state already collects from motorists as part of annual inspections — odometer readings. Use that to calculate and send drivers a bill, based on how much they drive each year. That would still be cumbersome and unpopular, but at least it might do a better job matching road and bridge repair costs with actual usage.
Jonathan A. Scott
Plainfield