Vance’s lavish Italy trip, Biden didn’t have worst inflation and more letters to the editors

Trump doesn’t care about you

Tr’mp has no “U”. PUblic servants do. SUpreme CoUrt and our CoUrts do. Tr’mp is concerned with only that which increases his power and personal wealth. Tr’mp is not interested in serving you, the American public.

Ask those who worked for his companies that went into bankruptcy and consequently weren’t paid. Ask those that have lost their food stamps. Ask those intimidated or the families of those wounded or killed by masked ICE patrols.

Who else in our history wore masks? Not our community police, National Guard or our military. Oh yes, there was a group that intimated folks while hiding their faces — the KKK. And of course, bank robbers.

The current ICE fiasco is not about deporting folks. This is a dry run for a militia that can intimidate voters.

Who manages the president and protects our government? Our Congress, elected by the people to watch over and protect our democracy. We are looking to you at this time of crisis.

I want to live in the United States of America where state government takes care of its communities — not interested in the Federation of America where the country is governed by the whimsy of Tr’mp.

J.T. Coyle

Palestine death toll calls for end to war

I’m so tired of the old trope that if you support Gaza/Palestine, you are antisemitic. The scale of death and injury happening under Netanyahu’s leadership is horrific, and according to the UN amounts to a genocide. I agree!

The Oct. 7 attack on Israel was terrible and wrong. Yet the current death toll for Israelis is estimated at 2,109, including the October attack. The death toll for Palestinians is 71,600 and counting. During the ceasefire, people in Gaza and the West Bank are being killed systematically as they search for food, water and protect their homes. Israel has bombed hospitals, schools, and withheld food and health care for Gaza. According to the UN, Gaza has the most amputated children in the world! This response is in no way justified!

What is happening in Palestine and especially Gaza is in large part due to the U.S. continuing to support and fund Netanyahu’s agenda. I am proud the church I attend, the Unitarian Universalist Church, co-sponsored a public forum on the war. In a time of such horror, educating people about what is happening “on the ground” is important. Advocating for an end to this war is love in action.

Judith Pedersen-Benn

Why so lavish?

It was a flight of 14 aircraft — 11 planes with family and necessary others, like staff and security, and three transport planes carrying food (to Italy!?) as well as a motorcade of 100 vehicles, including 40 Chevrolet Suburbans, to visit Milan, a city regrettably not constructed to accommodate such behemoths.

No, it wasn’t several entourages of Saudi royalty, as you might at first glance think, but our very own Vice President JD Vance, traveling like a potentate on your dime. And he’s not the only member of the Trump cabal freely spending your tax dollars on expensive government airplane travel. Some of it isn’t even official business.

Couldn’t Vance at least have left the food behind, so some of the children who were cut off food stamp assistance because there wasn’t enough money available for it could get something to eat?

Ted Tumelaire

Walden

Biden inflation not the worst

We’ve all heard President Trump say many times, “Joe Biden had the worst inflation rate in US history. Nobody has ever seen anything like it!” The highest inflation rate during the Biden administration was 7%, during the year 2021.

Here are some inflation rates since 1940: 9.9% in 1941, 9% in 1942, 18.1% in 1946, 8.8% in 1947, 8.7% in 1973, 12.8% in 1974, 9% in 1978, 13.3% in 1979, 12.5% in 1980 and 8.9% in 1981.

President John Adams once said, “Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

Ken Barker

Hixson