Question candidates on job growth efforts

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Question candidates on job growth efforts

Attention voters in the North Country: Comptroller Thomas P. Dinapoli released a report stating that the Mohawk Valley had the worst job growth at minus 2.9 percent between 2009 and 2014. Job growth in the North Country was minus 1.5 percent. In the same period, New York City enjoyed the best in job growth among regions in the state at 11.5 percent.

With municipal elections coming up this year, it’s obvious that the No. 1 issue to be addressed by the candidates has to be how they directly propose to secure future job growth. This initiative will tell us who is fit for elective office and who is not.

When, and if, any candidates do actually offer a clearly defined plan to successfully induce job growth in the areas they represent, listen carefully. See if the gigantic progress that the global tourism industry’s response markets have been experiencing in America will be included in a candidate’s presentation.

If no mention is made at all, ask, “Why not?” The tourism industries are proven, established generators, capable of creating jobs that remain intact instead of eventually departing from the scene after a period of time.

Anthony Biscotti

Amsterdam

Obama has made country much worse

Re: Bob Karandy’s Sept. 9 opinion, “Obama owed credit for nation’s rebound”: Karandy claims Obama has improved our country and he would want another four years of this improvement. He buys the line that unemployment has fallen and he thinks more Americans have jobs.

To put it another way, when President Obama took office in January 2009, there were 80,529,000 Americans who were not participating in the workforce. Since then, 12,369,000 U.S. citizens have left the workforce. The number of Americans out of the workforce jumped by 354,000 in August.

The last time the labor participation rate dropped below 63 percent was 37 years ago, in March 1978, when it was 62.8 percent. So the unemployment number pushed by the administration looks lower because many more Americans have dropped from the workforce.

Karandy then praises Obama for ending an “illegal war” in the Middle East. Well, that troop reduction has led to the formation of ISIS and now the mass migration of over a million Muslims to Europe and eventually the United States. What a great move by Obama. Karandy thinks we are fighting terrorism, yet we released five of the worst terrorists to get back a deserter. And due to the refusal to secure our borders, we have allowed many terrorists to infiltrate our country.

Karandy thinks the economy has improved under Obama. He must live under a rock in Burnt Hills. In the fourth quarter of 2008, when President Obama was elected, there were 96,197,000 people living in households taking benefits from one or more federal welfare programs.

After four years, by the fourth quarter of 2012, that had grown by 13,434,000. It has continued to grow ever since.

More people are on public assistance than are working. The administration likes to blame G.W. Bush for our debt/deficit. Yes, it grew substantially during the Bush administration (which had a Democratic Congress). But rather than being reduced under Obama, both have continued to rise to record, some would say unsustainable levels, now equal to our Gross Domestic Product.

I guess Mr. Karandy doesn’t realize either that the candidates are not yet picked for the next election; that won’t happen until next year. His rant against Trump is a little premature. He also thinks Obama has restored intelligence and dignity to the White House and in the “eyes of the world.”

Apparently Mr. Karandy is oblivious to rhetoric and cartoons from Europe, Israel and the Middle East. Obama is a “laughingstock” around the world.

David Buckbee

Rexford

Difficult to stand by and watch violence

Our country is going through tragic times due to the deaths of our schoolchildren, lives that matter, our college students, lives that matter, and all the other people’s lives that matter.

People’s lives are hard enough as it is without all this tragic news appearing all the time, with no relief in sight to change the gun laws or to control mental illness.

All we have to look forward to is the next time for it to occur. Then we have to watch families go through the grieving process all over again. If something could have been done, it would have been done a long time ago. Also, if something is done, then the families who have lost loved ones will be offended that something wasn’t done for them.

The American people are strong, but this is getting to be too much to bear, to stand by and watch copycats and mentally ill people gun down helpless people who never did anything to them.

Walter “Neal” Brazell

Rotterdam

Gun control backers ignore facts in killings

The recent tragedy in Oregon made national news, and was the 294th “mass shooting” (defined by the Department of Justice as four or more victims); by all accounts only three or four of these mass shootings in 2015 have made national news. Why haven’t we heard of the other 290 in the national news?

I suggest that a very large number of these shootings are taking place in the cities that have the most Draconian firearms laws in the nation (Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, New York City) and do not fit the narrative of “more stringent gun control.”

It is certainly not because no innocent victims were among those killed, as drive-by shootings are, by nature, indiscriminate. The reason that they do not fit is that they are committed by persons with extensive criminal backgrounds due to the judicial system’s catch-and-release programs and would not be permitted to purchase a firearm in a legal fashion. (I have seen the disappointment in hardworking uniformed officers who are forced to arrest these same criminals over and over.)

The nation’s focus is on how and where do these perpetrators obtain the “evil” firearms. In a separate trial, the murder of Border Control Agent Brian Terry, the very first decision made by the federal judge was that the method used to obtain the firearms used in this heinous crime would not be allowed to be used in this trial. Seems contrary to what the president said about gun control in his remarks immediately after the Oregon tragedy.

By now, you might be wondering why the origin of the firearms used in the murder of Brian Terry is barred from his murderer’s trial. The reason is that the firearms used were illegally purchased with the help of the federal government (FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) during the often-times forgotten “Operation Fast and Furious,” an operation in which our own government illegally provided over 1,400 firearms to Mexican cartels.

When asked what proposed firearm law would have prevented any of these tragedies, the answer is always the same: “I don’t know, but something must be done.” By now, it should be obvious to an intelligent person that the anti-gun lobby led by the president has no interest in enforcing the current firearms laws on the books, only on making it more and more difficult for the average law-abiding citizen to obtain a firearm in a legal manner.

Michael Sheedy

Schenectady

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Categories: Letters to the Editor