Letters to the Editor for Saturday, May 4

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Leave Trump alone and do your jobs

I wish our politicians would knock off their nonsense with the president and get to work for which you are being paid to do.

The economy is going great. The stock market is near the highest it’s ever been. You elected officials are just mad because a non-political person won the election two years ago and you can’t push him around. He’s not a puppet you can control. You politicians should be ashamed of yourselves. Social Security is going to run out of money in 2035. Why don’t you worry about putting our money back into it? If we took money that didn’t belong to us, we would be in jail. Maybe you should be.

Put it back, leave the president alone and do your job that you were elected to do.
Jim Pratt
Ballston Spa

Accept the good and bad of U.S. history

In the midst of a fine column by Karen Cookson in Sunday’s April 28 Gazette, she included the sentence, “bigotry is being re-examined—even sweet old Kate Smith and Stephen Foster are being chastised (and rightly so) for their racist songs.”

Oh how we like to get on our soapboxes in judging others for their foibles, acting as if we are so right about everything.

I was raised in Virginia during the 1950s, and learning Stephen Foster songs was part of the curriculum. “My old Kentucky Home,” “Oh! Susanna,” and “Swanee River” were some of Foster’s repertoire that gets lost when we condemn him to the “racist” pile. He’s considered “the father of American music.”

And my are we getting high and mighty by condemning Kate Smith as a racist. That particular line in Cookson’s column was totally unnecessary and indicative of an elitist view. And shame on the Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Yankees for not standing up for Kate.

History is history with all of its warts and imperfections! We need to know and accept it, not rewrite it.
Gerard F. Havasy
Clifton Park

Look past the false claims in Spa race

Kara Rosettie (“Board slate enlists GOP strategist,” The Gazette April 27) is incorrect in her assertions regarding the Saratoga Springs school board election.

Those who oppose armed grounds monitors on school property are not “anti-school safety.”

Candidates for school board are not “independent” if they take money from a political action committee that hires an out-of-town Republican operative as an election consultant.

Saratoga Springs voters are smart enough to see through these misrepresentations.

And those smart voters will support John Brueggemann, Natalya Lakhtakia, and Heather Reynolds in the May 21 election.
Andrea Wise
Saratoga Springs

Cartoon crossed the line of good taste

Your editorial cartoon in the April 29 Daily Gazette (depicting evangelist Franklin Graham’s support of President Trump for not being gay) was disgusting.
Helen Martin
Scotia

Focus on family, daily life, not on Trump

I’m wondering if we could go one day, or even one hour, without hearing the Trump name. We are so focused on his every move and word, we forget about our daily lives. With election time in the near future, it’s only going to get worse. Why not let the government take over the job of watching Trump, and we concentrate on home and family? Trump hopefully will come and go, but our families are here forever.
Marty Shanty
Charlton

Saratoga Hospital is vital for community

Although I don’t live in the area surrounding Saratoga Hospital, I have lived in Saratoga Springs and Wilton for over 30 years and my family and I have used its facilities extensively.

I’m very dismayed to hear all of the negative comments from neighbors regarding the improvements that the hospital would like to make. 

My understanding is that one of the improvements would be to allow for a more comprehensive stroke center.

As I had two strokes and two transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) since Feb. 1, I feel I can comment first-hand on the need for these services here in Saratoga Springs. 

Although I started out at the hospital in all of these occurrences, I had to be sent by ambulance to Albany Med, as Saratoga Hospital was unable to care for me.

I believe the folks who are speaking out against the hospital’s plans are being extremely short-sighted and perhaps even foolish to think they might never need the new services that will be available.

Saratoga Hospital is a great hospital. Let us not stand in the way of making it even better.
Tom Federlin
Saratoga Springs

Stop calling Rubin a moderate/conservative

Please stop referring to Jennifer Rubin as writing from a moderate/conservative perspective. This person is an extreme NeverTrumper who has not expressed a conservative viewpoint in years.

And for heaven’s sake, don’t reference her as a demonstration of presenting balanced perspectives in your opinion pages. She and her declarations are distinctly far left of center, and any rebuttal to that perspective is a sincere insult to your remaining conservative readers.
Randy L. Gray
Clifton Park

No voting for people who go to prison

There has been some talk among our elected officials that some of the people who have gone to prison should still have the right or privilege to vote.

Now don’t get me wrong here, but as a very proud American who enjoys the right and privilege to vote, I strongly disagree.

Let me explain why I disagree and why I also believe that they still have some rights, but have lost the right and privilege to vote.

Currently, when someone has committed a crime or an act of terrorism against humanity and goes to prison, they have lost the right or privilege to vote for good.

I’m for anybody who has gone to prison, who has done their time and paid their debt to society and tries to help themselves to do better and not go back to prison. But they should not be able to vote because once they go to prison, they lose the right and privilege that we Americans enjoy. That is the right and privilege to vote.
Anthony Peter Carota III
Schenectady

Report shows Trump violated oath of office

When Donald Trump took the oath of office in January 2017, he promised that “to the best of his ability he would preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The judicial system was established by the Constitution and, therefore, it’s the president’s duty to uphold the integrity of the judicial system. The Mueller report indicates that Trump did not uphold the integrity of the judicial system.

The redacted report identified 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice by President Trump. Two such instances are of particular concern.

The first is the president’s statement to FBI Director James Comey regarding the investigation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Trump told Comey, “I hope you can see your way to letting this go.” Comey refused to cooperate and was subsequently fired by Trump. 

The second is Trump’s order to White House counsel Don McGahn. Trump told McGahn to “correct” a New York Times story that reported Trump had earlier instructed McGahn to fire Mueller. Trump also asked McGahn why he had told Mueller’s investigators about the directive to remove Mueller. McGahn answered that he had to tell the investigators the truth. McGahn eventually resigned.

The report did not exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice. 

However, Attorney General William Barr attempted to rationalize Trump’s behavior as “justified” and stated that there was no obstruction of justice. In any case, given the evidence, it’s clear that Trump did not “preserve, protect, and defend” the judicial system and thus, broke his oath to the American people.
Don Steiner
Schenectady

Plenty of reasons for Trump impeachment

Robert Mueller’s findings provide constitutional grounds for impeaching Trump. Only public opinion, however, will persuade House members to impeach, and senators to convict.

Polls show that Trump approval dipped significantly, though temporarily, after release of Mueller’s report, from 44 to 39 percent. This suggests that a whopping 10 percent (5/44) of Trump supporters actually might waver.

Supporters resist arguments like: Trump obstructed justice by seeking to silence investigators. Trump broke campaign finance laws by paying to silence exploited women. 

Russia interfered in our elections, and Trump approved. Trump associates conspired with Russian hackers to win his election. Trump knew, and even directed this. Numerous Trump associates were indicted, convicted or pleaded guilty to crimes.

Such offenses provide legal and constitutional grounds for impeaching Trump for his basket of deplorable actions and associates.

Today’s Congress, however, will muster the needed political will only if its members see their own seats at risk. They might if constitutional, legal and political forces together make a groundswell of constituents feel at imminent and substantial risk from Trump’s “criminocracy.”

Risks include Trump’s refusal to protect elections from foreign interference, refusal to uphold the Constitution, refusal to divest from conflicts of interest and continuing susceptibility to Russian leverage against Trump and against American interests because of ‘kompromat’ and debts to oligarchs.

Testimony of Mueller and informants, and their separate counterintelligence findings, will reveal details to Congress, and unclassified details to the public.

Congress may not lead us to impeach, but it might be led to impeach.
Dr. Robert A. Michaels, PhD
Niskayuna

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Categories: Letters to the Editor, Opinion