Letters to the Editor Wednesday, Sep. 30

Give each county its own state senator

I urge all of you to support Senator Joseph Grillo’s and Assemblyman Mark Walczyk’s bills to change the makeup of the state Senate to one senator from each county.

I have had this idea for 10 years since back in 2010 when I ran for state comptroller. This change will make the New York State legislature more representative of the people. Right now it is too downstate centric. Contact your state senator and Assembly member.
JOHN A. GAETANI
Glenville

McConnell tramples on the Constitution

In 2016, Senator Mitch McConnell cynically shirked his constitutional responsibilities regarding the U.S. Supreme Court, citing the most dubious of justifications.

Sen. McConnell’s response to Justice Ginsburg’s death confirms that his justifications in 2016 were meritless and confirms that the court, as currently configured, is constitutionally illegitimate.

And now he intends to make matters worse. It is the duty of patriotic Americans to oust Sen. McConnell and his enablers from public office. Rep. Elise Stefanik, do you support or condemn Sen. McConnell’s trampling of the United States Constitution?
THOMAS COMPARIN
Schenectady

Biden will put the country back on track

All voters need to give serious thought about the growing turmoil, chaos, corruption, dishonesty, hate and division we have seen in our country these last four years.

We suffer an alarming, aggressive cancer that continues to spread throughout the land. It is imperative that we find an antidote and begin to heal.

That healing process will start by electing Joe Biden as our next president. Biden has said that he will only run for one term. In that one term, we will find ourselves moving back to the country once so admired and envied by the world; one of decency and compassion; one with a moral compass.

Biden will be advised by experts in their field, unlike Trump who appoints people to positions in which they have little or, worse yet, NO experience.

Biden will listen to those experts, unlike Trump who hires and fires, or just plain ignores. Biden will encourage respect, trust, and empathy for one another, unlike Trump who always has someone to blame or to call disparaging names, who leads with bullying, fear, and half-truths.

I urge all voters to vote. Vote for Joe Biden, who will begin putting us back on the right track.
SUE PENNY
Niskayuna

NY Times accurately depicted hot spot

In his Sept. 19 letter (“Times didn’t have its covid facts straight”), Andy Beiniks charged that a New York Times article appearing in The Gazette “contains completely wrong information,” and added that Times stories should be “considered as possible fiction.”

In fact, it is Mr. Beiniks who is guilty of spreading misinformation by his limited selection of data sources. He cites state Department. of Health statistics as being significantly lower than those reported by the Times. State agencies often have lags in their statistics. Any good reporter seeking the most up-to-date data would go directly to the source, and that appears to be what the Times did.

Mr. Beiniks notes that the Department of Health logged only 67 Covid cases at SUNY Oneonta in August. Currently, on its COVID-19 dashboard (updated on Sept. 20), the college reports 680 “positive cases since the start of the fall semester.”

The point of the Times story was to show how quickly a hot spot can develop. A ten-fold increase in the course of a month would certainly seem to qualify SUNY Oneonta as a frightening example of precisely that.
FRANK DONEGAN
Schenectady

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Categories: Letters to the Editor, Opinion