Letters to the Editor: A job well done

Southold

A job well done

We would like to congratulate all of the people who participated in International Coastal Cleanup Day on Sept. 19. Kenney’s/McCabe’s Beach Civic Association and Southold Peconic Civic Association joined forces to clean Kenney’s, McCabe’s, and Bittner Soundview beaches, helping to make Southold a cleaner, more environmentally healthy and beautiful place.

Special thanks go to Arden Gardell, owner of Little Fish Restaurant, who supplied coffee and pastries to fuel our efforts. He’s always a willing participant in our endeavors, in so many ways, including using his dumpster for the trash.

Lastly, thanks to our member bakers who made cookies and coffee cakes.

Looking forward to our spring cleanup in May.

Ralph Reinertsen
president, Southold Peconic Civic Association

Cutchogue

A prof’s perspective

I read your very informative piece on Climate Change (“Doubling down,” Sept. 24). There is a different perspective.

Professor Steven Koonin, former undersecretary for science, U.S. Department of Energy under the Obama administration, has authored a book titled “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t and Why It Matters.”

In this book, he clearly points out that “Man-Caused Global Warming” is not a certainty! So, surprisingly, there are differing opinions on this subject.

Richard Brewster

Orient

Choose democracy

Jerry Silverstein’s Aug. 27 letter regarding Congressman Lalota’s AWOL status brought to mind two TV ads he’s running. One concerns a bill that never even passed (about restricting lawmakers’ stock trading) and another is about a partial reinstatement of SALT deductions, which were entirely eliminated in Trump’s 2017 tax bill.

Mr. LaLota is AWOL because he has little to show for the past two years. Along with the rest of his party, he has stood down, allowing the executive branch to run amok.

Congress, under Republican leadership, has abandoned its responsibilities, ceding full authority to an individual of dubious temperament, judgment and character. The abominable results of this autocratic approach to government are unsurprising.
We began a never-ending war in Iran (with attendant constraints on our ability to deal with other strategic threats), causing a significant spike in gas and utility prices. Inflation is accelerating and affordability declining. Long-term interest rates are at their highest level in over 20 years as the federal budget deficit swells. (Long-term mortgage rates are back over 7%.) We have alienated longstanding allies in Canada and Europe while cultivating friendship with dictators. China has ascended as a global force while U.S. influence is in decline. And we have taken big, threatening steps backward on climate change and the environment. (East End homeowner insurance premiums have soared on account of extreme weather events.)

With feeble silence, Representative LaLota and his Republican cohort have chosen to support authoritarianism, to dreadful effect. We need a Congress with the courage to challenge the rule of one.

Choose democracy. Vote for Chris Gallant.

Robert Ruocco

Cutchogue

A write-in option

I’m running for County Clerk because voters deserve both a real choice and a well-run clerk’s office.

The clerk’s own website warns that if you purchased a property within the past eight to 10 weeks, your new deed may not yet be recorded. Suffolk residents should expect efficient, modern service from an office that handles records affecting their homes, businesses and legal affairs.

There are also legitimate questions about political patronage in the office. Newsday reported that Mike Torres, the Suffolk Conservative Party chair, also serves as chief deputy county clerk under incumbent Vincent Puleo, and earned $147,000 from this position alone.

Despite this poor performance and more than questionable hiring, the incumbent has no challenger. He’s set to win by default.
Why? Well, Newsday reported in August that Democratic nominee Anthony Portesy accepted a Conservative judicial nomination after pressure to leave the County Clerk race to protect patronage jobs. Mr. Portesy’s departure left Mr. Puleo without a Democratic opponent on your ballot, protecting Torres’ job.

Forcing me, as a Suffolk County taxpayer, to pay this clerk and his political boss for four more years was too much for me, and I decided to step up and run a write-in campaign.

In each of my 19 years of voting in Suffolk County I’ve witnessed election manipulation by the chairs of Suffolk’s political parties. Judicial “races” that offer only one name, triply endorsed, for ratification rather than election. “Paper candidates” who don’t campaign, and always lose. Their purpose is giving the party’s most partisan voters a box to check. Voters aren’t really deciding the outcome of the election.

Please join me in rejecting backroom politics by writing me in for Suffolk County Clerk. Make your vote matter. Learn why I’m qualified and how to write me in at WriteInAbigailField.com.

Abigail Field

Southold

A long, wrong list?

In response to the letter “33 to 47” (Sept. 24): Trump has forced Europeans to contribute their fair share to NATO and their own defense. This is not destruction; it is burden sharing, as NATO secretary general Mark Kutte has stated.

The Democratic Party is not your father’s Democratic Party. President Truman’s U.N. ambassador cast the deciding vote recognizing Israel as an independent state. Today, the Democratic party is rife with anti-Semitism and has embraced Communism, hostility toward evangelical Christians and Catholics, and those who oppose men competing in women’s sports.

If you can’t define a woman, you certainly have no place in government or on the Supreme Court.

The Democratic refusal to support voter ID is a sure and simple way to allow cheating. Refusing to attend Congressional hearings concerning biological men in women’s sports is criminal and indefensible.

The Helsinki Accords have been a complete failure; just ask Ukraine. Obamacare was a big lie. It is not affordable, you cannot keep your own doctor and it has enriched insurance companies. Another one of Obama’s losers.

The Paris Accord hurt America and helped China. Obama tried to bribe Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. How did that work out?

The Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab nations are a historic step toward peace in the Middle bast. His predecessors said it; Trump did it.

DEl is unconstitutional when employment or school admission is based on race rather than merit.

My Christian beliefs are based on the Biblical, inerrant Word of Almighty God. I do not base my Christianity on my political views; I base my political views on my Christian beliefs.

All humans are flawed, Trump included. I thank God he is our president and pray for the safety and prosperity of our great nation.

Rev. John Reichert, retired

Cutchogue

Choosing your team

Over the past several decades, politicians on both sides of the aisle have been playing with the nation’s future as if it were a team sport. Gone are the days of intelligent, principled compromise. Until the governing body in this country gets back to behaving like grown-ups, where we can rely on our elected officials to worry first about America instead of worrying about staying in power for power’s sake and trading stocks on inside information, we must decide which team to vote for.

Our congressman, Nick LaLota, is on Team Trump. He’s on the team that shuns vaccinating children while measles becomes epidemic. He’s on the team that is responsible for perhaps millions of unnecessary deaths in Africa from AIDS because his team stopped providing the poor with food and medicine. He’s on the team that separates parents from their children and then sends the parents to countries they didn’t even know existed. He’s on the team that supports masked gunmen with badges shooting innocent people on our streets. He’s on the team that thinks the war in Iran was, and remains, a good idea. He’s on the team that has given us $5-plus gas and unaffordable food. He’s on the team that has now produced 7% mortgages so nobody can afford a house unless they’re wealthy. He’s on the team that managed to turn our Canadian brothers and sisters into estranged family members. He’s on the team that has destroyed the world’s trust in the word of the United States.

Basically, Nick LaLota is a player on a world-class losing team that has participated in wrecking our economy and our standing in the world, which took almost a century to build.

I’m no fan of the way the Democrats have conducted themselves during all these years. But when you compare their fecklessness to the mean-spiritedness and cruelty of the Republican team’s policies, there’s no contest on who I want running the store.

So, while it’s possible that Mr. LaLota may be a wonderful guy to have a drink with, if we vote for him, we’re voting for his team and more of the same of what we now have. I’m sticking with democracy and voting for the other team this time around. Team Trump and its sycophants are just too much of a danger to our nation, and Mr. LaLota is one of the players in the lineup.

It’s time for Mr. LaLota to find other work.

Michael Levy

Laurel

Republicans, awaken

Republicans have been misinformed. This is not meant to be critical; just informative. I was a Republican for 40 years before the lies got to me. Republicans have great propaganda and a persistent message. But since they’re consistently lying, we all should fact-check what we hear in campaign commercials and political ads. For example, Nick LaLota’s current ad says he got tax breaks for people on Social Security, overtime and tips, and increased the SALT deduction.

When fact-checked, you learn that he and 216 other Republicans voted for these things in the One Big Beautiful Bill, which also included cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and SNAP, tax cuts for the wealthy, and added $2 trillion to the national debt. The same 217 people also voted to pass the Save America Act to disenfranchise millions of people who wouldn’t be able to vote in November if it got through the Senate.

Do yourself a favor. Ask Google what programs have been initiated during the past 40 years that provide major benefits to the working classes or veterans, and which party initiated them.

Check LaLota’s voting record. See how he followed Trump at the expense of his constituents. You have to see this for yourself. If you vote for LaLota, consider yourself complicit in what’s happening in Washington.

It’s time for Long Island to vote for the remedy, not the replica.

Charles Gueli