The other day, President Joe Biden jumped into the autoworkers contract dispute in a big way. He stated that auto manufacturers had just made record profits and that union workers should be getting their share. He missed the perfect opportunity to suggest that when profits fall, union members share in the losses as well. But you know our Biden.
He could also have mentioned that if you believe there are profits to be made, you should buy shares of stock in that company. Get it? Shares. But you know our Biden.
For that matter, why not tell them the whole truth? Tell them that he’s trying to destroy their internal combustion engine auto business and their jobs right along with it. Or at the very least tell them to prepare to switch over to working in the electric vehicle manufacturing business instead. But then, he’d be obligated to tell them that the electric vehicle business needs 30% less labor than the gas-powered segment.
Kiss some more union jobs goodbye. Or maybe just work only three and a half days a week for less total pay. But you know our Biden.
All those opportunities lost. All the opportunities to come clean with the people he claims to support. Squandered on yet another political grandstand. But you know our Biden.
Don Lovett, Smithfield
Re “Saving Medicare will never be easier than it is right now” (Other Views, Sept. 15): I’m 72, and obviously on Medicare. Why is Medicare Advantage so religiously touted as the best solution to costs the program does not cover, yet seldom mentioned is Medicare Supplemental Insurance?
Yes, the premiums are nice and low with Medicare Advantage, but the co-pays can be quite onerous. Supplemental insurance still has payments that slowly increase with time, yet its “advantage” is found in easily continuing with providers with which one has had yearslong relationships.
It’s easily portable, and the premiums are incrementally higher, yet the limitations are, to me, smaller than the co-pays one finds when choosing Medicare Advantage.
And for anyone with a previous major health issue, such as heart attacks, etc., the time to evaluate this is with a comparison with both programs, during the length of time when those issues are not a part of premium considerations by insurers. Please, thoroughly investigate both, in spite of the perpetual promotion of Medicare Advantage.
Chuck Moebus, Virginia Beach
House Republicans have established the two things that must be included and the two things they want excluded from any agreement they would sign to continue to fund our government. I would like to focus on the two things they insist must be left out.
The House GOP doesn’t want to continue to support Ukraine. I think this would be a terrible mistake and maybe the worst thing we have ever done as a nation. The other thing they appear to want to cut out, because they have little to no plan for it, is disaster relief spending. This would be consistent with the conservative view of small government.
Before climate change became as bad as it currently is, the disasters were small and people could be made whole by their insurance companies. Now the disasters are enormous, and the insurance companies are leaving the market. As the fires, flooding, hurricanes and tornadoes become more and more lethal, we will have ever-increasing numbers of “climate migrants.”
If the GOP wants to follow its dogma of “small government,” so be it, but most importantly, they have to stop their total and very effective support of the fossil fuel industry as they are the cause of this climate change we are suffering from and will continue to suffer from. For the sake of our future generations, we have to make the change from fossil fuels to renewables.
Richard Korn, Virginia Beach
Former President Donald Trump has been saying since 2016 that any time he doesn’t win an election, it is because it is rigged. He claimed the election was rigged when he lost the Iowa caucus to Sen. Ted Cruz in 2016. Weeks prior to the 2016 election, he made the same declaration if he should lose to Hillary Clinton. Even after winning, he created that phony election fraud commission in 2017 with Kris Kobach because he couldn’t accept that Clinton beat him in the popular vote.
In the months leading up to the 2020 election, he kept claiming that if he lost, it would be because the election was rigged. This is a pattern that special counsel Jack Smith needs to emphasize regarding Trump’s intent, during the upcoming trial.
Trump will argue the same election fraud nonsense leading up to the 2024 election. Precisely because Trump makes these repeated claims of election fraud, irrespective of the evidence, any claims he makes that he genuinely believes that he won the 2020 election are not credible.
The only exception would be if he intends to give an insanity defense. Many experts have claimed that he exhibits narcissistic personality disorder or is a narcissist, so perhaps an insanity defense may be appropriate.
Christina Anne Knight, Newport News
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