Letters: Budget bill designed for billionaires; Birds of a feather

Budget bill designed for billionaires

The budget bill being dissected in Congress contains many items that get little coverage. The obvious ones are cuts to Medicaid and health insurance, in both coverage and affordability for the working class American, and trillions of dollars added to the federal deficit and stupefying tax cuts for billionaires.

Just about everything in this budget bill is designed to benefit big corporations and their billionaire owners. EPA regulations are being removed. Enforcement of industrial pollution violations will stop against fossil fuel companies. The sale of 258 million acres of BLM and national forest land can be sold, with no hearings, debate, or public hearing opportunities.

Immigration enforcement and deportation numbers are: $45B to expand detention capacity, $14B on removal of people, and $8B to hire more ICE officers.

One might ask, why should I be concerned about some of these seemingly distant issues? Because everything in this budget bill is designed to protect and give to the billionaire class, not hard working Americans: slashing regulations, dismantling government agencies, firing the federal workforce, tax cuts for the rich, defunding science and health research, cuts to VA care and providers, cutting affordable health care, food and housing assistance. The list is extensive and the impact is tremendous. Our GOP representatives have been lying about what is in the bill and it will be too late when it is passed. If you haven’t been paying attention, it is time to do so. It is time to write and/or call your representatives.

Birds of a feather

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has vowed to find the cause of autism by September 2025. To lead this ambitious endeavor, Kennedy hired David Geier, who has no medical license or scientific training. Unfortunately for the American public, Mr. Geier has a track record of harming children and manipulating data.

David’s father, Dr. Mark Geier, claimed that injections of Lupron, a testosterone-suppressant approved for prostate cancer and ovarian fibroids, was a “miracle drug” for children with autism. The Cleveland Clinic decried the quack treatment as “medical castration,” as it halts or delays puberty in females.

With no medical credentials, and relying on “junk science,” David Geier administered the Lupron injections. He was fined by the Maryland State Board of Physicians for practicing medicine without a license — and his father’s medical license was revoked.

Kennedy, who also has no medical credentials, selected David Geier, known for peddling a long-debunked theory that vaccines are linked to autism, to oversee the health of more than 70 million American children. Every Republican Senator except Mitch McConnell supported Trump’s appointment of Kennedy. No Democrats or Independents voted for him. But, of course, the Republican majority ruled.

These are just two of the many incredibly disturbing appointments and hires under Trump’s tenure — and of the astoundingly disturbing instances of Republican Senators and House members tacitly or explicitly supporting the craziness.

America deserves leaders who inspire trust. Congress must stop supporting unqualified appointees or be voted out of office in 2026!

I-It vs. I-Thou

One begins to discover oneself at the beginning as one finds one’s mother’s body in the womb. Here the story begins to unfold.

In this great time the story includes all of us in the morally united world.

Martin Buber considered two great worlds — I-It and I-Thou. The story unfolding is emphatic that we discover each other primarily in the I-Thou dimension mutually opening our hearts. For in the I-It at extreme we close our fists around the world clench our teeth and attempt to say mine-apart. Here the world disappears.

And this may happen to the president as he demonizes the migrants.

For they are not I-It, they are our neighbors — fellow citizens in the great city now emerging, which is under all the stars.

Here together we will see ourselves and know the full meaning of our names. As Rupert Brooks so recently said — these are the greatest times which have ever been.

Give us your young and aspiring

Students with disparate backgrounds, cultures and interpretations of our shared Earth, it will be your conversations, friendships and conflicts that set the stage for a more inclusive future. It will be the ways that you influence the developing views of the world community and how you are influenced by the voices of your peers in these United States of America.

The people of this nation welcome you and yearn for that more perfect union, which you have become a part of. Whether you return to your nation of origin or remain to participate in this nation’s future, you will apply the fruit of the educational experience gained here to conceive that future.

Pay little heed to current disparaging efforts to disrupt your aspirations. Dig deeply into the community that welcomes you here. That community is forged from the melding of your predecessors with what is our ever emerging, endearing, enduring melting pot.