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Opinion
Smoky Mountain News
Bad choices will make things worse BY STEVE WALL G UEST COLUMNIST here are over 200 cases of coronavirus that have appeared in Italy, with three deaths as of Feb. 21. It’s possible patient one had symptoms for five days before seeking help. Currently, there are over 500,000 people in North Carolina who have no medical insurance, and several thousand are here in the mountains. Careful health surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation show that people with no medical insurance delay seeing a medical provider for financial reasons. Is it inconceivable that someone with a highly contagious disease could remain under the radar, and without knowing it, spread the infection, because a visit to the ER and lab test could cost them $300 or more out of pocket. If so, why do Republican politicians like Sen. Tom Tillis, R-N.C., and state Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, sabotage the expansion of Medicaid in North Carolina that would help protect public health? Why does President Trump continue to attack the Affordable Care Act that has given over 20 million people access to care? The reason is as obvious as it is outrageous — because these programs to safeguard our nation’s health have President Obama’s name attached to them. And
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Thanks for the reminder To the Editor: I want to thank Scott McLeod for his encouragement to all of us in his “From the Publisher” portion of the Friday Xtra digital newsletter last Friday morning. With us not knowing what others are going through, it is a wonderful reminder to be kind and compassionate as well as always treating people like we want to be treated. Thanks again! Sheriff Greg Christopher Haywood County Sheriff
these Democratic initiated programs must be socialist or communist, as state House candidate Mike Clampitt from Bryson City recently declared, conveniently forgetting that Medicare and Social Security were also called socialist or even communist when they were first proposed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. As late as 1954, paralytic polio claimed 50,000 victims every year in the U.S. As late as 1999, measles killed 2 million children worldwide. These plagues have stopped because of vaccine development and improved medical access. About 23 million children have been spared death from measles worldwide since 1960. In 1918, we didn’t have the kind of medical research and technology that developed in the second half of the 20th century. No one really knows how many people died from the Spanish Flu, but estimates range from 30 to 40 million worldwide. And the oceans didn’t protect the U.S., where out of population of 105 million approximately 400,000 to 500,000 died, including my wife’s great-grandfather. This is not fake news, Mr. President. Xi Jinping, president of China, is not doing “A great job … totally under control ….” as you foolishly stated before having any real intelligence (perhaps from one of the 17 intelligence agencies you have stated
LETTERS (cherry picked topics with no supporting evidence) some of which to my mine are not really reasons to vote for or against a candidate. Example: “Was Not Always a Lawyer” says nothing as I imagine none of the three candidates was always a lawyer. It does not carry a “paid for” statement. I intend to pay attention to ads that give real information about a candidate, their endorsements, and their positions and not ads that offer little or no helpful information. Such ads only inform my opinion about the candidate running the ad. Richard Gould Waynesville
Some political ads are not helpful
Democracy hits the mat
To the Editor: One of the blessings or curses of too many philosophy classes at university is an appreciation for critical thinking skills. Many of these skills are becoming less and less prevalent in modern discourse. Applying those skills to politics is critical to making sound judgements in the voting booth. Over the last several weeks I have noted political ads in the news and have been using them to help make my voting decisions. Specifically, three ads caught my attention. Two are Republican and one is Democratic. I am registered as unaffiliated. One ad is for the 11th Congressional District race, one ad is for the N.C. House and one ad is for District Court Judge. The first two are objective statements of qualifications for the office and clearly state who paid for the ad. The third (for District Court judge), I consider to be deficient in that it lacks objectivity
To the Editor: Just when I thought it was safe to be optimistic about the trajectory of our country, I came up from my crouch and took a double gut punch. That one-two punch left me reeling from what I’d just seen and felt. When the Senate voted not to allow any witnesses or additional evidence to be admitted during their hurried impeachment proceedings, I dropped a tear of anger and loss. How can one even hope to find the truth and offer transparency without hearing from those directly involved on the front lines? Blocking testimony from the highest-ranking staffers in the field is the most blatant way to insure that the facts are never heard. This comes after weeks of the president specifically instructing government employees to ignore congressionally issued subpoenas to testify before recognized bipartisan committees, giving our Constitution a swift right
you don’t trust as much as you trust Vladimir Putin). So while we are talking about this, ask yourself why Mr. Trump is calling for a $5 billion cut in the budget for the National Institute of Health. I think I know why — because our president encouraged by his obedient, irresponsible followers like Sen. Tillis and Rep. Mark Meadows and thinks he knows more than anyone, whether it’s about Syria (sorry Kurds, you’re on your own, I know more than the generals), vaccines (they cause autism, bad doctors!), climate (he knows its all a Chinese trick), etc., etc. I’m glad the stock market is up and job creation in the past 36 months is almost as good as it was in the last 36 months of the Obama administration. I’m glad there will never be another recession, and that Trump’s federal deficit that’s now over a trillion dollars — for the first time in our history — won’t ever come back to bite us. Because the really good news, in spite of any worries about epidemics or economics or our standing in the world with no allies is what Trump said to his wealthy campaign contributors during a dinner at Mar-aLago after the 2017 passage of the budget busting tax give away: “I just made you all a lot richer.” See you in November. (Steve Wall is a retired pediatrician who spent his career in Haywood County.)
hook, busting the collective lip of truthfulness. Even before the trial began, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed that he’d not only be in the President’s corner with the stool and a pep talk between rounds, but also with the assurance that he would fix the fight from the beginning with help from his complicit cohorts in the chamber to hamstring the opponent — transparency. The truth and any unbiased hearing would be buried under the canvas cover along with another piece of our democracy. Shock and disbelief fell across many American faces as our long-held faith and belief in the sacred process of fair and equal justice and our national character were thrown into the ropes with a little fancy footwork by those whose job it is to defend those very ideals. This is not how our systems of checks and balances and due process work, this is how thugs, gangs, dictators and mob bosses operate. The only thing missing here was the sound of kneecaps breaking. I couldn’t watch any of the proceeding that followed, knowing that a complete sham and cover-up was taking place, and all the world had a ring-side seat, our Constitution reduced to bookies bet sheets and birdcage liner. The pre-arranged acquittal followed, not because of our unbiased, equally applied system of government, but in spite of it. An emboldened lightweight emerged, eager to retaliate against his critics, knowing that his spineless backers in the Senate, including our own Sen. Tom Tillis, were giving him the green light and freeing him from any accountability going forward, regardless of rules, law or sense of decency. He celebrated by throwing Purple Heart recipient Lt. Col.Vindman and his fellow sol-
dier brother, along with world-respected US Ambassadors Gordon Sondland (EU) and Marie Yovanovitch (Ukraine) out on their asses for providing information and testimony as requested by investigators, and required by law (incidentally!). In the meantime, he disgraces previous recipients of the Medal of Freedom by awarding it to his ass-kissing, bigoted pal Rush Limbaugh with a bare-knuckled jab into American honor. He followed with his appointed lapdog Attorney General William Barr directed to intervene in a presiding judge’s sentence for his long-time dirtbag buddy Roger Stone in yet another flagrant abuse of power, usurping the distinct separation between the judicial and executive branches of government. Now, officially above the law and given free rein to re-make our legal system to his benefit, the most recent series of punches that landed on America’s face make a mockery of our institutions and those who sacrificed and died to defend and protect them. My 2020 hope is that the nation can gather the collective courage and conviction to get up off the floor and come back swinging with the conjoined political punches of Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Leonard and Muhammed Ali. It’s imperative that voters deliver the needed knock-out blow to this blatant assault on our democracy. We want our nation back. We don’t want to hear the ref count to three and await our democracy’s final bell sounding. It’s up to us in November to land that massive punch, sending the dirty fighter and his backers to the locker room defeated, marking a win for America’s future as the real democracy champions. John Beckman Cullowhee
