Zeldin serves Trump, not the environment

Ending standards and controls of tailpipe and smokestack pollution will accelerate climate change, make rain storms more violent, increase flooding risks, bring back acid rain to Adirondack lakes and streams, shorten winters and lake ice, cause our insurance rates to rise faster, and hurt small and large business invested in pollution reduction.

All these results are OK with “drill baby drill.” Trump and EPA’s Lee Zeldin announced that as far as climate change goes, it was invented by Obama and there is nothing to see. Of course, the rest of us see plenty. And lawyer Zeldin, too, has seen plenty.

Coming from Long Island, he knows better; unlike his boss he actually reads; he has personally witnessed what sea level rise, violent storm surge and air pollution do to his Suffolk County. He cheerfully hides what he knows to announce the end of tailpipe and smokestack regulations. That’s because Zeldin’s not the administrator for environmental protection but, chameleon-like, he’s become a spokesperson for oil and gas and an ambitious Trump toady.

If he had any self-respect, he would resign tomorrow.

ICE protesters are not good role models

The tragic event that took place in Minnesota is on the ignorant Democratic Party.

The police should have been there to keep the people who were not for ICE in control and to behave in a civil way. They were adults and no role models for children. They even allowed children out of school to march against ICE.

This is madness and it tells me something about the parents who allowed their children to march against ICE.

ICE was there to do the job they were sent to do. This was to send immigrants here illegally back to their country.

I researched ICE to find out about it. It came into existence after Sept. 11, 2001. This is when we were attacked by foreign terrorists in our country. Most Americans do not know what is going on in their country. I know, I did not know ICE came into existence after Sept. 11.

Maybe our government did not do a good job informing us about ICE. Maybe I should do a better job of being informed of what is taking place in our government.

I lived my life and only focused on my family and let all the politicians be in charge of America. I stopped being naïve in 2016 when Trump was running for president.

This is when I saw hatred for Trump by the Democratic Party. I voted for Trump because he didn’t believe in abortion and neither did the Republican Party.

Board’s ICE policy panders to the woke

I was raised in Catskill and pay taxes on multiple properties in Catskill.

I was disappointed to read in the Feb. 13 edition of The Daily Mail, (“Catskill, Hudson school districts won’t cooperate with ICE without warrants,”) that the Board of Education of the Catskill school district has directed that ICE won’t be allowed entry into Catskill schools without a warrant.

This action is an affront to district taxpayers and an affront to the rule of law. There is no requirement for a warrant for federal law enforcement officials to pursue immigrants anywhere in the homeland.

The board is virtue signaling to the left and telling taxpayers that the responsible spending of tax dollars and the safety of American citizens is not as important as pandering to the left and protecting those in the country illegally.

This isn’t about “protecting students’ rights.” It’s about following federal law and ensuring the financial security and physical safety of American citizens in Catskill are not placed behind the interests of immigrants who broke the law when entering our country.

The board is demonstrating to the taxpayers, the community, and its student body that the law doesn’t matter as much as political pandering to the woke left.

This isn’t what the many combat veterans from Catskill fought and died for. This isn’t what the district’s taxpayers are paying for. The board should focus time, money, and energy on improving reading, writing, math and chemistry.

The board should leave political virtue signaling to politicians in Albany.

LtCol, USMC (Retired)

Maysville, NC, formerly of Catskill

Random observations, predictable results

As I watch the Nancy Guthrie Incident/Investigation play out, two thoughts come to mind.

First, if she wasn’t a relative of a popular media person, otherwise just another run-of-the-mill elderly victim, she wouldn’t be getting this attention. And two, she is not alive.

During the last years of my own mother’s life, I worried about this type of scenario. She needed a walker/cane and daily medication. She lived alone in a very nice home and was extremely financially well-off.

I live on the Schenectady side and she lived on the Loudonville side of the town of Colonie. I was about 5-15 minutes away from her, plus three different police departments are within a 5-mile radius (Colonie police, state troopers and Albany County sheriffs.)

I played this horrible scenario years ago when mom was alive. During this playout, she is the victim of home invasion/robbery. The only people who knew she lived alone were neighbors, family and handymen.

In Ms. Guthrie’s case, this is almost identical in reality to my worst fears for my mother. The probable results will be similar to my fears. The villains knew Ms. Guthrie’s living situation. This isn’t a kidnapping; that is some person thinking he is being naughty, cute and funny with ransom note creation.

The villains were probably recognized by the victim during a home invasion/robbery. They can’t take care of her physical needs and she is a living witness to the crimes. She must go missing until the villains have secured their freedom.I’m sorry, she is no longer with us.

Recall Lincoln’s wise words about nation

As we celebrate Presidents Day this week, we might recall the words President Abraham Lincoln spoke so eloquently on the hallowed grounds of Gettysburg’s Soldiers’ National Cemetery on Nov. 19, 1863.

One of the most profoundly significant speeches in history, Lincoln’s speech is as relevant today as it was then — a powerful reminder of how fragile our nation’s democracy truly is, and how absolutely imperative it is for us all to remain in the fight to protect it:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

“We are now at this moment in history being tested, involved in another form of civil war, this time between democracy and autocracy, in a crucial fight to protect this liberty and proposition that “all men are created equal.”

Lincoln spoke of those courageous soldiers who died in the name of liberty, but also how crucial it would be to never forget what they did for all who came after -- and our responsibility to preserve this fragile nation, our democracy, our freedom. Lincoln ended with this firm resolve:

“…this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

© The Leader Herald