Letters to the Editor - The Lakeville Journal - 4-21-22

Rebuttal to opposing letter writers

Democrat letter writers to The Lakeville Journal have been largely silent for 15 months on the subject of Joe Biden’s myriad mistakes and gaffes since becoming president.

You’d hardly know that inflation, crime, border crossings, supply issues, gas prices and everything else have skyrocketed to crisis stage under Biden.

The left still prefers to vent only about Donald Trump, as they’ve done nonstop for six years with tirades and talking points gleaned from CNN, MSNBC and other liberal outlets. It’s a nice diversion from Joe’s woes.

But just mention Biden’s blunders, along with the left’s own Trumpian assaults on democracy, and they’re in high dudgeon. Like local opponents of affordable housing, they fabricate all sorts of arguments to turn away the threat.

Thus Willard Wood and Joe Geraghty accuse me of peddling fake Fox News talking points. Geraghty wonders why the dialogue can’t be nicer. Craig Toensing chips in with a snide little letter, juvenile and derogatory, no substance whatsoever.

Mr. Wood claims that his news source, The New York Times, produces the correct first draft of history by a “sober sifting of evidence,” while the source he falsely ascribes to me is just “political diatribe.”

Such is the left’s self-aggrandizing: simply proclaim their sources true and the other side’s false. Then they win automatically.

Gretchen Gordon doesn’t claim to know what channel I’m watching, but she insists the left is innocent of Trumpian crimes.

We’ll see. Special Counsel John Durham may yet prove that the Russia collusion hoax was akin to Watergate. The “fact-sifting” Times pushed that anonymously sourced dossier of dirty tricks for years.

The Times also led the politically motivated spiking of the Hunter Biden laptop story, all of which was true in my opinion and may implicate Joe.

The Times finally acknowledged the laptop 17 months late in the 24th paragraph of a report. That’s too late for even a tenth draft of history. (Sober fact-sifting at the Times takes a lot longer when the facts being sifted would greatly harm their preferred candidate.) Mr. Wood would have done much better to read the New York Post.

Ms. Gordon insists the 2011 Wisconsin Capitol takeover was nothing like Jan. 6, citing the left’s talking points of the half-dozen deaths tangentially linked to the latter. But the only person purposely killed on Jan. 6 was a protestor shot by a cop. Had she been a leftist protestor, it would have been called murder.

The fact remains that in both cases a Capitol was stormed, legislators were chased, death threats were made, the democratic process was disrupted. That’s as alike as you can get. The only difference is in the branding. When the left does it, it’s democracy in action; when the right does it, it’s insurrection.

Most media, including The New York Times, are as rankly partisan as Fox. The only way to be well informed is to sift them all.

Mark Godburn

Norfolk

Gratitude to Rotary

We have hearts full of gratitude for all the wonderful Rotarians and volunteers who came here last Saturday and cleaned up our yard. New friends made and  a wonderful day. Thank you!

Molly and Jerry Hardy

Amesville

We still need to beat COVID together

Many are now vaccinated, boosted, and probably to be boosted again.      

While less threatened with hospitalization or death from COVID, we know and read about people in our own situation who are contracting COVID. The news reports that COVID cases in the Northeast are rising and that a surge may be around the corner.

As COVID cases rise, government mask mandates drop. Should one continue to wear a mask? Can one feel comfortable around another who is not wearing a mask? Are there any respectable mask guidelines? Or, is everyone on their own to draw their own red line?

Some facts highlight the questions.

All masks are not the same, do not protect the same person (i.e., wearer or other) and do not offer the same protection. The Food and Drug Administration distinguishes between face masks (which provide source control, meaning they help prevent people with COVID from spreading the virus), barrier face coverings (which provide source control and some particulate filtration), surgical masks (which provide a physical barrier to fluids and particulate materials but are not respiratory protective devices), and respirators such as N95s (which filter 95% of airborne particles).

If you want to protect oneself to the maximum extent possible, wear an N95, which provides 95% filtration of airborne particles. But you are still not safe. If the person sitting 4 feet away from you in a movie theater is fully vaccinated and boosted but has asymptomatic COVID, your own N95 is filtering 95% of the contagion in the air, but 5% is still through to you. During a two-hour movie, that may be enough to infect you. Now, if your neighbor is also wearing an N95 mask, that mask is filtering out 95% leaving 5% of the contagion for you. Your mask does its job on the 5% remaining from the neighbor’s mask, and now only 0.25% of the contagion gets through to you (0.05 x 0.05 = 0.0025 = 0.25%).

Thus, a simplistic statistical analysis confirms what we already knew instinctively — wearing masks protects the community at large, not just the person wearing the mask.

COVID, vaccinations, boosters, testing, and masks are probably with us for quite a while. We have to figure out how to live with all five without going crazy.

Health care institutions have their own regulations, and local school boards are now liberated to decide.

What should the rest of us do? Like churches, garden clubs, bridge clubs, camera clubs, book clubs, charitable organizations, historical associations, meetings of political parties, and all varieties of our associations in civil society? We do not want governmental mandated instruction of what to wear over mouth and nose. But?

I personally accept that I should have a supply of N95 masks to wear around others, particularly when the sign at an entrance diplomatically reads something like:

“Please wear a mask to protect both yourself and others.”

Makes sense to me. Beating COVID is up to us. We must win this fight together.

G. A. Mudge

Sharon

Local environmental work will pay off

Thank you for your excellent article updating people on the revisions to Hazardous Tree Policy (Bill 117) and the upcoming restoration of Housatonic Meadows State Park. Housatonic Meadows Preservation Action is a new group of concerned citizens who assembled to address the loss of trees and the upcoming restoration of the park. It is indeed a showcase for Connecticut’s  parks, (in July 2021 heralded as Connecticut’s premier park by Outside Magazine) and contributes extraordinary value to our regional recreation, economics and environmental education.

There are other established organizations working in coordination and in partnership with the Connecticut DEEP to ensure an appropriate restoration plan. They are Housatonic Valley Association, Sharon Audubon, Housatonic River Commission, Trout Unlimited and Berkshire Litchfield Environmental Council.

Both Conservation Commissions in Cornwall and Sharon are also represented. We are proud that this alliance of local environmental organizations is stepping up and working for the best outcome. Thank you again.

Katherine Freygang

Cornwall

Time to say thanks

Friends and neighbors, I invite you to take time on Thursday, May 5, to celebrate the 71st National Day of Prayer as it has been proclaimed by our presidents.  We are in perilous times.  I am sure you would agree with me that the daily listening, reading or watching of the news causes you to pause.  It does me.

President Biden and others in authority daily face the moment-by-moment events which require careful decisions for our nation and the world. For our president, our state and our local community, we invite you to come and celebrate the 71st National Day of Prayer.

There are several gatherings in the Northwest Corner for you to attend:  in Cornwall 8 a.m. at the flagpole on the Green; in Falls Village noon on the Town Green; in North Canaan 5:30 p.m. under the pavilion across from McDonald’s; in Sharon noon on the Green; and in Salisbury 6 p.m. at the War Memorials next to the Salisbury Town Hall (if inclement weather in the Salisbury Congregational Church).

At each of these celebrations, your neighbors will pray for our churches, businesses, schools, government, military emergency service and media. You are welcome at all of them.  Let’s find time to pause and say thanks together as a community.

Marie Barnum

Salisbury

Immigration is not a dirty word

“If the current birth rate, which is the lowest in the major developed countries, continues, there will be no Japanese. Who will pay the enormous debt?”  Jim Rogers

Japan has the world’s oldest population and highest rate of people over 100. By 2040, the elderly in Japan will account for 35% of the population placing a major strain on a country with a 1.4 birth rate and restricted immigration.   Japan exhibits an unsustainable demography — a shrinking workforce increasingly supporting citizens 65 and older.

Japan along with most of the developed world faces a “demographic time bomb” — shrinking and imbalanced populations as national birth rates steadily decline and far right precepts of immigration’s evils are front and center in elections:  culture, ethnicity and color are the drumbeat of Orban in Hungary recent election , Le Pen campaigning now in France and Trumpites in the US always.

In the midst of the horrors inflicted on Ukraine by Putin’s Russia — intentional decimation of towns, cities and civilians — Poland accompanied by much of Europe (not Hungary, not Serbia) are welcoming, providing for Ukraine refugees. The death toll and exodus of millions have created yet another crater for Ukraine in recovery. Ukraine, pre-Putin’s wrath and war crimes, had Europe’s lowest birth rate, 1.3. Post their victory over Russia, the Ukrainians will not only need to rebuild their infrastructure and dwellings, it will need to rebuild its depleted population, reclaim its citizenry from other nations.

Putin’s wipe-the-country-empty-of-resistance-to-his-will criminality is beyond perhaps even his idol Stalin.  Yet Putin’s Russia, regardless of the outcome in Ukraine, has a severe population problem – its low birth rate is currently strained with the emigration of young talent seeking life beyond a brutal tyrant.

Bjorn Borg, tennis legend, appeared decades back in a Swedish TV ad urging Swedes to have more sex to up the nation’s falling birth rate, yet in 2022, Sweden’s population is still declining. Immigration – welcoming persons from other nations with birth rates exceeding 2.1, the replacement level, is a significant population solution if fraught with the difficulties of acceptance and integration. In 2015, Sweden was the most receptive European country to refugees of middle east wars.

Globally immigration is a masked issue potentially leading to economic and social decline.   Of course, immigration in the US is a high-octane issue rife with politicking, unpassed legislation, steep, often ugly resistance and resentment of cultural and color differences.  With a birth rate of 1.7, the US is a nation dependent on immigration. Much as immigration is cast as a villain for the US immigration is a safety net for prosperity and sustainment. The US has leveraged immigration over decades to fill a range of positions, fill employment holes, offer talent, enhance innovation.  Immigration has more than four letters and is not a dirty word.

“A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in. And how many want out.”  Tony Blair

Kathy Herald-Marlowe

Sharon