LETTERS TO THE
E DITOR Please wear face masks
To the editor: Let’s wear face masks and social distance to assure that our fellow citizens have healthy air to breathe.
As Henri Frederic Amielhas said: “In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties.”
Terry Hansen Hales Corners
Voter suppression equals a truly ‘rigged’ election
To the editor: President Trump started talking about a “rigged” election back in June. Since then, he and Republicans across the country have taken steps to do exactly that, to rig the election.
The effort actually began in earnest when Republicans selected their voters with gerrymandered voting districts. Just a glance at the map of Wisconsin legislative districts reveals the convoluted logic employed when drawing district boundaries.
Then came purging names from lists of voters. A total of 17 million names have been removed from voter lists around the nation since 2016.
Justin Clark, one of Trump’s re-election advisors said, “Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes in places. That’s what you’re going to see in 2020. It’s going to be a much bigger program, a much better-funded program.”
More recently, Trump campaign advisors have helped Kanye West get on the ballot in several “swing” states, including Wisconsin, hoping to drain votes from Biden.
Concerned about increased voter participation through mail-in voting, Trump has taken steps to make it as difficult as possible for the post office to get the ballots in on time to be counted. He became directly involved in voter suppression by refusing additional funding for the post office and supporting a major campaign donor, Louis DeJoy, as postmaster general.
DeJoy displaced 23 top postal executives, centralizing his authority. He then curtailed overtime, reduced staff, implemented a hiring freeze, and ordered the removal of 671 high speed letter sorting machines. This is done 11 weeks before an election, during a pandemic, and knowing millions of voters will be expecting their ballots to arrive in time to be counted.
Slowing the mail puts seniors and veterans depending on Social Security, VA benefits and prescription drugs at risk. It is a sad day when the president of the United States makes an unabashed attempt to suppress the vote of American citizens in addition to sabotaging one of America’s premier institutions.
Anita Sloane Neillsville
Trump is working to destroy Social Security
To the editor: It was Aug. 14, 1935, when President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, so there is some irony that President Trump would announce a plan to destroy the program on the anniversary of its signing. About 64 million Americans receive Social Security (SS) benefits and it is the only source of income for many of them.
Trump assured people he would save Social Security during a speech in 2015, but Trump’s actions are often quite different from what he says. He chose Governor Pence as his vice president knowing Pence had advocated for privatizing or cutting SS. He named Tom Leppert to lead the Social Security Administration’s transition to the Trump Administration knowing Leppert advocated privatizing SS.
Trump named Congressman Mick Mulvaney as director of the Office of Management and Budget knowing Mulvaney had a record of attempting to cut Medicare and Social Security. Trump hired Stephen Moore as an advisor on economics and tried to appoint him to the Federal Reserve Board, again knowing that Moore believes in eliminating SS.
This past January, Trump issued an executive order aimed at removing people from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program over protests from organizations like the American Foundation for the Blind. Last week, Trump issued another executive order allowing employers to postpone withholding the Payroll Tax with the promise to forgive and permanently terminate the payroll tax if he is re-elected.
The payroll tax funds Social Security and Medicare. Terminating the tax would kill the program. After signing the executive order, Trump looked Americans in the eye and told one of his biggest lies yet, saying, “This will have zero impact on Social Security.” The singular most trustworthy rule we have about Trump is that we cannot trust anything he says.
Darlene and Dennis Bucheger Greenwood
