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Lying should not be a good look for a US president
DEAR EDITOR:
All politicians lie. That's not a new concept, and whether it is true or not doesn't matter when too many people accept it as fact.
The Trump era has brought us to a tipping point: Since lying is ubiquitous, it must not be wrong. This is dangerous territory for a democracy.
I've known hundreds of politicians, and I'm sure some, maybe even many, lied. Sometimes, I could tell if they were lying; sometimes I figured it out later through fact checking. But I never knew anyone who lied the way President Trump does. He'll repeat a lie even after it's been exposed as a lie.
In a recent online conversation with a Trump supporter, I was challenged to give an example of an egregious and provable lie that he has repeated.
It wasn't hard. He has said multiple times that he is the only president who has not taken a salary. That is a bold-faced lie.
John F. Kennedy, Herbert Hoover and George Washington all refused their salary or donated it to charity. Washington later relented when he was persuaded that if he set the precedent, only rich men would run for president. There is no way Trump could not know that by now. It doesn't matter to him, it should to us.
Some of Trump's lies can be chalked up to his hyperbolic rhetoric -- such as a claim he has made since his first campaign a decade ago, that he knows more than all the generals. In 2016, that could be dismissed as Trump the TV reality star being Trump. But he's now the commander in chief with the lives of America's sons and daughters in his hands. Does he still believe he knows more than all the generals? His shameless denigration of Gens. Milley, Mattis and Kelly, among others, would suggest he does.
Recently he posted an AI generated image on Truth Social showing him in the uniform of a four-star general, his chest covered in ribbons, flanked by two real-life generals, George Patton and Douglas MacArthur.
Wearing such a uniform would be impersonating an officer. And while an AI image is protected by the First Amendment, it is still dangerously close to what we'd call stolen valor.
Some people wonder why Trump is obsessed with painting Washington gold. I worry about why he thinks reality doesn't matter and lying is an acceptable presidential strategy.
DENNIS B. MANGAN
Howland
Drivers can use Overland Street, which is not private
DEAR EDITOR:
Driving on Overland Street in Warren (Howland Township) is becoming ridiculous. AJAX TOCCO has its factory on this street. The employees feel that they personally own this street and anyone who dares to drive on it is invading their property.
First, they put signs up and down the street SLOW DOWN (this street is zoned 35 mph). Then they had Howland install cameras in both directions that show the speed you are driving. Both reasonable ideas, but why does the taxpayer have to fund this? Now, they had Howland install speed bumps across the entire street in two different places. If you don't slow your car down to 5-10 mph, you definitely will damage your car.
I called the Township Road Department, and they stated this is a very busy street and the employees have a hard time getting across the street to the parking lot. The only time there are more than two cars on this street is when the employees are going in and out of the parking lot (starting shift time and ending shift time). The rest of the time, this street is almost always empty. The employees are not trying to cross Elm Road or Youngstown Road. Atlantic Street has way more traffic than Overland. I was also told that people who don't live in the neighborhood use this road as a "CUT THROUGH." Exactly when did it become wrong to use a street to get from point A to point B if that street is the most efficient way?
I have been yelled at and flipped off for not stopping when the employee was exiting the factory, but was nowhere close to the street. I will not slam on my brakes and sit there for 5-10 minutes for someone to make it to the crosswalk. I WILL stop if they are at the cross walk or in the street.
In Ohio, according to the laws that I can find online: Section 4511.46 | Right-of-way of pedestrian within crosswalk:
A) When highway traffic signals are not in place, not in operation, or are not clearly assigning the right-of-way, the driver of a vehicle, trackless trolley, or streetcar shall yield the right of way, slowing down or stopping if need be to so yield or if required by section 4511.132 of the Revised Code, to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is upon the half of the roadway upon which the vehicle is traveling, or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger.
B) No pedestrian shall suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle, trackless trolley, or streetcar which is so close as to constitute an immediate hazard.
I hope all the employees of AJAX and Howland look into this law and decide who really has the right on this road.
KAYE HADZIGEORGE
Warren
Youngstown should ask who will own the next economy
DEAR EDITOR:
My father, Pat Barrett Jr., was born in Youngstown and raised in Port Clinton, so Ohio has always been part of my family's story.
Youngstown also knows something much of America is only beginning to understand: what happens when generations of people build economic value but have little control over what remains when companies close, move or change hands.
Schwebel Baking Company is the latest painful reminder.
The ownership question has to come before the emergency.
When a locally important employer faces succession, sale, restructuring, or outside acquisition, employee ownership, cooperative conversion, and community-backed acquisition should be among the options examined early -- while there is still a functioning enterprise, a skilled workforce, customers, equipment and time.
And while one part of Youngstown's economy is disappearing, the next economy is already being built.
Site plans are being reviewed. Zoning and utility issues are under discussion. Officials, residents and developers are meeting. Data-center proposals and other investments are already moving through decisions across the Mahoning Valley.
So ask a question larger than how many jobs a project promises:
What will people in the Mahoning Valley own because this new economy came here?
Local businesses? Contractor capacity? Skills? Equipment? Energy assets? Housing? Worker-owned enterprises?
The exact answer can differ from project to project. But the objective should be clear: Economic development should leave behind economic capacity.
This time, before everybody finishes making the deal, Ohio should ask:
When the market changes, the technology changes and the investors eventually move on, what will the workers and the community still own?
If the answer is nothing but memories of the jobs that used to be there, we will have spent another generation rowing somebody else's boat.
GEOFF BARRETT
Founder
Seven Years of Change
https://www.sevenyearsofchange.org
Bayside, California
Prepare for the constant noise of data centers
DEAR EDITOR:
The transformation of voters into cicadas. Our future life in an industrial park.
This is what the wealthy have planned for America, while they themselves leisure hundreds of thousands of miles away.
America shall be humming away, literally. Data center noise typically remains audible within a .5- to 2.5-mile radius, a continuous hum of 55 to 85 dBA. Prolonged exposure to noise over 70 dBA can cause permanent hearing damage.
Something like the 7-year itch of a cicada, with their loud buzzing sound, only opposite with a low hum, 24/7. I'm sure the wealthy will offer relief to those who can't afford it, such as Walmart ear plugs.
Humans molting under data centers, leaving behind the shells of people. Being the loss of freedom without nature also sheds pounds of pride in its wake. Accept it or not, we became part of the AI experiment.
PAUL LAWSON
McDonald
Jan. 6 rioters deserve to be 'compensated'
DEAR EDITOR:
A proposal for Jan. 6ers:
The convicted January-Sixers have money coming to them!
Righteous!
Rewarding brave and good behavior is the way to go.
Any Geauga, Lake, Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Trumbull, Lorain, Summit, Mahoning and Portage County citizens who breached the Capitol Building on that "day of love" should proudly and publicly announce that they were present in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, brag about what they specifically did in the Capitol Building, and, when they receive their compensation from the government, publicly post the amount they received or allow the IRS to release their well-earned, unexpected, federal, taxable income ... their patriot bonus.
If you are a convicted J-6er who may be reluctant to publicly reveal your identity due to the predictable retribution from socialists, progressives, communists, Antifa, the "deep-state," flag-haters, the Fake News, immigrants, and, from that lost tribe, RINOs, take heart and "screw your courage to the sticking place."
Remember ... you are an inspiration to real Americans ... you risked your sacred honor to find Pence, Pelosi and the box with the fake ballots!
You risked getting a shard of glass in your finger when you broke through a window, you could have gotten your head split while splitting the heads of several Capitol cops, and when you pummeled a cop with a wooden American flag pole, you could have been taken down by a sliver that may have gotten infected.
Those of you who defecated on the marble tile floor of the Rotunda are the true defenders of democracy!
Do not lose sleep over not being compensated. These haters will not win.
The Administration will see to it that it happens either publicly or behind the closed, gilded doors of the Oval Office.
You deserve it and more!
Friendly hint...I would suggest taking the compensation in Bitcoin...always lucrative and reliable.
As they say, "Take the money and run."
You earned it because you pledged to each other your lives, your fortunes, and your sacred honor.
As the ex-northern Virginia Gen. Robert E. Lee wisely stated, "you will be remembered for ... the glory of duty done--the honor of the integrity of principle."
"Thank you for your attention to this matter."
SHELDON FIREM
Chardon
Trying to make sense of Trump's Iran War
DEAR EDITOR:
In June 2025, Trump announced that Iran's "nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and fully obliterated" in a bombing raid that he called a "spectacular military success". Then, seven months later, he attacked Iran again with the express goal, he stated, of preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon.
This action, understandably, puzzled most Americans and left us with only three possible explanations. 1) The June, 2025, bombing was actually a spectacular military failure, not success as he claimed, 2) if it was a success, those enterprising Iranians had somehow, in only seven months, rebuilt those facilities (that took decades to build) to the point that they were even closer to developing a nuclear weapon than they were before the June, 2025, bombing, or, most likely, 3) Trump needed to divert America's attention, especially the media, away from the disastrous effects of his domestic and foreign policy blunders before the midterm elections.
When Iran offered no retaliation after the 2025 bombing, Trump foolishly believed that Iran would easily capitulate after we assassinated their leader and aggressively bombed their country. It was going to be over in 2 weeks and he would be hailed a hero, a great leader for ridding the world of this terrible scourge that is Iran. He never planned for or anticipated a "war". In his continuing and utter incompetence he started a war that has cost 18 Americans their lives and wounded over 600, cost taxpayers over 100 billion dollars (in only 5 months) with Hegseth asking for another 67 billion, and another 30 billion necessary to repair our military bases, and a war that seriously depleted our defensive missile capabilities. He instigated this unnecessary, untimely, illegal, unconstitutional, tragic and expensive attack simply as a diversion.
In his 2024 campaign for the presidency, he said, "I'm not going to start a war; I'm going to stop wars. Under Trump, we will have no more wars," ... that is, unless he deems it necessary to suit his personal and political ambitions. When will his loyalists in Congress open their eyes, pull their heads out of their butts, and acknowledge that Trump is destroying America, not making it "great" again? When will they find the courage and integrity to honor their oath to protect our Constitution? Trump and his party are a festering cancer on our democracy.
THOMAS BRENT
Struthers