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Learning the truth about employee-paid health care

Letters to the Editor

DEAR EDITOR: You’re a locally important civic leader with formal authority in your organization and significant influence outside of it. You see the rescission of Obamacare for millions of Americans as a complicating factor with unknown consequences for your thinking about health care. How should you think? What should you and your colleagues in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys’ civic leadership do? Consider this. Approach your colleagues and ask for their public support in proposing the Chief Actuary in the Health Care Financing Administration conduct an investigation into ...

YSU should practice due diligence as it expands

Letters to the Editor

DEAR EDITOR: I am cautiously optimistic about YSU opening a satellite campus in Steubenville. Four members of my family are YSU graduates with six degrees in widely varied fields of study. We all faced challenges, but on-campus support services and dedicated faculty who truly wanted their students to succeed helped us complete our degrees and move into fulfilling careers. Our youngest child chose a program that is not available at YSU but could be completed at Kent State East Liverpool. Being neurodivergent, she was concerned about entering college, but hard work and ...

The real cost of Trump’s war for Americans

Letters to the Editor

DEAR EDITOR: Trump attacks Iran, you pay. A $100,000 retirement fund invested to mirror the S&P 500 has lost $5,000 since Trump’s attack. If you had $200,000 invested you’ve lost $10,000 ... in 3 weeks. But wait, there’s more. The Pentagon wants a fresh $200 BILLION to keep fighting Trump’s war. That’s money you’ll be paying. Hold on, we’re not finished. Gas is up 30+%. So if you drive 1,000 miles a month and buy 30 gallons of gas, that’s about $30 more a month or $360 a year — more if you drive more or get under 33 miles per gallon. BILL ADAMS Austintown

The art of taxing fairly is messy

Editorials

“The rich should pay their fair share of taxes.” Who can argue with that? But then we must decide who is rich and what is meant by fair. Neither political party has distinguished itself in making such distinctions. But Republicans play an especially outrageous game in portraying the Internal Revenue Service as the working stiff’s enemy. For salaried workers, taxes come straight out of paychecks, meaning most are already paying what they owe. Owners of small businesses have more deductions at their disposal, but the neighborhood bakery that tries to follow the rules doesn’t ...

Donald Trump has made America unrecognizable

Letters to the Editor

DEAR EDITOR: Star Parker doesn’t get it. She thinks everything is political. It is not that Democrats don’t love the United States, we just don’t recognize it any more. Can you imagine Eisenhower or Kennedy hawking gold shoes or Bibles for sale on TV or selling them in the White House? None of the other presidents destroyed part of “the People’s House” to make it look like a gaudy casino. Don’t let him destroy the Kennedy Center! Did you have to hustle your kids out of the room when other presidents were on TV because they were making crude remarks about disabled ...

Sound off!

Letters to the Editor

Rumor has it Liberty trustee and Judge candidate Devon Stanley does not live in Liberty Township. Enough of the theft from the residents of Liberty Township. How can this guy be trusted as a judge? Voter Beware. — Warren Many white Americans want to kill Muslims. Muslims are “too strange, not Christian, unwilling to assimilate.” They won’t just lie there and let their children be murdered by foreign bombs. Islam itself isn’t evil. What’s evil is another American president using fake intelligence as an excuse to deploy bombs, waging an immoral war to distract us from his ...