MAGA Is Manipulating Us
There is a great divide in this country, but MAGA politicians do not want us to notice: The top 1% of Americans hold 10 times more wealth than the bottom 50% of us.
MAGA knows that division creates conflict and a divide-and-conquer winner-take-all society. Abortion, minimum wage and threats from climate change are issues that we must address together. MAGA found a way to fabricate division on these issues.
The fact is, we Americans are far more united than we are divided. According to recent polling, 61% of us feel current immigration policy is a problem, but 57% feel immigration is important to our national identity; 64% feel abortion should be legal in most or all cases, and 59% feel Roe v. Wade should not have been overturned; 62% of us favor increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour; and 67% want to prioritize developing alternative energy such as wind and solar.
We as a country are nowhere as divided as Trump and MAGA want us to believe.
Going forward, we can’t stand by while Trump implements the agenda he claims he has a mandate for. We must be engaged citizens if our collective will is to be respected. You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you. We are being manipulated. In the next weeks and years, stay involved and watch to see what is being done in your name.
Richard Burt
Athens
More Thoughts on Leaf and Limb
I totally agree with my neighbor and good friend Dera Weaver on several points she makes about the leaf and limb issue (Flagpole, Feb. 5). The idea of calling in for pickup service is ridiculous. It is going to be a nightmare of who and when and where. Let’s keep the zones. And I wholeheartedly believe we need to up the salaries of the drivers to at least $30 an hour.
But for all of this to work, the city needs to purchase another truck. I can hear the screaming now that it will cost too much money. The bottom line is simply this: We need another truck (I think we have only one of the big ones) in order to have a service once a month.
Despite what the management of leaf and limb services wants us to believe, we are not getting pickup every six weeks. I have waited many times eight to 10 weeks while the bags full of leaf and limb debris are rotting where I store them.
Dera is absolutely right. This is a service the city needs to provide. I know for a fact that other cities in Georgia (and elsewhere) pick up leaf and limb debris every week. One city is Rome, GA. My daughter puts debris out on the street by her curb unbagged, and the city picks it up every week.
We do pay plenty of taxes in Athens, and the city needs to consider that we are not asking for the impossible: an additional truck and drivers making at least $30 an hour.
Theresa Cullen
Athens
Athens Is Too Noisy
I live near Epps Bridge Parkway between Tawnyberry Drive and Timothy Road, a dense residential area. Nearly every day and night a few wannabe Nascar drivers troll back and forth on Epps Bridge Parkway. These few are disturbing the peace and are a nuisance. I can’t speak for the other homeowners in the area, but I’m incensed that these few constantly invade my space with their noise.
I know there will be road noise, ambulances, police cars, airplanes. These types of vehicles don’t cruise the parkway for hours, beginning in the wee hours of the morning and into the wee hours of the night. These are understandable and accepted sounds. Loud noise is different. Willful and targeted noise is different. There is no security system I know of to prevent this type of home invasion. It needs to be stopped at the source.
The police could/should cite this inconsiderate behavior and truly do a service to the public as peace officers. Our daily lives don’t have to be disrupted in this manner.
Barbara Blount
Athens
Trump’s FBI Purge Is Dangerous
In case some readers are not up to date on current developments, President Donald Trump is now in the process of identifying everyone in the Department of Justice and the FBI who was involved in the investigation and/or prosecution of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists so that they can be fired, and he can replace them with his own loyalists. Trump has already fired a dozen top-tier officials at the FBI, and is collecting the names of any and all FBI agents who had any role whatsoever in the investigation and prosecution of those who attacked the Capitol. President Trump is placing both the Department of Justice and the FBI under his personal control to exact vengeance and retribution against all the hundreds or even thousands of FBI agents who, acting in accordance with the law, investigated the insurrection and obtained the conviction of those who attempted the violent overthrow of our government. The situation is absolutely clear, and the danger to the nation is more than obvious.
Bruce Menke
Athens
Trump Isn’t Solving Problems
I didn’t vote for Trump. However, I listened to Trump’s inauguration speech because I wanted to see what he would say about significant issues facing working families. I’ve also observed his actions thus far.
Our health-care system is broken and wildly expensive. Not one word from Trump nor action taken to address this crisis. We pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, and one out of four Americans is unable to afford the prescriptions that their doctors prescribe. Nothing from Donald Trump or Rep. Mike Collins on the high cost of medications.
We have a major housing crisis in America. We all know it, yet in his inaugural address, not one word was devoted to it. Nor has he signed an executive order empowering Elon Musk to address this issue facing families. Collins remains ignorant of the housing crisis.
During his speech, Trump didn’t have one word to say about how we are going to address the crisis of climate change. Extreme weather disturbances and natural disasters are taking place all across the U.S. With his and Collins’ “climate change is a hoax” mindset, Georgians can expect weather disturbances and disasters to increase in destruction and cost.
Since his inaugural speech, I have heard nothing from Trump, Musk or Collins addressing health care, housing or climate change—issues that affect working families. Instead, they’re more concerned about agencies’ DEI programs. Well folks, removing what’s offensive to the eye doesn’t do anything about what you face every day.
Peggy Perkins
Winder
Trump’s Executive Orders
President Donald J. Trump, acting without legal authority and in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States, signed more than 200 pieces of paper he called “executive orders.” In those pieces of paper, he purported to shutter federal agencies, fire thousands of federal employees and suspend federal funding, all of which had been authorized by law. Some residents of U.S. House District 10 seem to think this is a great idea.
There are residents of our congressional district who seem to not care that the Department of Education provides 26,000,000 healthy meals to school children; USAID saves millions of people who would have starved, is a cornerstone of American diplomacy and buys $2.1 billion dollars of farm products from farmers, including Georgians; Federal Aviation Administration employees are vital to safe operation of airports serving millions of Americans; Federal investments in renewable energy fight fossil fuel driven climate catastrophes, create thousands of good paying jobs and include $1 billion dollars in funding Georgia infrastructure; Federal law enforcement agents and judges protect our border from violent criminals and suppliers of deadly drugs; the CDC provides crucial scientific research that protects us from the constant, evolving threat of deadly disease; or that federal employees fight those who poison our air and water and protect us from workplace injury and death.
So why, exactly, does anyone in Congressional District 10, and anyone anywhere within our United States, think it is a great idea to gut our federal government and destroy the very agencies and agents that protect us? Do you care?
Shelbey Alexander
Winder
Fight Back Against Trump
Editor’s Note: District 8 Athens-Clarke County Commissioner Carol Myers submitted the text of a speech she gave at a women’s march on Mar. 8.
As a mother, grandmother, sister, friend, teacher, elected official, woman and human being, I’m tired of, so tired, from these first six weeks of the Trump regime. But I refuse to let Trump and Elon and their team take away our joy. We have to be here for each other—to support each other, to stand up for what’s right.
We are living in the most critical moment of my 66 years. The America I knew all these years was not perfect by any means, but there were certain morals and values that were part of that America that I assumed would always be there: Creating a world where we strive to treat people equally, where we value diversity and inclusion; where we stand for human rights; where we fund a social support system and social security that helps the poor, the elderly and everyday working people; where freedoms of speech and religion are the norm; where scientific research and academic freedoms are valued; where climate change is real, and we work hard to stop it; where we stand by our allies in support of democracies; where a woman’s body is hers to control.
I turn around, and the world has changed. Trump and his MAGA fan club, along with his buddy Musk, have changed everything.
My daughter in Canada tells me of family and friends there boycotting American goods, but also worried about bombs from America and skirmishes at the borders. These are their fears. How can we do this to our neighbors?
I have young friends doing important work in the federal government keeping our water clean and working on the energy transition. One has lost her job, and the other is living day-to-day fearing that their job will be next on the chopping block.
Since Jan. 20 I open up my phone daily to new chaos—the dismantling of USAID, attacks on our transgender friends and immigrants, the abandonment of Ukraine, the rejection of the clean energy transition, the pardoning of the Jan. 6 violent attackers on our democracy. The list is endless.
For the first time in our country’s history, we have a president turning his back on democracy and making friends with authoritarianism. And when Trump talked to congress Tuesday night, he didn’t say anything about the biggest crisis I hear about here in City Hall—affordable housing. This is not just a local issue, but a national crisis that should be forefront in Washington. Sixty percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Yet we have a team of oligarchs working with our American president to reduce taxes on the rich. Where are our priorities? Again and again, he’s making the victims into the villains, and the villains into the victims.
I am going to end with words Bernie Sanders shared this week that meant so much to me:
“Despair is not an option. Giving up is not acceptable. And none of us have the privilege of hiding under the covers. The stakes are just too high.”
Let us never forget. Real change only occurs when ordinary people stand up against oppression and injustice, and fight back. If we stand together and not let them divide us up by the color of our skin or where we were born or our religion or sexual orientation; if we bring our people together around an agenda and values that work for the many and not the few, we will win.
I close my eyes and think of my four grandchildren. I think of all our grandchildren. What other choice is there but to fight back?
Carol Myers
Athens
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