Letters to editor, 2/9

Arlington fire commissioner defends role, cites progress

This letter is in response to John Weisman’s Feb. 2 letter “Arlington Fire District reform a must to lower high costs.”

While he’s wrong about a lot, I agree with two things:

1. The Arlington Fire District (AFD) tax is higher than the town tax on our property tax bill. I’m glad he woke up to this. I’ve been talking about it publicly for more than six years. That’s why I ran for fire commissioner.

2. I got elected to make positive changes — and I have, too numerous to list here.

I thank the voters for allowing me the honor to serve as commissioner. The challenge I took to rein in AFD expenses is to correct decades of labor contract negotiations by prior boards that were unfavorable to taxpayers. Those chickens have come home to roost on the current board.

More than 90 percent of AFD’s budget is related to labor expense and the labor contract for career firefighters drives much of it. Contract negotiation was taken out of my reach for three years. Six days after, I was elected in December 2012 and before I took office in January, the sitting board rushed to extend the contract 10 months early, from October 2013 to October 2016.

Four members of that board are gone. The contract is up for negotiation now in 2016. I will continue to work on expense reduction to help taxpayers, while still providing the high quality emergency service that is delivered every day by the career employees and volunteers of the Arlington Fire District.

Jim Beretta

Poughkeepsie

Voters concerned with reproductive rights vie for Clinton

In an election where reproductive rights in this country are at stake, we need a president who will stand up for women and reproductive rights not only when it’s easy — but also when it’s hard.

That candidate is Democrat Hillary Clinton. Women cannot afford to take a back seat in this election. That is why the Planned Parenthood Mid-Hudson Valley Action Fund has endorsed Hillary Clinton.

Make no mistake about it. Reproductive health and rights will be a deciding issue in this election.

In Washington, D.C. and in statehouses across the country, women’s health will continue to face attacks.

The Supreme Court of the United States will be hearing the most important abortion case in a decade —where Roe v. Wade is at stake. And the 2016 presidential race has already seen women’s health and Planned Parenthood become a touchstone issue with every single GOP candidate pushing dangerous policies that would block patients from accessing care at Planned Parenthood.

This would disproportionately impact low-income women and women of color, ban safe, legal abortion, and cut insurance coverage of birth control.

The Republican field is the most extreme that we’ve seen in recent history and continues to believe that attacking women’s health is a winning campaign issue.

It’s not.

We need a candidate who will not only protect access to reproductive health care, but will push the needle forward. That candidate is Hillary Clinton!

Ruth-Ellen Blodgett

President and CEO

Planned Parenthood Mid-Hudson Valley Action Fund

Obama’s actions in Oval Office not unique to presidency

Jonah Goldberg’s Jan. 6 commentary entitled (“Obama’s presidency has paved way for Trump”) is intellectually and historically dishonest and continues to feed the right wing, racist feeling and actions that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has led, along with many others, for decades.

The Trump, Republican, right wing, populace presidential campaign didn’t need any help from President Obama to form its essential message that his presidency is “illegitimate” because he wasn’t born in America! Unfortunately, there are still those in America who believe the same way that Trump does — think of the Tea Party.

On the one hand, Trump followers are blinded by their sometimes explicit but mostly implicit racism. On the other, Goldberg seeks to ignore the historical record that Obama has only done what all presidents before him have done.

Namely, they have followed some laws, ignored quite a few, and violated quite a few as well. With few exceptions — Reagan, Nixon and Clinton — most of their enforcements, or not, of laws could not be attributed to them directly but rather the massive, but necessary, bureaucratic decisions carried out by the agencies of the U.S. government. How else do you run a country of now 300 million?

The answer is that you establish priorities consistent with your public pronouncements. In any case, the record thus far is that the Obama presidency has been relatively “scandal free.”

Jonah Goldberg is dishonest when he cites Obama’s practices as “precedents” when they are historically and intellectually not!

Joseph V. Williams

Poughkeepsie