Education

Battle over books

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The recent controversy in the Penfield school district is a microcosm of a growing trend in the country: challenges to books in public school libraries.

Letters

Trump, Musk are looting the government, rifling through personal information

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President Trump, who was convicted of 34 felonies, and Elon Musk with Republicans acceding, are looting the government to line their own pockets with massive tax cuts and steering federal contracts their way. Mr. Musk and his companies were under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Justice, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Trade Commission and USAID prior to President Trump’s illegal dismissal of 18 Inspector Generals. The job of the Inspector Generals is to root out waste, fraud and abuse and they are accountable to Congress and the American people. Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, (DOGE), is not responsible to Congress or to the American people. They are not vetted; they could be foreign terrorist for all anyone knows. Mr. Trump fired the Inspector Generals because they were accountable to the American people.  

The budget proposed by the Republicans entails $4.5 trillion tax cut mostly for the wealthy and large corporations with $2 trillion in spending cuts that will jeopardize the health care and food programs for poor and middle-class Americans. It is important to remember that during President Biden’s administration, the Democrats dramatically reduced the deficits and the ratio of debt to gross domestic product while creating the fastest recovery in decades and strengthening the social safety net, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the Republican budget proposal would increase the debt by “nearly $4 trillion.” Also, they write that the Republican’s budget “economic assumptions are overly aggressive,” meaning that they expect the budget proposals would do more damage to the middle class and increase the debt by a lot more.    

Cutting jobs and government agencies randomly with no purpose or plan is wasteful. Furthermore, Mr. Musk’s DOGE group is rifling through Americans personal information through the IRS, the SSI and the Treasury Department. They do not have any clearance or Congressional authority. I want readers to know that Congresswoman Claudia Tenney not only accepts this invasion of your privacy, the loss of government safety net and jobs and the looting of your tax dollars but she praises this behavior.  

William FineBrockport

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Letters

The real-life impact of our current government

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I received the following a few days ago from a person I know well, a Rochester native, who is bright and very dedicated to their work as a public servant. They live in Maryland now and work for a federal agency within the U.S. government providing essential services to people of all ages, and doing research to make sure the services are as effective as possible. It is critical that truth, including real stories affecting people, be spread about the processes and impacts of recent actions by our government. We need truth to inform our actions. I want to share with you what has been going on with so many Americans recently who work for the federal government.