Right about the town justices

To the editor:

I strongly approve of the editorial on “No truth, no justice” and greatly appreciate your writing it. You lay out very clearly what appears to be an arbitrary decision on the part of the Bethel Town Board toward an elected official. I also applaud your recognition of the Rohrs’ letter, which the town board refused to address.

Please include me among those who believe the Bethel Town Board does indeed have an obligation to explain the difference in payment of judges. Thank you also for your excellent coverage of the gas drilling situation.

Mary Ann Burke

What do we do now?

To the editor:

Marcia Nehemiah has asked a provocative question at the conclusion of her column “In Our Hands” on the lack of leadership initiative on the climate. Life as we know it has an increasingly questionable future. It is too late to turn the big ship around to mitigate the effects of climate change in an effective way. Yet, there is still much we can, and possibly should do.

Perhaps the single most compassionate act left to slow environmental degradation is to amend the human appetite for meat consumption. People are characterized by their adaptability to change. Twenty times more land and water will be available when a vegetarian diet is adopted. I have been at it for 40 years and am still healthy.

Meat consumption surpasses transportation as the single greatest contributor to carbon release into the atmosphere. Population control, renewable energy management and closed resource loops are coincidental challenges facing business and government. Individual behavior is key to quality of life, and will affirm grassroots desires to foment real change.

For example, ongoing peace protests during the Vietnam War era demonstrated how perseverance can work. Howard Zinn, author of “The People’s History of the United States,” reminded us recently in an interview with Charlie Rose that all significant change in government policy stems from leadership by individuals who are motivated to initiate change from the grassroots level. Being compassionate toward others is effective if it is directed in equal measure toward oneself. There are generations arising at our feet and a diverse biosphere, yet intact. It behooves us to be kind and do our best to reduce suffering. We bear the responsibility to live our lives with dignity.

Will Conway

The enemy of the better

To the editor:

One defense against trying to improve the healthcare reform bill is taken from Voltaire: “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” If this were really a debate between the perfect and the good, a compromise would yield “the better.” But if the public option is out, a ban on insurance company monopolies is out, caps on insurance premiums are out and re-importation of drugs is out, while the forced-buy mandate under penalty of fine is in, we’re about to get “the worse.”

George Orwell would be the first to agree this cunning little puzzle proverb needs to be analyzed. It was used in response to arguments in favor of single payer/Medicare for All, which were cast as “the perfect,” the absolute, the idealistic, the unachievable, while “the good” was the acceptable, the achievable, the good enough, as signified by the familiar all-American commercial insurance we’ve had for generations. “The good” is the ultimate warm and fuzzy word, leaving an echoing obverse of “the bad” in the back of one’s brain.

Voltaire’s expression polarizes two extreme positions without focusing on “the better,” in this case perhaps a hybrid commercial plan with a strong public option—something that won’t happen in part because we’ve made the possibility invisible in the very language of the debate. The subtext of this phrase casts “single payer” as the bad guy, while the commercial insurance industry is the familiar, “the good.” But how good can it be if it lacks competition, lacks premium controls, lets monopolies dominate the market, and refuses to allow negotiation of drug prices?

We let ourselves be bamboozled by media-political word games, leading us in the healthcare reform bill into a potentially enormous economic lurch. What’s wrong with us? Have we been too busy to pay attention? Or is the corruption among most Democrats in Washington (never mind the GOP) so thick we cannot penetrate it?

Both?