Reject Sanctuary City declaration
I am asking the Common Council to vote no on Kingston as a Sanctuary City at their Jan. 10 meeting.
We are a nation of laws and rules and we have a process whereby any person can enter this country legally and/or become a citizen. We do not have the liberty to pick and choose the laws and rules we want to obey. If we elect to not follow laws that are inconvenient to us then we have started down a path that leads to the destruction of our orderly society.
If the idea of a “sanctuary city” was to encourage and assist residents in starting the process of being here legally and, guide them through the process, I would support the idea. Rewrite the MOA in that context and put it before us again for consideration. This would not be turning our backs to anyone, just helping them live by the same rules and protections us legal residents do. We enjoy many freedoms in this country and if an illegal resident finds all this too burdensome, they have another freedom — the freedom to go back to the country they came from.
Ronald Dietl
Kingston
The dark of the matter
I’ve followed the interesting dispatches from Bob Berman’s column on astronomy and the persistence of consciousness, and the several letters from readers on that topic, with great puzzlement. Finally, I realized that the “Dark Matter” making up the majority of the universe is explicable: It’s the residue of thoughts from right wingers. Zillions and zillions of them, from way back. How else to understand their published and private buffoonery?
For instance, there’s a letter from one of them who chides Obama’s followers for his “getting nothing done these past eight years.” The writer, one of those contributors to the billowing Dark Matter Club, makes no mention of the Republican Cabal that was issued on Obama’s inauguration, for him to fail. The Dark Matter writer doesn’t want to know that as recently as this year, his associates in the Dark Matter Club refused to honor their Constitutional responsibility by ignoring the president’s role in voting up or down on his suggestion for a Supreme Court justice. I’m not a big fan of Obama, but the Dark Matter gang is even more out in left field than the mysteries of the universe.
I suggest that a celebration be held, that the discovery of what Dark Matter truly is be added to the accumulating accomplishments of our understanding and freedom from ignorance. As for the Dark Matterists, laughter is the only solution, but don’t ever turn your back on them.
Jay Wenk
Woodstock
Ahoy!
The hungry vultures are flocking to Washington, D.C., eager to feed on the rotting flesh of the American Dream.
The snarling jackals are gathering in statehouses across the country, hoping for a slice of that good ol’ Trump pie to go with their indefensible assault on human and civil rights.
The slimy bottom feeders are salivating at the thought of the impending feeding frenzy.
The banquet table is set for the billionaires, bankers and bigots who are wetting their pants over the gilded gluttony to come.
Iceberg dead ahead. And we are all either passengers or prisoners aboard this ship of fools.
Gary Maurer
Willow
Threat to security
I am writing this email as spokesperson of the #CultureShock10k Activist Organization NYS. It is my option to address the fact that City of Kingston wants to make this a sanctuary for illegal immigrants. Our organization does not agree with this motion. We realize that it is a threat to national and local security. It is a threat to public safety and we will advocate and protest against this. We do not want to use this city as a sanctuary for other illegal activities including illegal immigration. We are also interested in recovering unaccounted millions of dollars that are lost through illegal immigration activities. We will like to call this process loss prevention. It is detrimental to the local economy, taxation in New York State, the real estate sectors of our communities, and contributes to higher crime rates, and is a risk to public safety. We thank you for your cooperation and if you have any questions, please direct them to our complaint department.
David Paul
Kingston
Join the family! 
