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Hope for the holidays
Though there is cause for hope, it wasn’t enough to save the 2020 holiday season.
Covid-19 dimmed the usual glow of the Festival of Lights. The candles on the Chanukah menorah burned less brightly with only two voices singing the blessings and no children expressing their glee over the gelt and other gifts. And I hear of fewer Christmas trees, with fewer family members around them and fewer presents beneath them.
Still, there are things to be grateful for, developments to be hopeful about. Though no one has been immune to Covid’s emotional pain, most of us have escaped — so far, and with ongoing vigilance — its physical ravages. And vaccines are on the way, offering cause for hope that Chanukah and Christmas 2021 will be vast improvements on the 2020 models.
So, of course, is the 2021-model White House cause for hope. But Donald Trump has another month to wreak havoc. Indeed, while writing this letter, I received this New York Times email alert: “The Trump administration is rushing to approve a last wave of mining and energy projects on public land before president-elect Joe Biden takes office.”
Trump has been “rushing” — while dodging the onrush of Covid deaths, or any mention of them — to commit all sorts of misdeeds besides undoing environmental regulations. They include, but are hardly limited to, undermining belief in our election process, despite clear evidence that it worked; ordering a spree of executions, despite appeals for mercy and in one case despite a likely wrongful conviction; pardoning political cronies (and soon, probably, himself and the rest of his family), despite clear criminality; and waving a blood-red flag in front of Iran, despite the incoming administration’s hopes for a new start with that country.
And he’s done all this with nary a whimper of protest from his underlings. The one-time party of Abraham Lincoln is today a slave to Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell.
Two of their most loyal slaves are David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are seeking reelection in the January 5 U.S. Senate runoff in Georgia. Google their names and see the thinking and policy-making uniformity among the four Republicans.
Then Google their opponents, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, and see the differences.
Then dig into your social consciences (and perhaps your pockets, and/or your time) and make Ossoff and Warnock the 49th and 50th Democratic votes in the Senate and Kamala Harris, as VP, the 51st, tie-breaking vote — the GOP stranglehold-breaking vote.
And then we may really have cause for hope!
Tom Cherwin
Saugerties
Burpless meat
We were both raised in middle-class families during the Forties and Fifties when meat was equated with good nutrition and good parenting. But when we left New York City “to live off the land,” we pledged to limit meat at our house to animals that we had raised and slaughtered — which made meat-eating a much more conscious experience.
When Dan started CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farms, he always encouraged the members to participate in the “harvesting” of the animals. Culinary Institute classes were also regularly invited to hog and chicken slaughters. Dan wanted everyone to appreciate and bear witness to the awesome concept of killing an animal for our sustenance.
Recently, a new concern about meat eating has come to the fore. Ruminants (cows, sheep and goats), belch methane (CH 4) as part of their digestion process. In fact, a third of all methane emitted comes from domestic farm animals!
The good news is that because of the need to cut emissions of greenhouse gases (methane is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide) many scientists are studying ways to mitigate methane burps. They have found that a red seaweed, called asparagopsis, does wonders even in small quantities to cut down methane emissions.
But even if you are a meat-eater, do so with conscious moderation.
Dan and Ann Guenther
New Paltz
The minions are back
Just when I thought the members of the Woodstock Town Board were moving on the correct path, it appears that [town supervisor Bill] McKenna’s minions have returned. I recently submitted my 19th application to fill the current vacancy on the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) to the town board, which was rejected. The town=board members are aware of the knowledge and experience I gained after spending 15 years as a member and chair of the ZBA; if they spoke to some of the current ZBA members who believe I would be an asset, I am sure they would have appointed me to fill the vacancy.
If you see any of the town-board members, ask them why my application was rejected. If they answer truthfully, you too will believe the minions are back.
Howard Harris
Woodstock
No mandates
The Covid-19 vaccine should never be mandated. Each person must choose what goes into his/her body. In the United States, millions have already contracted the virus and almost certainly have antibodies plus T-cell immunity. This also means that we should boycott any institution or industry that attempts to mandate the vaccines, such as colleges or the travel industry. Millions will choose to vaccinate. That is enough.
Additionally, most medications and treatments are contraindicated for someone. We are all unique. For example, after the mass rollout of the Pfizer vaccine in the UK, it was determined that those with a history of serious allergic reactions should not receive the vaccine.
The vaccine is also not indicated for those persons under the age of 16. But what about certain 20-year-olds? When one reaches the age of 17, does that mean this vaccine is automatically right for them?
We must each make our own decisions as to what we put into our bodies.
Lisa Jobson
Lake Hill
Cuck-coup cluck…
I totally love the irony of the states’-rights” cult suddenly treading all over other states’ rights to throw out the votes in four states on behalf of Trump, a very sore loser. I pray those who enabled this to happen in our beautiful country can see the damage, greed, selfishness, hate, deceit, corruption, dishonesty and division that they’ve brought to us. I think many have predicted this could happen — that our greatest threats would be internal: Sinclair Lewis for one, in his novel It Can’t happen Here saw the possibility.
I didn’t vote for Trump, and I dislike him immensely (I found him to be ignorant and shallow). And I have no respect for his wife because she supported his birther movement against Obama and turned her back on his cyber-bullying tactics. And although I’m pretty shockproof having lived on this planet a number of years, this man managed to shock me with his flagrant disregard for the law, the Constitution and the traditions of this country.
What he’s doing now in trying to overthrow a legal election is treason. The attorneys general of 17 states and 126 elected congressional Republicans who supported and signed on to subvert our election, definitely crossed the line for an autocratic overthrow on Trump’s behalf. They capitulated in a failed coup and should all be fired — at the very least — for their traitorous behavior.
Should we crave reckoning? To not seek justice, invites a repeat. If they can be tried for what they’ve done, then let it happen. We should all be tired of wanting the GOP to step up. They deserve no mercy for what they are trying to do to the very fabric of this country.
We need to get back to normal, with the question being, what’s the best way? If we stand together, we can change anything and everything. No matter how hard the far right tries to destroy us, we always come back and we come back stronger than before. That’s why they’re so afraid of us. It’s called We the People.
Oh, and Merry Christmas t’all because the Electoral College vote has been officially ratified — a procedural milestone to recognize the Biden/Harris ticket as our next administration leaders. Yes, democracy held its ground!
Neil Jarmel
West Hurley
How to restore our health
In the days following Joe Biden’s election to the presidency, Donald Trump’s diehard supporters, patriots all, have been described as a cult, echoing their leader’s claims of election fraud and conspiracy, willing to destroy democracy. A study by a Yale educator and violence researcher, James Kimmel, suggests a reason why they might be so willing to drink their metaphorical Kool Aid (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/12/trump-grievance-addiction-444570).
Kimmel notes that imaging studies of aggrieved individuals show an activation of “the same neural reward circuitry as narcotics.” When such an individual senses perceived wrongs, resentment fuels biological cravings we would associate with addiction. The addict can’t let go of the resentment; seeking revenge, ceaselessly, is the predictable outcome.
Sound like someone you know? Indeed, Kimmel does speculate that Trump’s seeming obsessions with perceived enemies, even when the behavior works against his own interests, are familiar to those who have addicts in their lives.
And his cult? The millions of his voters whose devotion is resistant to reality, will continue to get their fix from the news outlets that even now keep beating the drums for an election reversal.
The rest of us? How many have claimed that Trump’s defeat has exorcised his agitations from our brains, and we will henceforth ignore any news item with the word “Trump” in it? Really? Will we be able to resist?
As a health professional, Kimmel concludes by saying that we should be compassionate toward those who are in the grip of the Trump addiction, including the man himself. Perhaps we might have compassion for all of us. If a brain image from the outer atmosphere could be taken of the entire nation, it might show, on December 14, a patient ruled by their biochemistry. Our challenge is to discover the treatment to restore our health.
Tom Denton
Highland
Capitalism’s quarantine only benefits the wealthy
“Essential,” 2020’s word of the year, which means there is nothing else like it to replace it with, isn’t getting the respect it deserves. The situation this country faces with a record number of unemployed workers and impending evictions that looms across the country; our government writes additional bigger stimulus checks for the rich, but neglects to write a second stimulus check for those people who need it most. American culture benefits the wealthy in a never-ending circle, from the packaging of products to how we’re socialized into buying, buying some more and settling for materialism. We become subjects of our products, while services benefit only the wealthy and rich. In our culture: profit, cheap labor, competition between corporations in America are put above everything and everyone else.
Making a doctor’s appointment caters toward those with money, rather than those who need it most. By providing a stimulus for the rich, but not the unemployed, America has chosen to provide financial security for some at the cost of health security for all. Additionally, in the New York Times’ article, “Trump Administration Passed on Chance to Secure More of Pfizer Vaccine”, it says, “The bulk of the global supply of vaccines has already been claimed by wealthy countries like the United States, … leading to criticism that people in low- and middle-income countries will be left behind.” In order to receive medical care, at minimum, there needs to be access to health insurance, transportation, a phone or a laptop. Trickle down doesn’t work, but be that as it may, people need to have money in order to use these services.
Hazard pay only provided monetary relief for a short time during the beginning of the pandemic. Even the unlivable Federal minimum wage, $7.25, is socialized and engrained in our culture as normal. According to the MIT calculator, “A single-mother with two children earning … $7.25 per hour needs to work 135 hours per week … to earn a living wage.” In New York State, the minimum wage is higher, at $11.80, but this is still not a livable wage, even as it increments yearly toward $15. Some essential workers are still required, by law, to wear masks and get their temperatures taken every day to ensure safety at the workplace, during this pandemic. Workers after exposure, spend two weeks in quarantine, only to come back to work where their hazard pay was taken away a couple of months after March.
The “American Dream” is a systematic enigma that excuses abuse from the bustling workaholic perfectionism that has become America, or the American dream, since the 1900’s Manifest Destiny and to the Reagan era. This is Capitalism. Capitalism’s fundamental requirement for constant growth has latched onto plastic production, profit or cost effectiveness and “unskilled labor,” based upon the philosophy that these factors or items are disposable and replaceable. This is during a time period where Breonna Taylor, who’s murder is still seeking justice, retail workers and medical staff, are categorized as “essential.” Our environment, community and economy faces devastation because of this over value of Capitalism’s supply and demand and competition. We undervalue human rights and life. America would look different if all people were as valued as plastic and corporate profit.
Rebecca Augustine
New Paltz
Our emotional lives
I am pinned to my home in quarantine, where information streaming into my space begins challenging the banks of the river of my mind. I stumble on to a speech, in an old film by Charlie Chaplin, called The Great Dictator. After viewing it, I began feeling what is happening today is not really new.
This is what I heard Charlie say: “Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little.”
In today’s world, information is a few keyboard clicks away. Answers to our questions are no longer worked out by making mistakes and correcting them. Rather, if we can spell Google, in seconds we can know the difference between a black-crested titmouse and a Carolina chickadee. Right now, in three minutes I was able to find out the difference between pyrite and gold. In the year 1557 the English Explore Martin Frobisher sailed to Baffin island in Labrador, Canada. There, he loaded 200 tons of gold ore and hauled it back to England, only to find out it was fools’ gold.
What is instant access to knowledge doing to us? What has happened to the learning curve and all the secondary education we discover trying to find out the true answers to our questions? What is occurring to our emotional selves, which in the past we used to confront our frustration of not knowing. How will we develop patience in order to find our conclusion? If we don’t cultivate persistence, will we give up before we reach insights?
The answers to these questions may be why emotions are critical to living a fuller life. Without cultivating our emotional life, we stunt the maturing of our character. We can hold an abundance of facts, but we often lack the emotional insights on what to do with them. Our conclusions cannot be made with facts only. We must have emotional connective tissue between truth and our actions.
Facts without emotion have allowed complications to become the new way to ward off investigations of moral validity.
For example, our justice system is being used to make moral decisions about governmental policy. Attorneys spinning legal terms and using jargon that holds no relationship to our normal lives, causes the public to dismiss decisions made, or accept questionable politicians’ interpretations of those decisions.
Today, fools’ gold has been used to deceive poor Americans. It’s heavy and shines, but in the end it only leaves our hands dirty. We are learning that the more complicated something is, the less likely anyone will attempt to dismantle it to understand it.
In America’s stock market, we see complication sorting out wealth and poverty. The wealthy hire those who can run their computers, handle their legal entanglements, and make them complicated machines for production. The poor become victims to a morass of convoluted laws, a struggle to understand without an attorney. The wealthy hire attorneys to slow and more complicate the labyrinthine justice system. Then they hire the poor to load their ships with real gold to be sailed out of our country.
Larry Winters
New Paltz
Wishing Jen Metzger well
We members of the Voting Reform Committee of Ulster Activists wish to take this opportunity to thank State Senator Jen Metzger publicly for her consistent support of the cornerstone of our democracy — full participation for all of us in the democratic process.
Good governance depends on our having the opportunity to elect officials who are not beholden to special interests. To this end, Jen Metzger ran her 2018 and 2020 campaigns without accepting donations from corporations or LLCs. The first bill she introduced when she took office in January 2019 was a bill to ban all corporate campaign contributions. She also supported bills to limit LLC political spending and to ban political fundraisers in Albany while the legislature is in session. For this we thank her.
Citizens must be able to participate in elections. Senator Metzger sponsored the bill (which passed almost unanimously) to expand primary election voting hours to align with general election voting hours. She also supported the CURE legislation, requiring voters be given the opportunity to correct certain deficiencies in their absentee ballots so their votes may be counted. For this we thank her.
The Covid-19 pandemic presented challenges to all aspects of our lives in 2020, including voting. Senator Metzger sponsored legislation that eased the effects of the pandemic by allowing electronic application for absentee ballots, extending the deadline for absentee ballots to be postmarked and extending the definition of illness in applying for an absentee ballot to include the risk of contracting or spreading a disease. For this we thank her.
We are honored to have been represented in Albany by Senator Metzger, and we wish her well in her future endeavors.
Paul Auer
Doris Chorny
Elizabeth Lee
Howard Leibovitch
Carol Nolan
Mindy Ross
Ulster Activists
Tax breaks for investors
Why does The Kingstonian need a local Pilot if it’s in a federal opportunity zone?
In late 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed into law by President Donald Trump included a new federal incentive: Opportunity Zones. The program offers tax breaks for capital gains reinvestment within federal opportunity zones. Four opportunity zones were established in Ulster County. Three are in Kingston and one is in Ellenville.
The opportunity-zone program provides three tax reduction incentives: 1) temporary deferral of taxes on previously earned capital gains, 2) basis step-up of previously earned capital gains, and 3) permanent exclusion of taxable income on new gains for investments held for at least ten years.
For example, the ten percent step-up in basis” would save opportunity zone fund investors approximately $18 million if $60 million is invested with proceeds from prior eligible gains and held for at least five years, assuming a combined state and federal capital gain tax rate of approximately 30 percent.
But the more significant opportunity-zone advantage could be derived from the permanent exclusion of capital gains taxes on new capital gains for investments held for at least ten years. Opportunity zone fund investors stand to save several millions of dollars. For example, if The Kingstonian project is sold for $126 million after appreciating three percent annually over 25 years, the capital gains bill on this amount of appreciation, ordinarily, would be $19.8 million. Using a two percent inflation rate, $19.8 million in 25 years would be worth $12.1 million in today’s dollars. If the project appreciated four percent annually, the unpaid capital gains in today’s dollars would be $18.3 million and $30.1 million in 2046 dollars.
It appears that The Kingstonian developers are positioned to benefit significantly from this federal tax reduction program.
Tim Rogers
Local, county and federal taxpayer
New Paltz
Remote learning not working
It has been brought to my attention how Covid remote learning is still not working for most of the population. I have heard that almost half of all families are struggling with this remote learning, and that children are losing sleep and their health because of remote learning.
I have tried to ask for paperwork instead of the remote, and without any luck to get that help. My child has a learning disability and I have not gotten the correct help her team should have given her by now. I have heard from other sources that this is happening to other families.
It is not just the single low-income families struggling, it is also the two-family incomes. Parents are having a hard time getting all their children doing remote and there is usually one child falling through. I’ve been reading stories from different states about children being home alone. They are tarring at a screen, watching You Tube and who knows what. It’s taking them to 1 a.m. or later to complete assignments. This is not a set up for children. “Teams” is an office manager never intended for schooling. Are we expecting are children to become office workers now?
I really plead for all the teachers to get a paid school-year leave and that remote should be shut down. Please let the children repeat a grade or let the teachers be there to discuss feelings at this time with their students. The connection is getting lost between teacher and student and even parents. This pandemic is not a time to push harder and break connections, but a time of togetherness as a family in our homes to be safe.
Peace for the holidays.
Sasha Sun
Kingston
One more time
Where did I get the survival rate of 99.995% of Covid victims? A few weeks ago when I wrote the letter, the CDC had announced that they were estimating that 53-million Americans had contacted Covid but many had never been counted due to either no or mild symptoms and so hadn’t sought medical help and thus went uncounted.
Using the deaths at that time and following the science, the CDC’s 53-million number you come up with the 99.995%. South Korea has been praised for their adherence to mask wearing and other Covid-prevention protocols with almost 100% compliance.
I read last week that they had set a new national record for new cases. Given their compliance, shouldn’t they be doing better than last spring when the world was caught unaware, especially since they are a small country with controllable borders accessible only by sea or air? Europe is setting new records so if masks were effective, why is it worse now than it was in March when we started wearing mask? Could it be masks are ineffective and it’s because viruses are usually worse in fall and winter.
Before Covid, the only time I had hospital workers wearing masks around me was during surgery, not pre- or post-operation.
Governor Andy Cuomo is going to close restaurants and bars again even though tracking studies show only three percent can be traced to them and the majority come from in-home gatherings. So by closing public places, he’ll force more people into house parties.
Meanwhile, Mayor Bill de Blasio is encouraging people to go back to riding the subways since the MTA is losing money. Having been a subway rider and eaten in NYC restaurants, I can say the restaurants are cleaner, even more so now that they sanitize the tables after each use, unlike the subways, which are filthy. Then why would you expect common sense from either of them.
If the vaccines work, we’ll see Covid cases recede, but the financial damage to individuals and some businesses will never recover. And many schoolchildren, especially the poor, will never catch up with what they lost and the negative effects may last their lifetimes.
Of course arrogant Andy Cuomo will take no responsibly for any of this, same as with his nursing home disaster. I hear he’s writing another book, the working title is “Humility and How I Acquired it.”
Now that the Electoral College has voted. Trump supporters should stop fighting the results, it’s Biden’s election — he stole it fair and square and I’m not the one wearing Dumbo’s feather.
John Habersberger
New Paltz
Government incompetence
It is true that man has not succeeded in inventing any better system than our Founders gave us. Our system is still flawed and good people need to contribute to its improvement. Supervisor Neil Bettez of New Paltz recently used another government agency to help justify the ruination of an old neighborhood in New Paltz to make possible a better bicycle route connecting New York City to Buffalo.
We can do better: “attention must be paid” wrote a man with no experience in sales but appealed to common bias in Death of a Salesman. Locals all know Henry W. DuBois as a way to bypass Main Street, quicker, despite four stop signs, actually too narrow to be called more than a lane. And steep, though really good bikers with 21 gears can get up it okay.
But the people biking slower, and those others on foot — some pushing kids in strollers — all take up space the cars need to safely drive 44 feet per second. Gas, brake! Gas, brake! Climate and deer, dogs on leashes and cell-phoners be damned. I’m late to a very important date! And damn the setting sun, the cross streets, I am a better driver than most, “survey says!”
So government experts, ignore Google Maps/ Do not even consider the wider, less steep, stop sign and cross-street free, parallel alternative called Shivertown Road. Not one yard longer for those intent to ride from the East River to Niagara Falls. You are in charge!
Paul Nathe
New Paltz
Join the family! 
