Midterm election is about looking to the future
This midterm election is not about relitigating the 2020 election, but to look to the future. The Democrats want to tie Republican conservative values to Trump. Trump brought our conservative values to the forefront, but those values are not his alone.
No matter how much our national debt grows — $35 trillion, $40 trillion or more — the Democrats will not stop spending. They conveniently forget Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal, the highest inflation rate at 9.1 percent in 40 years, higher food and energy prices, higher rent prices, rising crime rates and a border crisis. An Open Forum contributor questions the integrity of the Republican Party. The Democrats have their problems with integrity. Do we just forget about Hunter Biden’s laptop and the suspicious foreign payments to the Biden family?
Biden and the Democrats like to talk about “Trump’s Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. At the same time, the Democrats forget that “Russiagate” was utter nonsense. Aside from Trump’s personality and style, the Democrats found little to complain about before the pandemic hit. During the Trump administration, America gained 7 million new jobs, middle class income increased nearly $6,000, unemployment was at 3.5 percent (the lowest in a half-century), nearly 160 million Americans were employed, poverty rates for African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans were at record lows. As the Democrats railed, we enjoyed an unprecedented economic boom during the Trump administration.
The Democrats want to make the midterm election about Trump. They believe that voters will decide their votes about the past, not for candidates that will restore our energy independence, reduce inflation and build trust in our government. We have an opportunity to bring balance to Washington this November. It is time to fire Schumer and Pelosi!
Larry Roche, Windsor
Money available to district should be used to keep schools operating
I read with a sense of dismay the story that 12 of our schools had no air conditioning and six others had only partial cooling, which caused schools to close early. Our children have already fallen behind due to COVID closures, and now this.
The story states that it would cost a total of $80 million to fix the problem and implies another raise in taxes may be necessary. I would like to ask, before taxes are raised yet again, where is some of the money going that probably should be going toward this?
In a Feb. 18, 2022, Reporter-Herald article, the Thompson School District spoke of how they were going to spend the $26.5 million they received from COVID relief funding. That money was originally sold to us for “keeping schools open.” There is nothing in the proposed spending of that money for air handling (cooling) systems. Also, conspicuously missing in the current story is any mention of attempting to tap into the more than $141 million a year that is specifically earmarked for capital improvements in schools coming from the marijuana tax.
I will say: I do not attend school board meetings and have not “interviewed” anyone there about this problem. That said, it seems to me that keeping the schools open is a top priority in funding rather than the list of items in the article from Feb. 17, which included busing students to the Loveland airport for flight training. You cannot have those programs unless the doors are open first.
Before I ever vote for another tax increase, I will want to see the schools being capable of staying open in the spring and fall.
Bill Diershow, Loveland
