Today's letters: Readers comment on littering, the Choose Home Care Act and Nazis
Stop littering
Litter. It's the biggest unnecessary evil. It's the easiest problem not to have. Yet, in the United States, it's a very big one. People drop trash on the ground and throw it out of their car windows. You can see it everywhere.
We love to wave our flags and sing “God Bless America” on the Fourth of July, but if we really love our country, it's time to show our love by keeping it clean. It's a new year. If you're a litterbug, make a resolution to kick the habit. Hold onto your waste until you get to a trash can and help keep America beautiful.
Karen Tieman, Ocala
Support ‘Choose Home Care Act’
The continuing COVID-19 pandemic has shown the limitations and risks of skilled nursing facilities — as well as the importance of extended care at home beyond the pandemic. There is a better way to care for seriously ill Medicare beneficiaries after hospital discharge.
Fortunately, bipartisan lawmakers in Congress introduced legislation that would expand home-based care options for seniors in our community. This legislation, the Choose Home Care Act, would establish an additional patient-centered home health option called Choose Home to help meet seniors' comprehensive care needs.
Choose Home would offer extended care services in the comfort and convenience of a patient's home after hospitalization instead of requiring them to stay in a skilled nursing facility. It also would provide support, training and education for family caregivers.
As we begin the new year, I hope our state’s lawmakers in Congress will resolve to support this important bipartisan legislation.
Heather Cole, Ocala
The big lies
I’d like to comment on a recent letter that compared the Nazis and what happened in the 1920s and ’30s with today’s Democratic Party. It contained several gross misreadings and misrepresentations of what actually happened.
While the Nazi Party was officially the National Socialist Democratic Workers Party, there was very little socialist or workers about it. Hitler made this very clear on the “Night of the Long Knives” (June 30-July 1, 1934), when he murdered elements of his own party that had promoted the “socialist” part of National Socialism.
By any reading of history, the Nazi Party was an extreme right-wing jingoistic cult that came to power by virtue of promoting a big lie and a cultlike figure (Adolph Hitler) who was goin to “save” Germany. Sound familiar? The big lie, of course, was that, rather than losing the war militarily, Germany was actually winning WWI and had been “stabbed in the back” by Jews who had undermined the war effort and surrendered to the Allies. The Nazis promoted this lie over and over until it became widely believed, in spite of there being absolutely no evidence. The Nazis came to power by democratic means. Once there, however, all democratic principles were abolished, and there was no way to remove them from power.
Today we have members of the Republican Party promoting their own big lie — that the 2020 election was fraudulent and that Donald Trump was the “real” winner. This in spite of there being numerous recounts and court cases that show that Joe Biden won both the popular and electoral votes. The current Republican Party has abandoned any political philosophy or morals to follow the ever changing whims of a would-be dictator who could never be defeated in an election.
Sound familiar?
Loren J. Eastmer, Ocala
Write to us
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This article originally appeared on Ocala Star-Banner: Stop littering, Choose Home Care Act, and fascism | Reader letters
