Dear editor,
So, what do the Delegate Ballard and US Representative Griffith, the Trumpsie Twins, have for us lately? Medicaid and Medicare sleight of hand, energy foolishness, cell phones in schools, and health and innovation destruction. I’ll save support of sedition for another time.
Make the able-bodied work, they say. Guess what, they do. The Rural Health Transformation Program is inadequate by half to overcome the damage to rural health and hospitals that the Big Beautiful Rip off Bill steals from Medicaid and Medicare. No, steals from you! Did you know that most Medicaid and SNAP recipients are employed, 64% full or part-time or are caregivers (12%), in school (7%), or are disabled (10%). Well, Gary Silverman nailed this issue in his column in this newspaper. Oh, but the Trumpsie Twins say we can’t afford the increasingly “rampant federal debt and deficit.” However, we apparently can afford the tax break for the richer than rich to the tune of $2.0-4.0 trillion in added national debt. There are no clean legislative hands when it comes to deficit, but, just sayin’, the highest ever occurred under Trump. Medicare and Medicaid fraud is corporate and criminal, not everyday citizens. Fixing it is an enforcement and compliance issue, not skimming the innocent, so you can thump your chests over useless, needless, costly legislation—we are not fooled by these red herrings.
The Trumpsie Twins certainly do sing the fossil fuel tune. The Delegate’s piece on energy is bereft of anything useful. In America, we are for growth, innovation, the new ways into the future. Sure, you say, but the Twins do everything possible in the way of preventing a cleaner, cheaper future, by throwing up legislative road locks to renewable energy, taking away even minimal incentives to anything not coal, a known loser, oil, and gas. Why not the American way, boys? We, taxpayers and others pump $757 billion per year into fossil fuel subsidies. Federal money for renewables dependent on a free source of energy was $100 billion in 2024. Come on, man, you people just stole all the climate data so the models won’t be run and predictions will go unmade.
Cell phones in schools is just another diversion from the big steal of America. Of course, phones shouldn’t be on in class, but every school district had and has the ability and authority to put the cells away during school hours. Is this bill just to make the Delegate seem to look good, seem busy. Yep, more useless, non-issue bravado.
Finally, consider how people of this virtually seditious ilk are deleting investment in the future. I must assume Trumpsie Twins support firing a huge chunk of the smartest, most productive scientific, engineering, and health research workforce in government and academia the world has ever known. I further see that extorting universities and others out of legally formed contracts is just dandy. This to say nothing of the silence in the face of charlatans running this nation’s public health system and trying to do away with vaccine science.
John C. Nemeth
Former CEO & Exec. Dir., Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society
Christiansburg
