MOUNT VERNON –
Good Year
Dear Editor,
President Trump’s recent tweet calling for a boycott of Goodyear, a company that has been in business in Ohio for more than 100 years and employs approximately 4,000 Ohio workers, including those in neighboring Licking County, is an attack on working families everywhere.
Maybe you’re thinking, “I’m glad it was Goodyear and not Jen-Weld or Kokosing.”
That’s the problem though. The next time it could be Jen-Weld or Kokosing. Or it could be Wal-Mart, it could be Sanoh America, it could be FT Precision. Somewhere somebody could make up a story about one of these companies, put it on the internet, and President Trump would see a tweet about it and— boom— a company is struggling and workers are laid off because the president incited a boycott.
Donald Trump doesn’t care. He said it didn’t really matter when General Motors closed its plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and thousands of jobs were lost. To the Goodyear workers, he said, ”You’ll be able to get another good job.” Of course, he didn’t mention that more than 1.5 million Ohioans have filed for unemployment since March. The President doesn’t care about Ohio working people losing their jobs.
Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan said, “This is a petty political attack that has the potential to make a huge impact on people’s lives….”
“This is who the President is,” said Senator Sherrod Brown. He added, “President Trump’s remarks will have a negative impact on Goodyear’s sales, stocks” and Ohio families’ livelihoods. In 2016, Trump promised Ohioans, “If I’m elected, you won’t lose a single plant.” Then the Lordstown plant closed, and the president did nothing.
With just one tweet, President Trump has put the livelihoods of Goodyear workers in jeopardy. Any president, current or future, who initiates a boycott on an American company because his feelings are hurt by something he sees on TV or reads in a Tweet is a danger to all businesses and working families in the U.S.
No one disputes the enormous power American presidents have, but it should be used to help all Americans, no matter who they are. It should not depend on whether they do or say something the president finds personally hurtful, and certainly not because of a hat. The president’s job should not be about the president himself. Unfortunately, it seems Mr. Trump does not understand this, but we Ohioans do.
Meg Galipault
Mount Vernon
Rural Postal Service
Editor of the News,
I am writing in response to a letter from Mr Randy Wolff of Mount Vernon appearing on Aug. 26. In his letter, Mr Wolff said that my previous letter of Aug. 19 about the importance of the rural postal service delivering items FedEx and UPS do not deliver, was “a flat out lie.” It is, in fact, verifiably true.
Although Mr Wolff has 30 years' experience as a UPS delivery agent in three Ohio counties, there seems to be more involved than delivering the items workers pick up from a central location. A quick Google search reveals an Aug. 17 article written by Sheridan Hendrix profiling a postal worker in rural Ohio, in which certain items end up as part of rural postal workers’ delivery responsibilities. In the article, Hendrix says, “Rural carriers also shoulder deliveries for... competitors such as FedEx, UPS and Amazon. Every morning [Carrier] Miller sorts through five pallets of Amazon deliveries.... A few more pallets will show up from FedEx and UPS throughout the week.”
A further Google search on Quora indicates that UPS and FedEx routinely deliver packages to rural carriers after their own drivers complete the long leg of the delivery, leaving the shorter, but more expensive, leg of the delivery to USPS. This is because FedEx and UPS are profit-making businesses, but the postal service is a nonprofit service for all Americans.
In addition, the Hendrix news article was picked up by a number of media outlets. Mr Wolff spoke disparagingly about The New York Times, suggesting the Times was not an acceptable source of information. However, this exact same article was picked up and printed in Stars and Stripes, USA Today, the Canton Repository, and The Columbus Dispatch, among others. Most of us find all of these sources acceptable. Also, facts found in more than one credible media outlet tend to be more reliable.
Patricia Burdette, Ph.D.
Butler, Knox County
Social Security
To the Editor
Are you or is someone you love on Social Security or Social Security Disability SSDI? If so, you should know that these benefits are in danger of being lost forever.
These benefits are funded through the payroll tax shared equally by the employer and the employee. Donald Trump has signed an order asking employers to stop withholding this tax from employee payrolls beginning this month and through the end of the year. He has threatened to make this deferral permanent if he wins claiming that the shortfall would be made up from general revenue funds.
Here is the reality. If all Social Security contributions from payroll tax stopped on January 1, 2021, the nearly 10 million people today getting SSDI would see them stop abruptly in the middle of 2021. Those 55 million receiving SS Old-Age and Survivors benefits would see them disappear two years later.
Prior to running for president on the Republican ticket, Trump endorsed privatizing Social Security and raising its full retirement age to 70. Other long-standing right-wing goals are to means-test Social Security and to adopt the change to price-indexing. Those changes would impose enormous cuts while also ending Social Security as it has existed since its enactment 85 years ago.
The Federal Government is already running a gigantic deficit. It is now almost equal to our total gross domestic product (GDP). So, it is impossible to make up the missing payroll contributions with general revenue. The program is already stressed because so many people are unemployed.
Congress needs to raise the salary cap from $137,700 to perhaps $200,000 to make up for the fact that the senior population is growing much faster than the working-age population. Social Security’s creator, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, clearly understood the importance of those Social Security contributions. They are what give the contributors a legal, moral and political right to collect their Social Security pensions.
Democrats created Social Security (and Medicare). Republicans have hated these benefits ever since. Think carefully about this on November 3, 2020.
Linda Michaels
Gambier, Ohio
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