To the editor,
Nov. 15 was the first snow storm of this season and already it has crippled this city. It’s just amazing that a city like ours cannot handle it. My sister lives in Ohio, where I visit frequently, and they really get snow, though somehow they are prepared so much better for the consequences of a storm.
Our city gets two to three inches and we totally fall apart. What’s the problem?
People are stranded in their cars for four hours on highways, on a 30-minute trip. Traffic is backed up for miles, people are stranded, it’s just outrageous.
I can understand if snowfall was not anticipated, but when weather geniuses are predicting it, should not the city be able to get a grip on it?
Come on, New York, we haven’t even gotten to the belly of winter!
This is my gripe of today, I think they have to rethink their strategy.
Thank you for the opportunity to vent my frustration. I enjoy your newspaper each week and know you take a great interest in what your neighborhood people have to say.
Mary Glicksman
Bath Beach
Down the Amazon
To the editor,
I heard, with much fanfare I might add, that Amazon is coming to New York City and settling in a relatively industrial area in Long Island City. I also see protesters by the hundreds, angry that building this massive complex will cause too many changes in neighborhoods nearby. One thing that cannot be denied is the constant change and building here in the city.
True, adjustments will have to be made having transportation systems bolstered to handle the workforce, and concessions will have to be made by neighborhoods concerning housing for the influx.
The only disturbing fact is that all the negotiating, tax breaks, and building placement plans, were done in extreme secrecy. Only the “govern-mayor,” Cuomo and DeBlasio, were involved. No one from the neighborhoods, no one from businesses, or transportation representatives, was allowed input. So much for “transparency.”
New York City is slowly achieving the appearance of the science-fiction “metropolis.” Monster building complexes reach for the stars, obscuring the original city skyline. The hoards of workers schlep in and out of their daily grind in a lockstep drone, looking like scenes right out of that movie. And what can be done? I guess nothing, since the powers that be are in total charge of your lives. And you put them there!
Other than fleeing the city for greener pastures, you should don your drab workers uniform and get in line with the masses.
Robert W. Lobenstein
Marine Park
…
To the editor,
Seriously, Gov. Cuomo and Mayor DeBlasio: $1.5 billion in incentives to a trillion-dollar company for 25,000 jobs; when housing, infrastructure, mass transit, and roads are in horrendous shape, and getting worse?
This is a perfect example of how elected representatives no longer represent the real needs and wants of all the people they were sworn to represent. Instead, they represent big business and real estate wants and needs without concern for the effects upon the people, and where and how they live.
I’ll never forget the 2016 announcement from the New York State Public Service Commission that it was allowing National Grid to pass off, to its customers, the many million-dollar cost of the Superfund cleanup it inherited when it bought Keyspan, which bought Brooklyn Union Gas. Not one state or city “representative” responded to inquires about this abomination of our trust.
Barry Brothers
Homecrest
Cloth twice as nice
To the editor,
My idea is to offer shoppers a fabric shopping bag for a certain amount of accumulated sales slips from individual stores — say, offer a fabric shopping bag for $300 worth of shopping sales slips from individual stores. It would save plastic and advertise each store, for the logo printing on each fabric bag would give publicity to, and throw the spotlight on, certain stores.
What a wonderful incentive to stop using plastic bags! All winners and no losers. Agree?Joan Applepie
Marine Park
Dems not like me
To the editor,
I am at a loss to know what to do with certain thoughts and feelings following the mid-term elections.
I am relieved that my wife and I, as well as tens of millions of other Americans, will not have to fear our Social Security Retirement Benefits being cut by 25 percent by the Republican Senate and House. With the Democrats taking over the House, we will no longer have to be scared for the next two years. The Democrats will block any Republican attempt to cut our benefits. The same holds true for those who rely on Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, College Student Loans, and Unemployment Insurance Benefits.
But I am angry, bitter, resentful, and disappointed with many of my fellow Democrats who I thought cared about people like me who have low-incomes. These affluent Democrats are members of the upper-middle-class and the upper-class, although they don’t see themselves as wealthy and well-off.
I am angry at how they scolded me, admonished me, and tried to shame me and bully me for the past two years because I did not care much about the “identity-politics” and “cultural-war” issues that they constantly bashed Donald Trump over. I focused on the bread-and-butter and kitchen-table issues of everyday survival. I focused on protecting the safety-net programs like Social Security.
These financially well-off “liberal-progressive” Democrats thought that I should have been more concerned with the plight of illegal immigrants, for example. I don’t understand how they could have been so insensitive to my plight and the plight of millions of us seniors who have to live on Social Security checks of $1,200 per month.
A good friend who does not earn as much as they do has provided me with the answer — they can well-afford to care primarily about the “identity-politics” and “cultural-war” issues and to focus on constantly bashing Trump over them. People like my wife and I can’t afford that luxury. We don’t have their high yearly incomes. They don’t need Social Security. They never will. It will not affect them if their Social Security checks get cut by 25 percent.
Yet, I am still surprised and disappointed that these self-proclaimed “humanists” are so insensitive. I expected more empathy and compassion from them.
For the next two years, I will still focus on the bread-and-butter issues that the poor, the near-poor, the lower-middle-class, and the middle-class struggle with that these affluent Democrats do not.
Stewart B. Epstein
Rochester, NY
No chance for GOP
To the Editor:
With the loss of Republican state Sen. Marty Golden and Congressmember Dan Donovan, GOP State Assemblymember Nicole Malliotakis becomes the last Republican public official in Kings County.
The last Republican Brooklyn Borough President who also ran on the Fusion Party line was Lewis H. Pounds, who served from 1913–17. The last GOP District Attorney may have been from the same time period.
Based upon the recent election results and State Board of Elections registration figures as of Nov. 1, 2018, Brooklyn continues to be a permanent Democratic Party bastion. There are 1,025,058 Democrats versus 123,059 Republicans along with 4,204 Conservatives, 4,880 Working Families, 28,382 Independence, 3,077 Green, 848 Women’s Equity, 107 Reform, 538 Other, and 251,965 unaffiliated active registered voters. The numbers make Republicans irrelevant in virtually all contests for public office.
Kings County Republicans haven’t offered Democrats serious competition for public office on the city, state, or federal level in years with the exception of Bay Ridge.
Despite overwhelming Democratic Party enrollment in Kings County, creative gerrymandering by the GOP-controlled State Senate in 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010 continued to preserve the Bay Ridge-based seat previously represented by Republican State Senators Bill Conklin, Chris Mega, Bob DiCarlo, and formerly Martin Golden.
In Kings County, running as a Democrat or winning any Democratic Party primary is a sure bet to winning any general election. Remnants of the Brooklyn GOP can now fit in one of those old-fashioned street corner telephone booths which disappeared decades ago. Larry Penner
Great Neck
