One of the Hardest
East Hampton
December 30, 2022
Dear David,
As a person who grew up speaking English, French, Spanish, and Dutch from the age of 3, having studied classical Arabic and Portuguese as an adult, as well as having taught French (Berlitz total-immersion method), I would like to commend Andrew Visconti for attempting to teach English as a second language.
I maintain that English is one of the hardest languages to learn. Why? So many words that are spelled differently (sea and see) but pronounced the same way and so many that are spelled the same way but of different meanings, such as organ, which is both an instrument and a body part.
A little confusing, no?
PATRICIA HABR
Close to Home
Southold
January 1, 2023
To the Editor,
My favorite presents for family and friends this year have been found close to home. The biggest amaryllis bulbs I had ever seen have come from the North Fork Flower Farm, and magnificent peaches preserved in brandy came from the North Fork Specialty Kitchen. While I hadn’t put them up myself, the plants and peaches delivered a clear message of sweetness and domesticity.
At once, the peaches reminded me of the rumtopf an old friend had shared from a traditional recipe of her German grandmother’s. Starting with a base of brandy and sugar, her grandmother had added strawberries and then raspberries, blueberries, boysenberries, blackberries, and gooseberries, each in their season.
After the Christmas dinner, she would ladle the boozy fruit over vanilla ice cream, and Carol said that each time her grandmother would laugh in memory of the guest who had kept saying, “More juice! More juice!”
As I wrapped each jar in tissue paper and tied it with ribbons, I thought I must write up the story of Carol’s rumtopf and deliver it with the peaches.
I googled rumtopf to refresh my memory, and, behold! I discovered that the recipe had evolved in Flensburg, Germany, on the Denmark border. In the 18th century, Flensburg had been the seat of the West India fleet. Look! It had been a leg of the “triangle trade” between Europe, Africa, and The New World. Each time that the fleet returned to Flensburg with a cargo of rum, the invention of rumtopf was but one idea away.
Since her grandmother had started with a base of brandy, rather than rum, Carol wondered why it had been called rumtopf and why not schnappstopf? Now we know.
Skol! And a happy new year.
JOY LEWIS
Rock Star
Amagansett
December 31, 2022
Dear David,
Best to all for the coming year and a note for your sports editor, Jack Graves, for elevating these 89-year-old bones to “rock star status,” according to a family member. An act of charity.
LONA RUBENSTEIN
Nature’s Course
Montauk
December 31, 2022
Dear David,
As reported in The East Hampton Press on Dec. 22, New York State will soon begin cutting down more pitch pines on Napeague in order to “try to halt the spread of the pests [southern pine beetle] before they reach the lush woodlands of Hither Hills State Park.”
My opposition is that this attempted control measure hasn’t worked. If it had, the beetles wouldn’t be on Napeague. We may recall that the first Suffolk County infestation appeared in Hampton Bays, Flanders, and Riverhead in 2014. Since then, despite cutting preventive protocols, the beetles continued their spread. It didn’t take long before they reached Sag Harbor, as seen along Route 114 and in Northwest Woods, where the town contracted arborists to do a similar felling program. Regardless, the beetles continued their advance and have now devastated much of Napeague.
These cutting programs have repeatedly proved to be ineffective, so why are they doing it again and at great cost? East of Napeague, the pitch pine forest ends, although there are scattered trees and small groves about up to the entrance to the Hither Hills State Park campground, where they thin out. Past that, eastward, there are only a handful on the Montauk peninsula. In other words, there relatively aren’t many more pines left, so why go to such costly measures in vain?
Another consideration is that should there remotely be a tree with genetic resistance to the southern pine beetle, it will never be able to pass it on to its offspring to survive the plague because it will have been razed in the cutting program.
I advocate that the trees, dead or alive, be left alone and let nature take her course. The bulk of the damage has already been done. Leave the remaining living trees to see if any survive and let the dead trees stand for vital habitat of the woodpeckers, owls, titmice, chickadees, and other tree cavity dwellers. In the end, worst case scenario, this won’t be the first pest to wipe out a tree species out here (think: the American chestnut and American elm) and it won’t be the last.
VICTORIA BUSTAMANTE
Already Too Crowded
Montauk
December 29, 2022
To the Editor,
When I grew up on Staten Island, it was pure country. I enjoyed playing in the woods, hunting, fishing, and being a juvenile delinquent. Prior to the Verrazzano Bridge, every politician promised they wouldn’t let happen to Staten Island what happened to Brooklyn and Queens. In a sense, they were right; they made it worse. First came the bridge, then the developers. They cut down all the 100-year-old trees, widened the roads, and put up cheap tract housing.
The proposed sewage treatment plan will only bring more development. Please don’t let this happen. Montauk is already too crowded. Don’t destroy the last beautiful place on Long Island.
GEORGE WATSON
A Space in Nature
Springs
January 2, 2023
David,
Thank you for your excellent editorial about Brooks-Park Arts and Nature Center. I thought it was right on the mark. The article “Second Opinion on Brooks-Park Buildings” left me with the sense that a great deal of information was missing.
The notion of what “open space” means for East Hampton, the relevance of the buildings to the history of East Hampton and its artist legacy, and the neglect of the buildings by the town for almost a decade and its responsibility.
Artists were drawn here by the beautiful light, the atmosphere, the openness, the nearness to original untouched nature that had been here since before the early settlers arrived. The Brooks-Park property, while naturally wooded, was “civilized” by the two artists into a world of creation and inspiration. It was organized with the purposeful placement of the structures to make their world totally about art and nature. Their two studios have north light, for painting. Their house facing the studios has southern light, for warmth and enjoyment. Paths connect it all, walking from one activity to another, daily, enjoying and improving their life and work. They were influenced by the natural environment — and they curated it. They planted specimen trees, such as the Fagus sylvatica tortuosa, a rare European ornamental beech tree, to help create this room in the woods.
This “room in the woods” is an ideal place for the Brooks-Park Arts and Nature Center. It provides a space in nature to have events with and for the people who live here. These buildings are a part of East Hampton, both the life we had as farmers and fishermen and the world of art as it expressed itself in our town, from the Tile Club to today’s artists. The house is a conglomerate of Montauk fishing shacks barged to Springs in 1954; Charlotte’s studio is part of the old Wainscott Post Office with a north skylight added, and James’s studio was designed and built by him to be his ideal studio.
The “ideal studio” is a thing in the art and architecture world, which started in the early 19th century, as artists became recognized as artists, not journeymen working in a factory to provide a product on order. The studio is a part of the art for art’s sake revolution of the 19th century and it evolved, as did the artist. The architect Richard Norman Shaw’s London apartments were designed and built while Thomas Moran was building his house and studio in East Hampton. Moran’s studio had strong influences from Shaw’s work; he knew what was going on. The great double-height room with balcony, fireplace, and north light is the ideal Arts and Crafts studio direct from London. This concept has been used by Corbusier and others for studios and other uses through time. It is wonderful that East Hampton has this precious piece of history.
James Brooks’s studio is a little more modern, more dedicated to work only. The architect Frederick Kiesler (designer of Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of this Century gallery, where Jackson Pollock became famous and moved to East Hampton) said of Brooks’s studio, “It was the most intelligent studio he had ever seen built.” I called it an inventive marvel in a letter to the town board. It has large roof windows for the perfect north light, ample space to work, and the ability to lift and move large art around. It also has curious operable panels that provide fresh air, sunny paint-drying racks, and it does not need air- conditioning. Those curious panels are very like ones in Paul Rudolph’s famous Florida beach house of the 1950s. This excellent studio needs to be saved here in East Hampton, as do the dedicated lives of these Abstract Expressionist artists of the 1950s and 1960s. It is an inspirational place to be.
Tom Gogola, in his article, mentioned that a demolition permit was approved in 2020 for this property. It did not mention that in order to get a demolition permit the town board is required to have an outside engineer assess the buildings. It doesn’t mention that the presentation to the architectural review board did not have such an assessment and was simply a “these buildings are a nuisance, and we want to demolish them,” without mentioning who the owners were or any other information.
The A.R.B., without a full membership and with some new members, simply took them at their word, and approved the permit. It does not mention that several times since then the A.R.B. has petitioned the town to present the matter to them a second time so they can reconsider it.
Also, the town has done minimal protection for these building for a decade, allowing them to slowly wither. And it also implies that everyone wants to spend the vast money the engineer, Drew Bennett, is suggesting. The fact is there is no conservation assessment, yet the contract with Michael Devonshire will provide such information, as well as options and a path forward.
We need to move now to protect and use our heritage in the manner that provides our community with knowledge and inspiration. The Brooks-Park Arts and Nature Center will be a wonderful community facility.
JONATHAN FOSTER
Community Resource
East Hampton
December 30, 2022
Dear Editor,
Watching the town board discuss the design of the new senior center, which every user of the current facility hopes will be built within their lifetime, one cannot help but wonder what these elected officials think a senior center is all about. When you look at the layout of the parking areas you can see the designers themselves seem to have forgotten.
If the proposed senior center were a pot, half the parking lot is located at the tip of the handle. One could run a 200-yard dash from there to the front door. But this wouldn’t be a dash, it would be accident avoidance, a version of “did you see that car when you tried to cross the parking lot?” There is no direct sidewalk access from where you park your car to the front entrance. You must cross the parking lot and vehicle traffic lanes. Good luck. Nor will you be able to avoid the trucks using the same entrance and surely parking there while they are making deliveries.
Clearly there need to be separate entrances and separate parking areas for workers, deliveries, and seniors. The parking area for seniors needs to have pedestrian-only access to the building without crossing driving lanes or parking spaces and forcing seniors to try to avoid cars backing up.
While the supervisor tried to make a case for the mechanicals and deliveries on a separate level, none of the two favored designs embraced that. What were the designers thinking? Didn’t they consider what would happen if a vision-impaired person wandered into an area of mechanical repair?
There was no discussion of the air-handling system. SARS-CoV-2 is a respiratory virus. It spreads when people rebreathe contaminated air. If the air is not filtered thoroughly and the filtration system maintained properly, the air-handling system will simply spread the virus throughout the building. Take note of the fact that the current senior center closes whenever the level of infection in the community rises because it has no adequate air-handling system. The town board should devote some time to questioning the air-handling protocols of this new senior center.
Finally, someone should take note of the basic reasons for having a senior center. This is not a public welfare facility. It is not to be grouped with substance abuse treatment or mental health services; it is a facility for the elderly.
The welfare approach to senior services dates back to the long-gone era when the elderly lived with their families in multigenerational households. In that era, it was expected that, just as you were taken care of as a child, you would take care of your aging parents. If you didn’t do so, you had to be poor. It also presumed that members of the family lived nearby.
Today — and especially in East Hampton — it is rarely the case that young people remain here or can even afford to live here. The multigenerational local community hardly exists. Your children most likely will live and work elsewhere. If the growing Hispanic population that does work here and live here follows this trend, the needs of the future elderly population will become increasingly urgent because they will be isolated from their relatives.
A successful senior center compensates for these demands of aging and supplements the desire of seniors to age in place and conduct their lives as they always have. There comes a time when you can’t drive as easily as you once could, when you can’t cook meals as easily as you once could, when you might overlook a medical condition that is developing, or give up on exercise for its own sake. A well-balanced senior center can help compensate for these problems of aging.
An outstanding senior center does one more thing: It acts as a resource for the community. It allows age not to interfere with achievement. Subject matter expertise doesn’t disappear with age. A physician will still know something about medicine. A builder will know something about construction. A ballroom dancer instructor will know something about dancing. A computer engineer will know something about computers. A successful senior center creates a common space for all of the mastered skills in life to be shared and continued to the benefit of the community by those who have mastered those skills over decades.
Let me drive one last nail into the notion that a senior center is a welfare center, because clearly the town board is infected with this disease and that is a crime. The people who go to the senior center, besides contributing to the benefit of this community during their working lives, have paid taxes here for decades. Individually as property owners they have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxes each. They are also voters.
I do believe that finally after nearly 10 years of inaction the town board members are ready to try to do the right thing together. Let’s hope that they listen to what is needed and get the right facility built, because East Hampton disgracefully remains far, far behind nearly every other community of comparable size in addressing the needs of a significant segment of its population. Here’s hoping for a good start to the new year.
Sincerely,
PAUL FIONDELLA
What’s Needed
Sag Harbor
January 2, 2023
To the Editor:
Your editorial on energy and climate in the Dec. 29 Star was spot on. You rightly featured the Inflation Reduction Act, which was a stunning achievement in the current political climate. You also mentioned the need for permitting reform and opportunities in agriculture and forestry. These are areas where progress may be possible even in the new Congress.
We need permitting reform to speed up the implementation of the massive new solar and wind power that the I.R.A. is making possible. We don’t want to sidestep environmental safeguards, but we do need to curb the ability of nimbys to use environment as a cover for their own private interests. We also need to reduce governmental inefficiency caused by short staffing and interagency conflict.
Much can be done in agriculture and forestry. Our forests sequester about 12 percent of our emissions. We could almost double that through reforestation, better forest management, and planting trees in urban areas. Better agricultural practices and reduction of food waste could greatly reduce emissions not only of carbon dioxide but also of the two other major greenhouse gases: methane and nitrous oxide. It is quite possible that some of what’s needed could show up in coming farm bills, if environmental groups lobbying the new Congress focus on positive opportunities that could garner bipartisan support.
There are also huge opportunities latent in new technology. Some of these are incremental, such as the steadily increasing efficiencies in buildings and transportation. Others are potential game changers. Here are just two examples:
Research on ways to tap the earth’s heat deep down is showing promise. Up to now, geothermal energy has been limited by the availability of heat sources closer to the surface. Deep geothermal exists everywhere, and could, if successful, be used to substitute earth heat for heat from burning coal. This would help in countries like China and India, which still depend greatly on coal, and it could further reduce our own coal use.
The invention of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has enabled America to be a net energy exporter, something that would have been unthinkable two decades ago. Much of the environmental damage from fracking is caused by using water as the fracking medium. If instead of water we fracked with carbon dioxide obtained from the natural gas and contrived to leave the carbon dioxide underground, we would be left with hydrogen as the only aboveground product. We would in effect be drilling for hydrogen instead of for fossil fuels.
These ideas, and others, will require clever engineering and materials development, but no new basic science. They might be brought into practice within this decade — soon enough to make a difference.
After 2024, with climate awareness increasing and climate-related disasters proliferating worldwide, we can hope for even stronger action. Perhaps we’ll be able to enact what economists overwhelmingly agree would be the most effective way to reduce emissions: carbon pricing.
The idea behind carbon pricing is simple. First, charge the producers and importers of fossil fuels a fee proportional to the amount of greenhouse gases that will be emitted when these fuels are burned. Second, return the proceeds to the American people in equal shares. Third, enact “border adjustments” that would put a special tariff on imports from countries that do not have carbon pricing. This combination would drive our economy toward low-carbon solutions while compensating consumers for higher fuel prices and protecting American businesses from unfair foreign competition.
Carbon pricing can be a hard sell when fuel prices skyrocket, and when they go down people just seem to breathe a sigh of relief. The good news is that electricity prices don’t vary as wildly as fuel prices do. As we shift our economy away from direct use of fossil fuels by consumers to electricity generated from carbon-free sources, the impact of fuel prices on inflation will diminish.
What can we do as individuals? Reducing our personal carbon footprints is always a good start, but that by itself won’t solve the problem. It’s unrealistic to expect more than a fraction of us to make this effort without financial incentives. That’s why we need carbon pricing. And although much can be done with existing technology, we’ll need a couple of real breakthroughs if our grandchildren are going to get through this century without devastating impacts on civilization. That’s why we need research.
The best thing we can do is to get involved in the public debate. Advocate positive solutions — too many people who call themselves environmentalists are quick to oppose anything that isn’t perfect, even if it’s a lot better than what we have now.
Recognize two things: One, perfect is not on the menu. Even solar and wind energy have environmental impacts, but we need them anyway. Two, there’s no single panacea. Many positive solutions acting in concert will be needed.
Join an environmental group that seeks common ground rather than ideological purity. My favorites are the Citizens’ Climate Lobby and the Environmental Defense Fund, but there are others. Perform your own due diligence and then get into the fray with your time, your energy, and if you have any to spare, your money.
JOHN ANDREWS
The Local Angle
Springs
January 2, 2023
To the Editor,
I appreciated the rundown of the potential benefits of the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act in your recent editorial (“New Hope on Energy’). As you point out, the United States is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions today. Sadly, we are the leader in creating emissions over time and responsible for over 20 percent of the historical total despite representing less than 5 percent of global population.
What was missing though in your review was the local angle on climate change. Our town board made a pledge eight years ago to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, a highly unrealistic target that they have done next to nothing to achieve. If they were honest, they would admit that the town today most likely emits more emissions than it did when it made its pledge.
Many simple steps though could be taken but are continually ignored. Almost three years ago, the town pledged to consider buying electric vehicles whenever appropriate but has only bought a few since. Given it owns over 200 vehicles, this is an area where some progress could be easily made especially since range anxiety should not be a factor. I would like to think the next time I get a ticket for rolling through a stop sign (an environmentally-minded move I will point out to the judge), it will be from an officer in an electric vehicle, not a hulking sport-utility vehicle.
The town also has said it will study heat pumps where appropriate, but it should be obvious at this point that these highly-efficient systems make sense not only for when systems fail, but as replacements now to save energy and money. Southampton upgraded their Town Hall to this type of system over five years ago.
East Hampton is finally starting to replace its streetlights with LEDs, something, once again, Southampton did five years ago. However, despite waiting so long, our town is not even using the most up-to-date equipment. They will mistakenly use higher-Kelvin lights than necessary (2,700 versus 2,200), which will introduce much higher glare than the lights we currently use and lock us into this mistake for another decade.
This is because the town relies on high-priced, politically-connected consultants for poor advice, when many of these projects are things the town should be able to figure out and do on its own given its staffing. This reminds me of the town’s decade-long buildout of an overly expensive emergency communication system that may be out of date if it is ever completed.
Getting back to the idea of producing clean energy, your point that solar is “the most cost-effective way to produce power” is something our town continues to disregard despite commissioning an $80,000 study from the New York Power Authority five years ago on this topic — it took this state agency two years to produce a report (really?), and the town has failed to do much since then. All we have to show for it is a small 75-kilowatt political-patronage project at the Parks Department in all that time. The town could offset all its municipal electric usage (2 megawatts) just by installing solar on town-owned buildings or land and, once again, save taxpayer money by doing it!
More important, East Hampton continues to ignore the potential for community solar, something Southampton committed to on its landfill over a year ago with a 5-megawatt project. If we really wanted to be embarrassed, we should look at Riverhead, where over 50 megawatts of solar are being installed.
While some will say that land is too expensive in our area for this, they ignore the fact that the town leases 90 acres of land for $1 a year for a gun club that probably only needs a tiny fraction of that location. More significantly, the town gets no revenue at all from the 200 acres of publicly-owned cleared land at the airport that studies show adds perhaps only 1 percent to our local economy and would probably only be missed by a few hundred people if it were closed.
Considering the town’s infrastructure can’t handle the influx of people during the summer at this point, maybe closing the airport might actually be a blessing. It would clearly help lowering emissions if that really is a goal — it is the largest source as roughly one million gallons of leaded fuel are sold there every year. In addition, it sits atop our main aquifer leaching leaded gasoline from the tarmac.
Lastly, while some like to suggest that noise complaints are overstated (over 30,000 a year), they ignore the many people across Long Island and New York City who also suffer due to flights, mainly for the top one-tenth of 1 percent.
From a financial standpoint, it would also be a huge win if the airport were closed since it cannot generate revenue for the town. Leasing that land to a large community solar project on the other hand could generate perhaps $500,000 a year in lease income, while also allowing local residents to save hundreds of thousands a year collectively on their bills and perhaps offset at least a quarter of the entire area’s annual local electric use. That is something that would be a real local commitment to fighting climate change as opposed to the endless empty promises made by the town administration.
I would suggest that the article in this past week’s edition (“Eyeing Table-to-Farm Compost Plan”) about starting a tiny composting project fits that bill. While it sounds good, I doubt much will ever really be done and the emissions eliminated will be irrelevant. If the town is actually serious about doing something in this area, I did suggest a few years ago that they look into a bio-digester for the recycling center that might make a small dent if it were pursued.
Hopefully, in the year 2023, the town will finally start taking some simple steps to not only lower its own emission’s profile, but also save taxpayers money by doing so. For that to happen, they have to start spending some of the $10 million that is allocated to capital improvements for actual renewable and energy efficiency investment projects — not continually waste it on a never-ending line of consultants who often don’t seem to have the town’s best interests.
BRAD BROOKS
The Emptiest Suit
East Hampton
January 2, 2023
Dear David:
It was bound to happen sooner or later. The Republican Party’s spiral into the world of untruth was bound to deliver to G.O.P. leaders someone exactly like George Santos: a seemingly glib, successful candidate who turned out to be purely fictional with no substance.
Mr. Santos won the open Long Island seat previously held by a Democrat, Tom Suozzi. Following his victory journalists discovered that Mr. Santos’s whole life story — as he sold it to voters — was a lie. This farce was a product of the Trump circus. Mr. Santos presented himself as a telegenic incarnation of the image the Republican Party wanted to project: a handsome, gay Latino man, wealthy and self-made, whose Republican “credentials” refuted the charge that today’s G.O.P. shamelessly pandered to racism and bigotry.
Now that the embalming of the Santos image has been confirmed by Mr. Santos himself and that the “George Santos” voters elected turned out to be a fictional character, Democrats have called for Mr. Santos not to be seated in the new Congress. Others have called for an immediate House Ethics Committee investigation. The feckless G.O.P. leader, Kevin McCarthy, needing Mr. Santos’s vote to be elected House speaker, has been transparently silent as to what disciplinary steps, if any, the incoming Republican majority might take.
The most honest thing House Republicans could do would be to welcome Mr. Santos into the G.O.P. caucus with open arms just as it would have had the fraudster Dr. Oz, or the vacuous Herschel Walker been victorious. The G.O.P. embarked on the path of make-believe politics — and politicians — long before Mr. Santos came onto the scene. Mr. Santos just expanded the frontier of the fraud. To me, the G.O.P.’s alternate universe was exposed when the party opted not to adopt a policy platform for the 2020 presidential election. In effect, they refused to tell voters what they would do if elected. The pledge instead was only to support whatever policies the bogus businessman and grifter Donald Trump might propose. The party ceded its political future not to principles of governing, but to political performance theater.
Marjorie Taylor Greene and others have shown that the path to prominence in the G.O.P. is not through legislative or administrative accomplishments but by attention-grabbing displays of performative outrage. It’s all about “owning the libs,” whether on Fox News, Twitter, or elsewhere — and the ploy raises a lot of campaign cash. In turn, if you can raise lots of money, party power follows. It doesn’t matter if what is said are lies — by the time one gets called on that outrage, the cycle has moved to the next over-the-top statement. And the cycle goes on and on.
So, Mr. Santos’s idea of building a G.O.P. political career built on audacious lies is hardly original. He just took that shtick further than his soon-to-be colleagues had done. There are a lot of metaphorical empty suits in the current G.O.P. caucus; they should welcome the emptiest suit yet with open arms. And we can sit back and watch the decay spread and further engulf the G.O.P.
Sincerely,
BRUCE COLBATH
Straight-Up Criminal
East Hampton
December 31, 2022
David,
In August 1974, Richard Nixon resigned as president. He was going to be impeached for lying about a break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters. He neither instigated nor ordered the break-in, but when confronted by Congress, he denied any knowledge of the event. He was caught on tape and decided to destroy the tape. Republicans and Democrats believed he had crossed the line of acceptable behavior and forced his resignation. Clearly, the bar in 1974 was a lot higher than the current standard.
The break-in at the Watergate complex was an action taken to assuage the paranoia and incontinence of the current president. It was orchestrated by members of Nixon’s team without his knowledge. Even though polls showed him with a commanding lead (he won in a landslide) they thought that they could gain an edge with some inside info on the Democrats.
After the burglars were caught money and information trails led to the White House, the cover-up of the connection undid Nixon and two years later he was obliged to step down.
It is difficult to compare Nixon to Trump. Nixon, with a Democratic Congress, accomplished more in six months than Trump, with a Republican Congress, did in four years.
Trump’s presidency was an abject failure. Only Jimmy Carter accomplished less. All the phony gibberish around the veracity of the election was, again, a paranoid cretin in disarray. While the public didn’t divide over Nixon’s culpability it went bananas over Trump’s.
Trump supporters were rigged, jiggered, and put on alert. They would do anything for him. January 6 is all Trump. No one died from Nixon’s cover-up. He wasn’t responsible for murder. Like Clinton, his lies damaged him. He didn’t try to overthrow an election.
The Jan. 6 report indicted every person who attacked the Capitol, including the president, his staff, and two-thirds of the Republicans in Congress and the Senate. They were charged with attempting to overthrow the U.S. government, treason, sedition, etc., etc. Nothing to discuss, debate, whine about, straight-up criminal behavior, which demands years, if not lifetimes, in prison. One has the right to drink the Kool-Aid, but we are still responsible for our behavior.
We are not morons or pretend to be so. It’s simple truths or shit or whatever one calls it. It’s a criminal act. It’s not the idiocy of breaking into an office or selling out workers to China. It’s taking down the Constitution and everything that goes along with it. It’s the essential destruction of the heart and soul of the country.
We executed the Rosenbergs without real evidence; Jan. 6 is in full video. All the evidence of complicity is in sworn testimony. If government truly works, punishment will prove its value.
NEIL HAUSIG