Long Beach letters

To the Editor:

Regarding Joseph Kellard’s story “McLaughlin’s Thesis: books over debate” (Oct. 1-7): If actions speak louder than words, then candidate John McLaughlin’s work on the Wounded Warriors event is a pretty strong “opening statment.” Going to class would be a pretty strong closing statement. I don’t think Mr. McLaughlin has to worry about the rest of the debate. I think he’s already won.

Joe Cavanagh

Long Beach

To the Editor:

I’m writing in regard to your article “Cash for guns program comes to L.B.” (Oct. 1-7). Since this was a “no questions asked” program, how exactly did your reporter know the guns collected were “illegal” and “taken off the street”?  The answer is, she didn’t. She just made it up because it fit your paper’s agenda. There’s a word for that, and it’s not news, it’s propaganda. Gun buy-back programs are a feel-good diversion from effective anti-crime measures. Guns are the tools of a criminal’s trade. He is no more likely to turn them in for chump change than a carpenter would turn in his hammer and saw. Most guns collected come from legal owners who no longer want them; many don’t even work, and the buy-back programs offer the best available price. All of this is ancillary, however, to the egregious abuse of journalistic trust perpetrated by your paper in proffering opinion disguised as fact. Newspapers owe a duty to their readers to separate news from opinion, and to make the demarcation clear. If they cannot be relied upon to do that, why should anyone bother to read them?

Neil Flynn

Lido Beach

Editor's note: According to Chris Munzing, a spokesman for the Nassau County District Attorney's Office, the guns collected at the Christian Light Missionary Baptist Church were illegal.

To the Editor:

Those critics who attacked Randi Kress on her health care ideas should learn that the best kept secret for far too many years is that we can have affordable health care for everyone, and at the same time save billions of dollars while shrinking the size of government. Not one extra cent would be needed.

This strictly American solution is based on the laws of mathematics, which are non-political. The idea was presented in 1993 by Dr. Marcia Angell in the New England Journal of Medicine, based on the cardinal rule of insurance: spread the risk. Which simply means that the more people in one insurance pool, the lower the cost for everyone. We would save $400 billion a year by eliminating the waste from the for-profit insurance companies with their non-medical costs of sales commissions and salaries, advertising budgets, stockholder dividends, CEO mega-million salaries and golden parachutes, and loads of paperwork that is killing doctors and hospitals, caused by 1,500 different plans.

We need only one plan that covers all treatment for everyone. The “choice of plans” is a financial gimmick to sell policies to clients who can’t afford full coverage! We could then eliminate more than 10 no-longer- needed health care bureaucracies, including Medicaid. 

It’s worth repeating Groucho Marx's great line from Duck Soup: “A 10-year-old child can understand this. Run out and get me a 10-year-old child.” Perhaps most of our legislators and our president should follow Groucho’s advice.

Joe Kane

Long Beach