Viewpoints

To the Editor:

Nursing homes are closing. Dependent seniors are having their home, their caretakers, their sense of life’s balance and security pulled out from under them when they are at a vulnerable stage of life. Now, let’s go to the other end of life in regards to being dependent and vulnerable, grandchildren.

Currently, Iowa does not recognize the continued importance of grandparents in grandchildren’s lives, even if the grandparents have played a key role in the grandchildren’s lives. If, for some reason, the connection, communication, etc. between grandparents and grandchildren is broken, short or long, Iowa gives grandparents, even vital grandparents, little recourse in keeping that connection intact.

This is devastating to grandchildren. It breaks their heart. They learn to build a protective wall around themselves and bottle up what is going on inside them. In time, this will callous and harden the grandchildren.

To the Editor:

Abortion is healthcare. As an ob/gyn, I help usher women safely through the joys and sorrows of childbearing, including abortion care. Since the June Supreme Court decision, state legislators are free to dictate the medical care I and my colleagues across the nation provide, however misinformed or politically motivated they may be.

Women in conservative states are already feeling the impact, even when seeking care for miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. At this time, no state explicitly restricts care for these conditions. However, their treatment often includes the exact same procedures and medications used to provide elective abortion. There are already many reports of pharmacies withholding medications for the treatment of miscarriage.

To the Editor:

There’s an unfortunate trend continuing in Iowa and across the nation that must be addressed: the negative behavior of some coaches, parents, and fans at high school athletic events.

Far too often, we see yelling, harassment, disrespect, and even physical assault directed at high school referees, umpires, and other officials during and after games. Often, the harassment continues on social media. Perhaps you’ve witnessed it firsthand - or even engaged in it yourself.

Not only is this behavior unacceptable and embarrassing, but it’s also having serious consequences on the future of high school sports. At this time, some states and some of our own communities are experiencing a critical shortage of high school officials. The number-one reason? You guessed it: the behavior of coaches, parents, and fans toward officials.

National surveys of officials report alarming statistics:

To the Editor:

Mr. Lowell Engle (September 14 letter) claimed that Ms. Ann Klees (August 31 letter) has been drinking the progressives’ “Kool-Aid.” If that is so, then Mr. Engle and Mr. Osmund Quandahl (September 14 letter) have been taking baths in the conservatives’ “Kool-Aid”.

Although many assertions in their letters deserve rebuttal, due to space limitations, I will focus on Mr.  Quandahl’s criticism of the $80 billion overhaul of the Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.) over the next decade as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. He may have been repeating the shameful remarks of a prominent conservative who said - even though he knows better - that the new I.R.S. employees would be “going after middle-class and small-business people.”

To the Editor:

The United States of America - our country endowed with the inalienable rights and freedoms of all who live - stands tall. God is the One who formed our rights and our freedoms. As such, we cannot dedicate this country to that of any other God or man-made religion. Rather, our Constitution was written by godly men who revered God and the Bible, and its principles were derived to write the U.S. Constitution.

The United States of America, a strong nation developed through the ideals of our “unalienable rights and freedom under God, indivisible, with liberty, and with justice for all,” was written to ensure that our rights as individuals are not infringed upon.

“We The People,” states the Constitution’s first words. The phrase itself is empowering. The moral courage it took of our founding fathers to draft this timeless document is unmatched by any other.

To the Editor:

Decades of failed mental health policies have placed law enforcement on the front line of mental health crisis response and turned jails and prisons into the new asylums. Deinstitutionalization, treatment laws demanding a person become violent before intervention, discriminatory Federal Medicaid funding policies and the prolonged failure by states to fund their mental health systems drive those in need of care into the criminal justice and corrections systems, rather than into the public health system where they belong.

To the Editor:

As I sit down to write this, my heart weighs very heavily tonight. Today staff, residents and families learned that the Postville Good Samaritan Society nursing home will be closing its doors in the middle of November.

A corporation, Sanford Health Care, has decided that the bottom dollar and profit is more important than the lives of those who work or live there. Tonight residents are wondering where they will live and spend whatever days they have left, leaving behind memories of those they have become close to and shared many happy times with. Staff are stressing over what they will do for a job to support themselves and their own families, walking away from a “family” they were part of at the Postville Good Sam.

“You’d fit right in!”

Recently, I have been going around the community to introduce myself and share information about our church and the Good News about Jesus who has won forgiveness and life for all people with His death on the cross. It reminded me of a story I heard about a pastor who went to visit a man one day. He knocked on the door and invited the man to come to church. The man shook his head and said, “I will never go to church. It’s full of hypocrites!” The preacher replied, “Well, you’d fit right in!”

This humorous story brings up an important question: who is church for? Is it just for nice people or those who need help? Who needs church? Perhaps the better question is - who needs Jesus? This answer is clear - we all do!

To the Editor:

Information literacy is crucial to democracy.

In his most recent letter to the editor, Lowell Engle cites a July 19, 2022 NASA article that claims climate changes are a result of “the changes in the earth’s solar orbit and not because of SUVs and fossil fuel.”

In the time it took you to read that sentence, you could also fact check it. Reuters reports and NASA submits that this claim, popular on social media, has long been debunked. The Milankovitch Cycles, Earth’s shifting of position relative to the sun over geological time, are not responsible for climate change.

“A spokesperson for NASA similarly told Reuters that the scientists are ‘confident Earth’s recent warming is primarily due to human activities - specifically, the direct input of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into Earth’s atmosphere from burning fossil fuels or other anthropogenic activities.’ ”

To the Editor:

Trump took over the party that has a long history of giving taxpayer money to big corporations and the extremely wealthy. At the same time, they condemn people who need a hand up as they struggle to make a living and raise a family.

In 2017 this conservative MAGA party passed tax break legislation signed into law by Trump which basically handed out trillions of dollars to big companies and to wealthy individuals.

Fast forward to 2020 when Trump and conservative Senators and Representatives passed a stimulus bill which ended up being a bonanza for the rich and big companies. This tax break cost us taxpayers $135 billion.

Check it out. Go to the Pro Publica website and look at how much Donald Trump and Iowa’s MAGA Senators and Representatives gave to big companies. Look at other individuals who abused the program.