Letters to the Editor | Oct. 1, 2024

In response to a recent letter to the editor about the Biden-Harris administration’s shifting drug costs, I want to remind the writer that they have the option to switch Part D plans during the open enrollment period. AARP does not necessarily provide the cheapest options, and she should go looking for a new plan. I pay $6 per year as my premium and have several prescriptions with a $0 copay. As for the price of eggs, the writer seems to have forgotten that egg prices rose substantially following the infection of millions of chickens by avian flu, requiring farmers to kill off all the birds where any became infected. It’s a supply-and-demand issue, not something controlled by any governmental agency. The U.S. is a capitalist country. The goal here is to make money. For many corporations, those profits are immense and are passed on to stockholders, which most of us aren’t. Look to those entities for the rising costs — it’s all about the profit margin, not what’s best for the people.

Melanie Baer, West Chester, mbaer27@verizon.net

In Trudy Rubin’s column, “After beheading Hezbollah, it’s time for a cease-fire, not an Israeli invasion,” she never mentions the thousands of civilians being killed and wounded, and whole towns and neighborhoods being demolished across Lebanon with terrible echoes of the death and destruction the Netanyahu government has caused in its war on Gaza. Reading her column as well as comments by the Biden-Harris administration over the past year, I have to ask: How many Palestinians and Lebanese must the Israeli military kill, maim, humiliate, torture, and starve before Israelis will feel safe? One hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand? A million? How about the U.S. suspending all military and political support for the Netanyahu government to force it to come to the negotiating table with representatives of Palestinians and the Lebanese to begin to work toward real, lasting solutions to this conflict?

Craig Stevens, Philadelphia

Why in the world does The Inquirer give oxygen to Donald Trump’s baseless and outrageous claims, such as the story Monday that Kamala Harris is “mentally impaired”? We rely on our major daily newspapers to be a filter of legitimate news, not a mouthpiece for fake news like some TikTok post. Please, editors, do your job. Don’t spread garbage on your limited pages and mislead your readers into thinking there is something to crazy claims like these. If Trump wins, it will be due, in part, to the mainstream media airing his lies as legitimate news.

Michael Homans, Wayne

I have known and respected State Sen. Jimmy Dillon for decades, predating his political career. He is a man of honor and integrity. There is no way he would have engaged in the writing of racist and homophobic social media posts. That is not who he is or how he was raised. This is obviously nothing more than a typical election season smear campaign. The fact that the ugly, alleged posts were publicized and condemned by the Pennsylvania Senate Republican Campaign Committee proves that this is nothing more than a partisan political hit job on a popular, effective incumbent senator. Teamsters Local 830 and many other local unions have proudly endorsed Dillon for reelection.

Daniel H. Grace, secretary-treasurer, Teamsters Local 830

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