Just Sayin': When did all this happen to our nation?

When did all this happen to our nation?

As a student of history, I am distressed each day as I read the news. I wonder, when did it become . . .

Appropriate to ignore a congressional subpoena and then be rewarded with the House speakership?

OK to keep judges from making decisions regarding bail, given the increase in crime in the state?

OK for officeholders to ignore experts in curriculum, history scholars, teachers and librarians and to ban books, whitewash American history and ban topics contrary to their ideas? Isn’t education supposed to expose students to diverse ideas?

Fair to eliminate all, or a portion of, students’ college debt, when prior generations worked to pay off their loans?

Fashionable to elect members to Congress who lie, yell and bully people; have little ability to legislate; and have no understanding of the word “compromise”?

The big question is: When will the moderates in government and the country stand up to the extremists on both ends of the spectrum? Left alone, they’ll destroy our democracy.

 — Rena Bologna, Bayville

Government gives seniors the brush-off

My mom died on Dec. 30, and I am grieving the loss of this beautiful woman who gave herself to two handicapped children, to me and to the world. I am also mourning a government that doesn’t work right. It gives billions of dollars to Ukraine and undocumented migrants but doesn’t help many of its own. Medicaid is a nightmare. I needed to spend down thousands of dollars in my mom’s bank account for her to be accepted by Medicaid.

My dad was a Korean War medic who took care of the injured and comforted the dying. We tried for over two years to gets veterans’ aid for my mom, who lived at a nursing home in Nassau County.

She would have received up to $1,400 toward her rent. We were told that we never had the correct papers, and we were given every excuse for denying her claim.

I never thought that being an American senior citizen had such huge disadvantages.

 — Geri O’Keeffe, St. James

Make car controls like they used to be

Bring back contoured controls to car dashboards.

I remember when I could reach over to the dashboard and find the button to my favorite radio station and push it. I didn’t have to look for it.

Same with the heat controls. The buttons had a convex or concave shape to help drivers determine the right button.

“Back in my day,” you could drive your car without looking down constantly at a display screen. My car now basically has four ways to change the temperature. I can look at the display screen, or try to find the small buttons under the screen that all look the same. Or I can feel for the correct steering wheel toggle switches. Or I could use voice-activated controls after I find the right steering wheel toggle.

All of this hunting makes driving dangerous, especially in bad weather and at night. I just want to drive without taking my eyes off the road to operate an onboard computer.

Please make cars safer again.

 — Kenneth Smith, Hauppauge