How to run government, Ron DeSantis, NY Dems' losses, composting, and more
Food scraps in a compost pile for a program at the Long Island Horticultural Research and Extension Center in Riverhead earlier in November. Credit: Randee Daddona
Get businesspeople to run government
It’s unbelievable that people want the government to run things [“Audit: Labor Dept. missteps in jobless pay fraud,” News, Nov. 16].
Almost anything the government touches seems to get screwed up, and taxpayers are left footing the bill.
We need businesspeople to run our government, not bureaucrats and lifetime politicians. If the government is involved, fraud often follows. It just appears to be a way of life in government.
Liberal policies doomed NY Dems
Readers commenting on the Democrats’ election losses in New York pointed fingers and blamed the party’s leadership [“Here’s why New York Dems lost,” Letters, Nov. 16]. No one mentioned the most obvious reasons — New Yorkers have had it with liberal policies, tax-and-spend ideology and crime propagated by the cashless bail law.
Now, if the Republican Party can wake up and see the danger of guns and come up with meaningful and effective gun laws, we will really be getting somewhere.
DeSantis is liked in Florida, but nation?
Cathy Young fails to mention that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is another version of former president Donald Trump, just smarter [“Can DeSantis pull GOP away from Trump?” Opinion, Nov. 14].
DeSantis has created fake cultural issues in his attack on “woke” beliefs. DeSantis and the Republican Party have been less than truthful about critical race theory being taught in public schools — it is discussed in law schools and graduate programs. Also, teachers in the elementary schools do not discuss gender identity.
DeSantis has “sanitized” the teaching of American history, ignoring slavery, Jim Crow laws, etc. Florida treated Blacks terribly during the Jim Crow period.
He opposed masks during the pandemic, citing personal freedom. However, COVID-19 has caused more than 82,000 deaths in Florida. His health commissioner, who has no background in epidemics, views vaccines as an individual choice.
DeSantis’ views on assault weapons and voter suppression are questionable.
He may be popular with Floridians, but he is a divisive figure nationally.
Composting helps all in big and small ways
Indeed, it is irresponsible for any household to discard organic matter into the regular garbage [“Imposing composting,” Our Towns, Nov. 11].
In Garden City, garbage goes directly to the Covanta Hempstead plant in Westbury and is burned. Any organic matter that is burned is releasing carbon into the atmosphere and exacerbating our climate problem.
Composting material, though, returns that carbon to the soil, where it can be sequestered or made available to new plants to blossom. Backyard composting is fairly easy and convenient but does require a bit of attention. Bins for this are readily available.
Restoration Farm in Old Bethpage has been accepting household scraps for years from community-supported agriculture members and farmstand customers. The material is composted and used at the farm to enrich the soil.
No matter how you compost, remember to remove plastic stickers on grocery store fruit and vegetables — they never break down. Small efforts by all of us makes a difference.
Hosting an exchange student is memorable
I found the article “Welcome, world” to be quite nostalgic [exploreLI, Nov. 16]. In 1987, as a junior in college, I was an exchange student in Siena, Italy, living with an Italian family for five months. It was the best experience of my life. I thought that someday I would pay it forward to a student wanting to come to America.
In 2011, my husband and I had such an opportunity, hosting a 16-year-old from Germany. With the help of the Deer Park school district, we enrolled her in her junior year of high school.
For 10 months, we grew to love this young lady as if she were our own.
For the past 10 years, our families have vacationed together multiple times.
She is now 26, a psychologist in Germany, and about to be married. The experience of hosting a student is one we’ll always savor.
Garlic won’t only keep vampires away
A new study cited certain skin smells as attracting mosquitoes [“Are you a mosquito magnet?”, Health & Science, Oct. 19].
Years ago, when my daughters went to sleepaway camp, I gave them garlic pills to take orally. They did not get mosquito bites (and they didn’t get bad breath). Garlic apparently helps keep mosquitoes away.
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