Where is the outrage for Trump doing Putin’s bidding in Ukraine? | Opinion

Putin’s influence

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s influence over President Donald Trump is dangerous. Trump has aligned with Putin in betrayal of our allies. Trump is a traitor to democracy in the U.S. and throughout the world. We and the rest of the world will be less safe and less free if Trump succeeds in enabling Russia’s annexation of Ukraine. Europe will be much more vulnerable to Russian aggression. America will no longer be the beacon of democracy. America will no longer be the “Home of the free and the brave.”

Why are so many Americans without concern for this horror? Where is the outrage? Where is the condemnation of Trump’s treason? Where is the accountability by Congress? Where are GOP leaders with guts? What can we do to get their attention? ALL members of Congress need to awaken from their dangerous, cowardly slumber and DO SOMETHING NOW! All of us who value the rights and freedoms of democracy need to find new ways to rise up and speak out.

Beverly C. Johnson-Miller, Lexington

ICE enforcement

Perhaps State Rep. T.J. Roberts, R-Boone County, could add requirements to his legislation proposing all Kentucky law enforcement agencies must have an ICE agreement. He could require immigrants to wear a symbol on their clothing, something that easily identifies them. Oh, and require immigrants to live in a certain area. No marrying immigrants, either.

Immigrants of all nationalities contribute to this nation, culturally and economically. Economists see immigrants as an asset to the economy — they pay taxes; if undocumented they don’t receive federal benefits; they work hard. Immigrants are not the great cost some would have you believe. Millions of them pay Social Security, Medicare, and income taxes.

Immigrants, documented or undocumented, are not why T.J. Roberts or his supporters are miserable. It’s just that immigrants are easily targeted and abused. Thugs in masks and paramilitary garb wonder American city streets like Storm Troopers did in Germany nearly a century ago. Don’t like the comparison? Don’t wear the brown shirts. What we’re seeing today in the U.S. is just more of the same sentiment that targeted immigrants in U.S. history. “No Irish, Italians, Chinese, need apply.”

It was wrong then, it’s wrong now.

Bill Adkins, Williamstown

Kennedy Center dishonors

President Donald Trump, the great bankrupter, has done it again. This time with the storied Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., originally named in honor of President John F. Kennedy.

He has renamed it “The Donald Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” with no congressional approval. Then he had the government pay to add his name to the facade of the building. Trump replaced the loyal Americans who ran the Kennedy Center with his usual choices of the most inept people possible, as long as they were willing to praise him.

Now artists who used to perform there are no longer interested. The public is no longer buying enough tickets to make the former Kennedy Center financially viable. No longer will we see unforgettable Kennedy Center Honors performances like Heart performing “Stairway to Heaven” with an ensemble of studio musicians, a string section, two choirs, and on drums Jason Bonham, the son of the original Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, while the living original members of Led Zeppelin — Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones — looked on from the balcony.

Now the Trump-Kennedy Center will only have much lesser performances that Trump finds acceptable.

Kevin Kline, Lexington

National Debt

Todd Kelly is correct in pointing out that former Kentucky state Sen. Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, doesn’t understand that our national debt doesn’t function like household debt. But, hardly anyone does.

Deficit spending is important for our economy. The deficit is a mirror image of our savings. They are literally two sides of the same coin. When the deficit shrinks, so do our savings.

Dr. Fredrick Thayer, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Pittsburg published a paper, “Balanced Budgets and Depressions,” in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology in 1996. He looked back as far as 1791 and found six periods of sustained balanced/surplus federal budgets. Each of those was followed by a depression.

If you balance the budget, you shrink private savings, which will cause the economy to seize up like an engine without oil. We’ve done that at least six times. I’m sure it’s possible to generate inflation with too much debt, but Dr. Thayer shows what definitely happens when you have too little debt.

Wouldn’t it be something if Damon Thayer was related to Dr. Thayer?

Bill Dake, Versailles

Defining adjectives

These definitions from the Merriam Webster dictionary were apparently not taught when some elected officials were educated.

Propriety: The state or quality of confirming to conventionally accepted standards or behavior or morals.

Bombastic: Marked by or given to speech or writing that is given exaggerated importance by artificial or empty means.

Cheryl Keenan, Lexington

Leadership legacy

To U.S. Sen. John Thune and U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson — There is not one policy President Donald Trump has conducted that has not been to the deficit on many levels. As a nation, the inescapable truth is there is nothing great about the Trump administration. Our nation is at the weakest point that we have ever been. Your leaderships are to blame.

When Trump humiliates you and Congress with his response to the murders of Rob Reiner and his wife Michele, how can you defend him? It was mentally and emotionally unstable.

You have allowed Trump to unilaterally attack “free speech” through your sycophancy. You have allowed Trump to unilaterally decide who and who is not a terrorist. The American people are terrified of Trump. It is not Trump who decides who is a terrorist... We the People decide that.

Both of you are profiles in cowardice. Both of you have diminished the values that were once conservative. Invoking the 25th Amendment will be your only saving grace. But no one expects that either of you will do this. Your legacy is emerging as infamy. We the people will decide who is to be lauded, and who is to be shelved upon the dust bin of history.

Robert Moreland, Lexington

Kentucky is “somewhere”

Kentuckians are most happy when we are “somewhere.” We love our neighborhoods, towns, mom-and-pop businesses, local schools, and our various religious organizations. We patronize our hometown stores even as we shop in big box stores too. Our love for our neighborhoods and towns endures even as we watch crime stories, hip comedies, and reality shows on television and the internet streaming services.

We prefer personal conversations to the social media even as we browse and post our comments.

Yet, we also know that many Americans today are just as happy “anywhere.” Their preferences were shaped by attending colleges far from home and by their careers in national and international companies and organizations.

Just as many Kentuckians are grounded in our neighborhoods and towns, other Americans are global in outlook and personal taste.

The difference between “somewhere” and “anywhere” is vexing the Kentucky Democratic Party nowadays. It seems to me our party has unwittingly become the “anywhere” party in its embrace of globalism.

I’m hoping our party will eventually catch sight of “somewhere.”

Tom Louderback, Louisville

Edited by Liz Carey