Nunes thanked: Letters to the editor, Jan. 31, 2019

Nunes thanked for Alzheimer’s bill

As a caregiver, daughter and advocate, I’m thrilled to share that Congress recently passed the Building Our Largest Dementia (BOLD) Infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act into law. I want to thank Congressman (Devin) Nunes for co-sponsoring this meaningful legislation, which will allow for effective Alzheimer’s public health interventions nationwide, including education on dementia warning signs and how to get diagnosed.

Alzheimer’s disease is bold — sweeping into minds, wiping them clear of precious memories, and eroding basic abilities that many of us take for granted. Thanks to the BOLD Act, Americans will now be better armed to get a diagnosis and care for those affected. Congress clearly understands that with Alzheimer’s, spending a little will save a lot.

On a personal level, Alzheimer’s meant stepping away from an ambitious career on the East Coast to return to my family home in Fresno and help care for my mom. Funding caregiver education will help me care for my mom in the best way possible. On a national level, passage of the BOLD Act underscores how elected officials are working together to address Alzheimer’s as a public health crisis. A bold response, indeed.

Fears U.S. heading toward Marxism

We live in a restrictive society: restricted by federal bureaucracies taking freedom by restrictive regulations, restricted by Congress making laws for everyone except itself, restricted by a Democrat Party heading toward Marxism, a failing economic theory everywhere it is tried.

Junior economists know self-serving restrictions affect price or scarcity given supply and demand analysis. “Single Payer/a $40 Trillion expense,” “Medicaid for All,” “free schools,” “welfare states” — restrict personal property from interacting in a respectful, trustful and cooperative environment. Russian Marxist-based bureaucracies clearly demonstrate anti-cooperation, little tolerance, freedom only for elitists and no due process.

If U.S. federal bureaucracies (IRS, DOE, DOJ, etc.) come calling, trust, due process and respect vanish, vis-à-vis General Flynn, 400 Tea Party Groups, etc. In 2017, 97 laws resulted in 3,281 agency-issued rules in just one year. Five bureaucracy regulations represent 43 percent of pending restrictions.

F. Hayek noted if people do not understand nor recognize free capitalism's benefits, they will ask government to undertake actions making us less wealthy, less free and less safe. Your elected leaders, uncaring for restrictions imposed or ignored, are safe in their courts, offices, houses and transport — odd, schools aren’t! Time to rethink electing freedom and safety advocates.

Unbounded media hatred of Trump

President Trump, with his many obvious character flaws, is frequently intemperate in his rhetoric, often rude, crude, vulgar, authoritarian, and is crassly obstinate; that doesn’t make him a bad president, it just makes him a nasty person, albeit a nasty person that has, surprisingly, done many right things.

So what is the servile media’s problem? It seems clear that the media is the propaganda arm of the Democratic party. If Trump says something is good or bad, the media automatically responds by taking the opposite stance, not out of conviction, but out of sheer, unmitigated hatred. Granted, that President Trump is not a nice person, but the extreme hatred the media manufactures on a daily basis is shocking.

Not even Richard Nixon at his worst was subject to a media this perverse.

Democrats needed to secure border

Malik Simba asks why the GOP-controlled Congress failed to allocate $5 billion for a border wall. Better questions: Why didn’t Obama push for true immigration reform when the Democrats had an even larger congressional majority rather than string Hispanics along before passing DACA by executive order (which effectively kept the Dreamers in citizenship limbo) as the 2012 elections approached? Why did so many Democrats oppose 2007 bipartisan immigration reform championed by President Bush and Sens. Kennedy and McCain?

Simba asserts that the wall isn’t important for border security. But U.S. Customs and Border Protection studies show that illegal crossings have dropped by over 90 percent in the four sections where barriers ordered by Presidents Clinton and both Bushes were erected.

Simba claims that Democrats will bargain to fund the wall in exchange for DACA security, but Pelosi and Schumer haven’t mentioned DACA in recent discussions and refused to discuss wall funding in exchange for ending the government shutdown.

Finally, Trump’s failure to mention the killing of two Americans by white males is no more relevant to the issue of border security than his failure to mention the epidemic of black-on-black homicide in our inner cities.

This story was originally published January 31, 2019 at 6:00 AM.