Cutchogue
Demand relief on SALT
House Republicans have released their 2025 federal budget. In a nod to Philip Wasilausky’s letter last week (“Do you have buyer’s remorse?”), I called Representative Nick LaLota’s D.C. office to ask whether the new budget includes a higher SALT cap.
Raising the SALT cap was a key campaign promise of Mr. LaLota. The $10,000 cap was imposed by the 2017 Trump Tax Cut Act. It has a greater impact on New York, particularly Long Islanders. Critics argue that the higher cap only benefits those with high incomes, as compared to other states. However, Long Island has a higher cost of living than other states. As per Mr. LaLota’s Jan. 29 email to constituents: “… It’s an indisputable fact that states like New York … contribute far more to the federal budget than we receive, subsidizing states that gain more than they give.”
Mr. LaLota’s office advised me the proposed budget doesn’t increase the SALT cap. I then asked if he will vote for the budget despite not honoring his key campaign promise to constituents. I was told Mr. LaLota would get back to me.
Despite Mr. Trump’s campaign statements that the federal deficit is too high, the Republican House budget extends trillions in tax cuts for billionaires. Despite the unconscionable push of Trump and Musk to slash billions from the budget by abolishing federal agencies and laying off government workers, it’s estimated the proposed budget will actually raise our federal deficit by $3 trillion to $4 trillion over 10 years. Cutting billions but adding trillions? Where’s the logic in that?
I urge everyone to call ask Mr. LaLota to withhold his vote on the proposed budget. The Republicans need his vote. If they won’t increase or eliminate the SALT cap, then he should vote “No.”
Barbara Farr
Cutchogue
Audit issues
In a letter last week (“Future in doubt”), the writer says Democrats should not be afraid of an audit of government agencies. I agree, but I have a few issues with his statements. First, Democrats have no power to stop what the Republican administration is doing. Republicans have control of Congress and the executive. Secondly, how is what DOGE is doing an audit? Have they released any reports? Have they documented any problems?
Well, DOGE uncovered $50 million being spent on condoms to Hamas in Gaza. Only problem with this is that the money was spent on HIV prevention in Gaza, Mozambique. No money was spent on condoms in the Gaza strip. Oops!
Well, what about the 150-year-old people on Social Security? Musk and his kids are too young to know that much of the backend software used in the Social Security system was written in the ’50s in COBOL and if you didn’t have a date you just used the starting date of the project, in this case Social Security. Oops again! Lastly. let’s remember that budgets are typically passed by both parties, not just one. I would like a real audit of the government, starting with the Department of Defense.
Gary Cormorau
Cutchogue
Fighting back
Our country is on the precipice of lawlessness and the loss of our democracy. The acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York refused to drop the corruption case against NYC Mayor Eric Adams after she was instructed to do just that by one of Donald Trump’s sycophants, who is now running the Department of Justice. Instead, she resigned, and on her way out, noted that Adams was offered a quid pro quo – essentially, you help us with Trump’s roundup of immigrants and we’ll drop the corruption case against you.
Following her resignation, another highly qualified assistant U.S.attorney in the same office resigned before he could be asked to drop the Adams case. After that, five more Justice Department officials in Washington quit before getting on board. Bravo to all of them for refusing to follow a clearly improper, and perhaps illegal, order.
It’s now time to take the next steps in fighting back. First, every lawyer in this country, when being admitted to practice law, swears to uphold the Constitution of the United States and conduct him or herself ethically. Those who engage in unethical or illegal conduct subject themselves to discipline all the way up to disbarment. It is therefore incumbent upon the appropriate state or local bar associations that handle disciplinary proceedings to conduct investigations and hearings involving lawyers in the Department of Justice who interfered with the prosecution of Eric Adams. If found to have violated the law or rules of ethics, they should be disciplined, in fact, disbarred.
Second, the large law firms in this country should step up to the plate and offer meaningful positions in their practices to the brave and highly ethical lawyers who said no, I will not engage in the improper conduct you are demanding from me.
The country can fight back. It just takes a bit of courage to stand up and say no to authoritarianism.
Michael Levy
Orient
Protect NOAA’s experts
My mother was in high school here in the Hurricane of ᾽38. She said when the wind started howling kids were let out of school, only to be blown against the fence. Teachers rushed out to pull them back into the auditorium, where they stayed, and parents called. The worst thing, she said, was “there was no warning.” Our eastern L.I. towns had no warning, so no businesses, homes or schools could prepare.
The ᾽38 hurricane seemed to come out of nowhere, destroying whole fishing fleets. Property damage was immense, including farms and livestock. Over 500 people died.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration formed in 1970, bringing the Weather Bureau and the Commission of Fisheries under one roof.
Last week, NOAA employees were told that staff will be cut by 50% (CBS) and the budget cut another 30%. The reason? Looking for waste, fraud and abuse. If that is the true goal, why not bring in auditors? Why fire all the Inspectors General, confirmed by the Senate for their expertise, who conduct investigations to root out abuse and report back to the public? It is publicly reported that last year IGs rooted out $1 billion in savings for taxpayers.
Crippling NOAA and our weather service will have devastating consequences for Long Island as we face warming oceans, erratic weather, flooding. Our Congress voted to fully fund NOAA to do its job protecting us. Recklessly dismantling NOAA is illegal and unconstitutional. There is a process for dismantling an agency. I’m writing to Congressman LaLota to ask him to protect us by keeping NOAA fully funded and staffed with experts.
Mary Morgan
Southold
Firing federal employees
Three and a half weeks.That is the amount of time it took for someone I know to be terminated by the administration. They’re implementing the Project 2025 objectives they denied supporting during the campaign. An unelected billionaire, making hundreds of millions from government contracts, accountable to no one, is spearheading these efforts and accessing our personal information in the process.
Perhaps you believe that all government employees live inside the beltway and are “deep state.” This lovely young mom of two doesn’t fit that profile. She has worked for the National Park Service for 18 years, specializing in rescues. A new job, earned by exemplary performance 18 months ago, left her vulnerable as a probationary employee. She lives in New Mexico.
Ah – not Long Island! Why should you care? A Dec. 20 report by Congressional Research Service indicates there are 53,600 Federal employees in our state. Approximately 9,800 live in CD 1. These are approximate numbers because residency is self-reported. The Office of Professional Management reports 60,727 federal employees in New York State, which supports CRS data.
Additionally, Northwell Health (31,153 employees), Catholic Health (17,000), the VA and universities may be affected by funding cuts. How long before someone you know is fired or a resource or service you rely on is no longer available?
Investigations into fraud are done by Inspectors General. They fired them. Wholesale firings and dismantling of agencies is not the approach you take to look for fraud. This is about rechanneling resources. Follow the money!
If you are concerned about the harm being caused to hardworking federal workers and the impact it will have on our communities and economy call Nick Lalota. Demand he stand up for his constituents. Demand Town Halls to listen to us. Demand accountability from the party in charge.
Barbara Wasilausky
Mattituck
Purge is hurting families
My sister-in-law has spent a decade serving the American people as a dedicated federal employee. She earned outstanding performance reviews and recently transferred to a new department. Two days ago, she and her wife welcomed a new baby into their family. Today, while on maternity leave, she was fired as one of thousands of federal employees purged by Donald Trump’s administration.
This isn’t about politics; it’s about fairness. She wasn’t a political appointee or a high-ranking official. She was a career public servant who, because of a bureaucratic rule, was placed on probation again after transferring. Now, through no fault of her own, she is unemployed.
The consequences are immediate and devastating. She and her wife now face financial uncertainty while caring for a newborn and a 4-year-old. They may have to pull their son from preschool. This was not just a mass firing, it was a direct attack on working families.
Trump calls it “draining the swamp,” but this is not about fixing government. It’s about using real people as collateral damage in a political stunt. If a decade-long employee can be discarded like this, what does that mean for anyone’s job security?
Long Island is home to many hardworking families, union members and public servants. No matter where you stand politically, ask yourself: If this can happen to her, it can happen to any of us. I hope my neighbors will recognize the human cost of these reckless purges.
TJ Wells
Riverhead
We the people
I cannot understand how anyone can be upset about the popularly elected chief executive of our country scrutinizing the agencies under his purview. FEMA, USAID, countless NGOs, UNRWA and NATO, for that matter, are all funded by the taxpayers, people like you and me — you know: we, the people.
We, the people, have a right to know if our money is being stolen and wasted. Elon Musk is acting on behalf of President Trump. No one elected Anthony Fauci, who was acting on behalf of the Biden administration.
It is reprehensible that we are jeopardizing the futures of generations yet to be born. Our debt is $36 trillion and the government runs a deficit every year, heaping on even more debt .
Let’s start by spending less than we have, then pay down the debt. Then, if there is anything left over, we can worry about other countries’ problems.
The greatest empires (Rome, Britannia) were crushed by debt, not conquest — a lesson the much older totalitarian states who are our adversaries seem to grasp.
Sterling Churgin
Riverhead
The great Silk Road caper
Most who have any recollection of high school history will remember that the Silk Road was the connection of all trade routes between China and the Far East to Europe.
The 21st-century iteration of the Silk Road was an internet site found only on the dark web founded by Ross Ulbricht. Historically, merchants bought, sold and traded goods along the Silk Road in the various bazaars set up for that purpose. Mr. Ulbricht simply modified the concept by creating an online bazaar whose main purpose was to facilitate the sale of illicit drugs, paid for in crypto.
The government ultimately unwound this rather sophisticated “drug bazaar,” resulting in Mr. Ulbricht’s conviction on seven counts including distribution of narcotics and conspiring to launder money. Mr. Ulbricht grossed over $200 million during the years the Silk Road was active, making him the most successful entrepreneur of the illegal drug trade in history. The marketplace also hawked multiple forms of contraband including fake driver’s licenses and contract hacking.
Government investigators identified six people they said overdosed and died from drugs they purchased on Ulbricht’s site. Notably, during his trial, it came to light that Ulbricht had allegedly commissioned and paid for five murders to protect his criminal enterprise. In the presentation of evidence, prosecutors proffered certain 2013 chat messages in which Ulbricht said: “Never killed a man or had one killed before, but it is the right move in this case.”
He was convicted in 2013 and subsequently sentenced to two life terms. The sentence was severe because of the evidence concerning the contracted for murders, even though they were not carried out.
If pardoning of the Jan. 6 rioters is not really a concern for you, the simultaneous action by President Trump in pardoning this criminal mastermind conspirator should be.
It is well documented that the president has developed a recent fascination with crypto. The consideration tendered to Mr. Ulbricht for the purchase of drugs and other illegal products was in crypto, thus making him one of the leading crypto experts. Just a coincidence, I guess.
Peter Mayer III
Southold
Many colors
Two things propel me to write: Watching the film “Selma” at the North Fork Arts Center and reading about the visit to Germany of our new secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. I was sad to learn that the military base school his wife visited had to remove all artwork having to do with Martin Luther King Jr., racial or women’s issues. The unkindest cut was reading that they took down a poster of one of our national heroines, Harriet Tubman. I have to ask: What’s so scary about history?
As a high school senior in 1968 I was asked to deliver remarks at my graduation. A person I highly respected — Republican congressman Gerald Ford (then minority leader of the House of Representatives, later to become president of the United States) — offered to help me with my speech. Since the Alexandria, Va., school system had desegregated just as our brand-new high school opened, we were a diverse group of students getting to know and learn from each other and creating new traditions. There were some tensions, but mostly there was a harmonious blending — until the tragic assassination of Dr. King that spring threatened to break our bonds. Mr. Ford suggested that I use in my speech the biblical story of Joseph’s Coat of Many Colors to contribute to my theme of all being equally part of the whole. I did — and I still believe in it. Let us as a “beloved community” not be afraid of it or fear it will weaken us, but embrace it and each other.
Patricia Lloyd
Mattituck
‘Scream bloody murder’
Tweny or 30 years ago, if you were writing a dystopian novel, you might have invented a member of the president’s cabinet who was in the habit of putting mice and baby chickens in a blender to make dinner for his pet hawks. To appear even more surreal and alarming, you might have presented him as a scion of America’s most prominent political dynasty. For today’s fiction writers, these options are no longer available.
Prior to RFK Jr.’s appointment as Secretary of Health and Human Services, it was at least possible to cling to the idea that there was a limit to the depths to which the present administration could sink. However, the Senate’s recent vote to confirm Kennedy’s nomination proves beyond doubt that there are no such limits, and that the well-being of the American people, the “common good,” is no longer a matter of concern, much less a priority, for the new stewards of the federal government.
Almost as appalling as the Republican party’s abandonment of any sense of civic responsibility is the feckless Democratic response. What response? You might well ask. Politicians on the left (which now includes anyone who might oppose a headlong plunge into fascism) seem to be frozen in a perpetual state of shock.
Plainly, anyone looking for leadership to resist the impending tyranny needs to search elsewhere, and there’s only one other place to look: the mirror. Remedies for the current political sickness will not be delivered from on high. They need to come from the citizenry. So, Citizen, what should you do? Whatever you can: petition, demonstrate, organize, write letters, demand action from politicians, strike, tell your friends to do the same. Use your imagination. Nothing will force public officials to mount an effective resistance to the current regime except loud and sustained expressions of public outrage. As someone once said, Do not go gentle into that good night. Instead, scream bloody murder. At present, it’s the only available option.
Dave Warren