The recent letter to the editor (Herald, Oct. 18) alleging McConnell and Sanders as accomplices to murder for refusing to act on gun control highlights one example of the dangers of “now is not the time” politics.
Big Pharma’s opioid epidemic, rape and pillage of our land, air and water by the oil and gas industry, high-cost education that is often also low-quality, expensive “health care” that has the worst outcomes in the industrialized world (and 700,000 medical bankruptcies each year) are just a few of the ills of our society that our elected officials do not have the political will to address.
Citizens United has allowed industry to thrive at our expense, and our government is anything but of, by, or for We The People. Science no longer matters: the oil and gas industry denies climate change and the public health dangers of fossil fuel extraction, just as the tobacco industry denied that smoking causes cancer.
Industrialized agriculture feeds less people less healthily at higher (externalized) costs, while poisoning our land and water. Our own La Plata Electric Association claims that now is not the time to move to renewables.
Cory Gardner and Scott Tipton continue to claim to represent us while focusing more on their corporate donors and regularly voting against the public good and for the public harm.
Now is clearly not the time of integrity in our “democracy.” The emperor has no clothes.
Lauri Costello
Durango
