Stiffing retirees
The Municipal Labor Council sold out 250,000 retired city workers by colluding with private insurance companies to weaken the excellent health coverage they have been receiving for many years (“Fix, Don’t End, City’s Health Savings,” Editorial, Oct. 20)
The United Federation of Teachers and other municipal unions have sacrificed the interests of their retirees by promoting Medicare Advantage as a better health-care choice than SeniorCare, the fine Medicare/Medigap plan they were receiving.
Union retirees are now faced with an unfair choice of joining Medicare Advantage with its many restrictions or paying $190 per month to remain in the SeniorCare plan they have been satisfied with.
The UFT and the other municipal unions who agreed to this egregious deal should be held accountable to their rank and file membership. While this particular issue is related to retired union members, the active city employees must be wondering how safe their benefits are going forward.
Gerard Rosenthal
Manhattan
End gov’t’s waste
There are solutions to “It’s Spending Driving the Deficit” (Editorial, Oct. 19).
Millions of Americans cut their household budgets to make ends meet. It is time for Washington to live within its available, existing revenues without excessive borrowing.
Return to pay-as-you-go budgeting, means testing for all government assistance programs, sunset provisions for agencies and programs that have outlived their original purpose, real balanced budgets without smoke and mirrors.
Everything needs to be on the table, including military spending, agricultural subsidies, corporate welfare bailouts and foreign aid to nations that are never there for us when we need help.
Close down obsolete military bases both here and abroad. Insist our NATO and other partners pay their fair share, including billions owed from previous years. The president and Congress have forgotten the old saying — a penny saved is a penny earned.
Larry Penner
Great Neck
Bitcoin boom
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are surging, masquerading as alternative currencies and/or alternative investments to paper assets (“Bitcoin in orbit,” Oct. 21).
To qualify as currency, it must serve as a reliable store of value. Crypto is not, unless you’re OK with seeing your hard-earned liquid cash fluctuate as much as 40 percent in the space of a few weeks.
As an alternative to paper assets, as gold is, it only qualifies if you think an intangible, digital asset is as real as one you can touch.
Cryptocurrency is nothing more than a casino for gamblers, another Wall Street gimmick taking advantage of suckers with money to burn. It’s fool’s gold, and eventually it will have that same value.
Richard Carhidi
Manhattan
Union bullies
As a former trades union worker, then employer of union tradesmen, I appreciate the concept of unionization for all the good reasons (“Labor Logjam,” Betsy McCaughey, Oct. 19).
However, there are downsides when they are too powerful, especially when our president and his administration kowtow to them.
Teachers unions and now dock workers are “hostage taking” for different agendas, and neither having anything to do with our country’s best interest.
Teachers unions are complicit in selling ideology to our kids, and dock workers are standing in the way of solving inefficiencies at our ports. Our feckless and disoriented president has painted himself into a corner.
Gary Fleming
Wayne, NJ
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