Valley News Forum for Sept. 24, 2023: We do not need career politicians

This is a letter to Trump and Biden — If you love this country, The United States of America, if you care for the people — both of you, stand down, do not run for president in 2024!

If you are a senator, Republican or Democrat, who has served or is serving a second term, stand down, do not run again!

Likewise, if you are a representative, Democrat or Republican, who has served five terms or is currently serving a fifth term, stand down, do not run again!

Everyone I talk to, whether Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative agrees there should be term limits!

We do not need career politicians — no — it does not take years to learn the ropes — that is a fallacy perpetuated by career politicians.

We need new people, with new ideas to help solve the old problems that we have been shackled with by old career politicians!

When new people run for office at the local, state and federal level, let us make sure they take the pledge to serve for a limited time!

Let it begin now!

Marcella Logue

Enfield

Much that we take for granted — think freedom, peace, prosperity, indeed civilization itself — depends heavily upon trust.

Trust in turn depends upon widespread fealty to the concept of objective truth.

Leftists, to the extent that they even acknowledge the existence of objective truth, deem their political objectives to be of greater importance.

Do the math. The actual math, that is, not the patronizing, therapeutic, subjective kind.

Anthony Stimson

Lebanon

In the latest television ad unveiled by the Super PAC supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president, we are told that “He intends to allow for deadly force to be used against anybody cutting through the border wall.”

I have a few questions:

■Is there a minimum age at which asylum-seekers fleeing persecution will be killed, or does “anybody” include babies, small children and their mothers?

■Will there be any sort of due process before the killing, or is the plan simply to dispense with such frivolity and get straight to the killing?

■Who, exactly, will be doing the killing? And what, exactly, will be their standing orders?

■Do they literally have to cut through the wall to be killed, or will they be killed simply for crossing into the U.S.?

■What will we do with the bodies once we’ve killed them? Leave them where they were shot? Bury them in open pits?

■Will the same rules apply at the Canadian border? Or at international airports?

Charlie Buttrey

Thetford

It should not be news to anyone that our country has an immigration problem. Our borders are overwhelmed with desperate migrants seeking entry, our cities overwhelmed with housing and caring for new arrivals, and our economy is starving for the migrants who have historically filled key jobs and revitalized our economy with innovation (half of our technology companies were founded by immigrants).

The tragedy is that we are capable of fixing much of this problem, but politicians pander with simple but dumb ideas, rather than advocating for the more complex and nuanced solutions that will actually work.

The crux of the problem is the definition of asylum that was enacted in the middle of the last century and despite efforts of presidents of both parties, has not been updated since. The reason people pour over our borders is we allow them to apply for asylum. When enacted, asylum was intended to apply to people persecuted because of who they were — their religion or politics — not because their country was poor or crime-ridden.

The solution is to narrow the definition of asylum, enact a compassionate immigration policy that allows a manageable number of immigrants to apply from poor countries, and substantially expand the number of people with valued skills who are allowed to immigrate.

Getting to this solution requires bipartisan compromise. Republicans must abandon the political leverage they get by blaming the immigration problem on Democrats. The problem won’t be solved unless Republicans start working with Democrats on immigration reform. Democrats must also abandon their position that offering asylum is the only humanitarian solution. There are billions of people who could plead asylum because of poverty, politics or crime. We need to stop pretending that our country is capable of offering asylum to anyone who crosses our borders and instead legislate a criteria for compassionate and humanitarian immigration of a manageable number of refugees from poverty and depravity.

David Allen

White River Junction