Many not so beautiful things about budget bill

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Behold the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) just passed by the House. Is the beauty in being beholden to Trump? The fiscal holdouts caved, so yes. Is the beauty to be found in adding approximately $4 trillion to the debt, already at $356 trillion? Doesn’t a budget usually mean using a plan to stay within your means? There is nothing in the bill that reduces the debt, in fact it will raise the debt ceiling.

I wouldn’t put money management at the top of Congress’s skill set. Is the beauty to behold in the increase to military spending? Yes. $92 million is needed for Trump’s birthday parade and untold millions will be needed to retrofit his new plane.

Is the beauty to behold in the cuts to safety nets for the least among us, the elimination of environmental protections and incentives, or help with student loans?

It’s a beauty all right. If Americans love the tax cuts, maybe.

Americans don’t want to pay for the government they want.

— Christine DeLapp, Aptos

Where all the ‘Free Palestine’ rhetoric leads

I write this the morning after two Jewish people were murdered by someone shouting “Free Palestine.” Since there was never an independent state of Palestine what is meant by that phase?

Gaza has been a de facto independent entity since 2005 with its own government and laws. Hamas won the only election ever held there. We have seen what they have done with the foreign aid they have received. They built a network of tunnels, not for public transportation but for military purposes only. They built factories — for building rockets and missiles. They imprisoned and tortured political dissidents.

Prior to Oct. 7, Hamas fired tens of thousands of rockets into Israel which caused little damage because Israel built a defense system to protect civilians. Hamas uses their civilians as human shields.

There is nothing noble about Hamas or their goal of killing Jews. If one wants to help the people of Gaza then they need to advocate for a Gaza free of Hamas.

What happened in Washington D.C. Wednesday night shows where this rhetoric leads.

— Gil Stein, Aptos

Killer of young Israelis: Actions, more than words

Wednesday’s brutal slaughter of two young Israelis in DC by a dyed-in-the-wool revolutionary whose public postings show his pro-Hamas sentiments was the ultimate wake-up call. Yet a May 22 letter writer published in this space asserts that being pro-Palestinian is not necessarily antisemitic.

Elias Rodriguez, the assassin, believed in action rather than words. He honored his pro-Palestinian sentiments by murdering two innocent young people about be married. When the police took him away, he shouted “Free, free Palestine.” What more do you need to know to connect the dots?

Rodriguez’ words constitute hate speech and he proved it with his actions. If the First Amendment protects these murderers, then I hope and pray that the Second Amendment is never revoked.

Moreover, people with his commitment are enabled by the silent majority who either say nothing or scream their own hatred with slogans whose true meaning is lethally deceptive when it hides the truth under the guise of the recognizing the “plight of Palestinians.”

— Desmond Tuck, San Mateo

Amid ‘Golden Dome’ plans, many people going hungry

President Donald Trump announced billions to build his Golden Dome project while many Americans are going hungry.

One of the reasons I helped start Food Not Bombs with my friends on May 24, 1980, was the announcement by Ronald Reagan that if elected he would divert money from social services to fund his Star Wars program. Trump noted during his Golden Dome press conference on May 20 that he was completing Reagan’s vision.

The message of Food Not Bombs couldn’t be more important today than at any time in our history. This weekend during our free concert at San Lorenzo Park I will be encouraging all of our nearly thousand Food Not Bombs chapters to increase our nonviolent direct actions to pressure the government to divert their military spending to fund health care, education and other social services.

— Keith McHenry, Santa Cruz