The Opinion page

About Wednesday’s Opinion page: Editorial No. 1 on the train to nowhere. Stop the $$$$$$$$$ madness!

Bravo! Editorial No. 2 on taxes and the Legislature’s wreckless increases. Their solution: Reduce taxes on marijuana, a proven threshold drug. Nonsense! The inmates have taken over the asylum. Larry Wilson’s column praising the Villa Gardens film: Bravo! Reslience of the victims of the Altadena (and Palisades) fires: Bravo!

— Joseph F. Paggi Jr., Pasadena

Blockbuster cinema

Larry Wilson’s column (July 9) caught my eye with the opening sentence, “Weary of the whack on the head and the full body blow that is blockbuster American cinema?” Yes! The last movie I saw at a theater in Pasadena was so loud, I was compelled to ask the manager to please turn the sound down, the booms and the bangs are hurting my ears! Since there were only a few of us there, she did so — but it was still way too loud. I left early.

Larry touted the film “Familiar Touch” playing at the Glendale Laemmle, about a woman with dementia who is adjusting to her new life in a home for older people, shot right here in Pasadena.

Obviously a gentler flick, which he says is highly rated, and it also attracts me because my beloved father was struck with Alzheimer’s, and I was privileged to care for him in his final six years.

Since I am no longer involved in the crazy politics of today, I feel so much better, and am planning on seeing this movie to add to my newfound peace.

Thanks for the tip, Larry!

— William Stremel, South Pasadena

‘Big Beautiful Bill’

In passing with the thinnest of margins Trump’s budget bill, it should be clear to all but his delusional followers that the GOP is clearly the party of the billionaire class.

The passed budget represents the largest transfer of wealth in U.S. history from most of us to the super-wealthy.

And we can easily see who will pay for these tax cuts: We and our descendants, who will be paying off this gift for generations.

And unlike Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito, we will not be riding around on our rich pal’s super yachts.

Within this terrible bill are written budget items that, either by inclusion or exclusion, are aimed at directly harming all of the rest of us, whether we voted for this or not.

The trading of health care and food programs for poor Americans in order to hand trillions to the rich would be bad enough, but other provisions also will make life for us not just harder, but more dangerous, such as the attack on laws regarding firearms restrictions, lax regulations on drug companies while making it harder to protect us from viruses and unleashing lunatic anti-science quack RFK Jr. and rolling back protections of our air, our earth and our water from pollution.

Not even counting the destruction of the National Weather Service, all to aid his friend who owns the Accuweather site.

It is more dangerous to be a pregnant woman in the U.S. than any other wealthy nation.

The focus of these fanatics regarding contraception and abortion, coupled with complete indifference to the health of women, means that even now women are dying from their fanatic policies.

Even with the few cheerleaders whose letters you print in the paper regarding the trade war that is delivering to all of us higher prices and lack of goods, all based on his whims, they will suffer.

But as some of the same writers show in the printed letters, they are falling for “the problems you have are all caused by all these Brown, Black and Yellow people” bait-and-switch puppet show.

Yes, the same immigrants who took a huge hand in making California the fourth largest economy in the world. They are the problem.

Again, a gang of servants of the uber-wealthy headed up by one of these guys who ran for office mainly to prop up his failing empire are now actively pursuing policies that are aimed at harming us, especially those who have no defense against this nightmare.

— David Gooler, Pasadena