Term limits

I have long been a proponent for term limits, but realized this would have to include all 50 states. There’s no sense replacing a politician after one or two terms, if all the states aren’t on board. Do you think Massachusetts would have been a term limit advocate in the 70’s? Doubtful, with the Kennedy and O’Neil families wielding power.

Unless there can be an actual agreement for all 50 states to enforce some kind of political harness, in the end you would be constantly sending newbies to Washington, where they would have no say against career politicians from other states. It’s all or nothing.

Garrett Stapleton

Weymouth

Convention of States

While I 100% agree with Chris Ekstrom (“Term limits can restore public service to politics,” April 26), there is another movement that has already passed in 19 states. It’s called Convention of States Action. I have volunteered for the group here in Massachusetts for three and a half years. The Convention of States Action group, including myself, have given testimony in front of our legislators. We became the first COS group in the country to pass out of committee in a blue state, although never getting to the House floor for a vote. While we share a passion for term limits, our organization has three topics to call a national convention.

Term limits, fiscal restraints, and reduce the power and jurisdiction of the federal government. It’s about bringing the power back to the states where it belongs and originally intended. By doing so, it gives our legislatures more power and the people of Massachusetts more of a voice (conventionofstates.com). We already have 19 states, all we need is 34. With all our history, how do we let this opportunity pass us by? John Adams would roll over in his grave.

Brian Hemenway

Plymouth

Student loans

The Trump Administration has announced a program to begin collecting long-defaulted federal student loans, after years of Democrats using COVID and other pretexts to selectively forgive student loans and/or blanket non-enforce collection of them. This of course comes on the heels of the 2008 derivative “housing” crisis market meltdown, where federal subsidization was again key in usury shenanigans, leading ultimately to deep pain for working class Americans. None of this even touches on the inflationary effect on housing and college prices artificially “free” money produces.

Enough. The federal government should not even be involved in student loans nor home loans, return both to the private sector. Do we want a more robust, states-run (not federal) community college system? OK, that’s one conversation. But the answer is not using the federal government as an operation for home and student loans. As someone who has paid off all of his student loans while raising kids on my own, drilling with the National Guard and working full time, I applaud President Trump’s measure to restore sanity to college student loans, and I hope he will enact a more permanent solution, one that removes the federal government from the private loan business once and for all.

Nick McNulty

Windham NH