12/24 Letters: New rules could take food stamps from 750,000 people. We can’t let that happen.

Passing the Farm Bill is a challenge, in part due to perennial conservative efforts to limit SNAP, our food stamp program. Following the president’s failure to get Congress to pass SNAP changes that would cut off many people who depend on the program, the administration proposed a rule change at the Department of Agriculture that would do the same thing administratively. SNAP already has rigorous requirements that require adults without dependents to work if they receive benefits for more than three months in a three-year period.

Currently, states can waive that requirement in local areas where the unemployment rate is 20 percent higher, or more, than the national average. The official unemployment rate currently stands at 3.8 percent. The proposed rule would limit waivers to areas with 7 percent or higher unemployment. With this change, over 750,000 current SNAP recipients could lose their benefits.

Most childless adults participating in SNAP have incomes 50 percent below the poverty line. States have used waivers in response to economic downturns and disasters, and in rural areas that lack job opportunities. This proposed rule change is not what our nation needs during the holiday season.

Pat McCoy

Chapel Hill

No affordable housing

After reading the front page story about high-end expensive townhouses (“Duke family estate will be developed into high-end, expensive townhouses,” Dec. 19) being built in Forest Hills and all the conversation about the lack of affordable houses in Durham and what developers are having to do in Durham concerning this issue, I noticed the story said that “Unlike other new developments, this project did not donate any money to the city’s affordable housing fund or the Durham Public Schools system.” I guess what is good for the goose really isn’t good for the gander.

Mark S. Corr

Durham

Climate of hate

With all the troubles swirling around President Trump and his administration, apparently he still thinks this whole thing about climate change is a hoax. In order to detract from scientific facts, he has created a climate change of his own making. It’s called a climate of hate, and he proves it every day by sowing the seeds of mistrust and fear, including his defense of Mohammad Bin Salman who (according to the CIA and other members of the intelligence community) ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Kashoggi. Impeach President Trump and put an end to this embarrassing chapter in our history.

Herb Stark

Mooresville

Never bored

One thing I have to say about President Trump, I am never bored. I have become a news junkie, checking newspapers first thing in the morning and the last news broadcast at night. What has he done now? What has he said? What he has he tweeted? What should I worry about? What rights is he taking away? Which public lands have been sold?

What is the outrage of the day, or the hour?

Time was, I used to think of the president of the United States only occasionally. I just assumed he was in the White House doing what presidents do. I assumed he knew how to be president. I didn’t always like everything a president did, but didn’t feel the need to check up on every moment. My, that has changed. Perhaps it was boring. I would love to be bored again!

Pat Harms

Morehead City

Peacemaking

Is anyone else sick and tired of the Silent Sam controversy? It would be really nice just to get rid of the darn thing altogether, but that’s unlikely to happen. The next best suggestion I’ve heard is to put it at Bennett Place. At that same location, near it, there should be an equally well-sculpted and impressive statue of a Union soldier. Bennett Place is, after all, a memorial to the end of the bloody, disastrous Civil War, a war that never would been fought but for the evil of slavery.

War memorials of any kind have no place at our universities. Universities are places where young adults learn how to live fully rather than be encouraged to die young, and learn how to contribute to society, rather than be encouraged to destroy those seen as “different,” or somehow threatening. Next to slavery and the near-extermination of the native population, the greatest wrong turn our country has taken has been to become economically dependent on arms and warfare.

Let’s stop venerating symbols of war and put our energies into peacemaking.

Joan F. Walsh

Durham