Ukrainian momentum continues to receive support during unprovoked Russian aggression

As Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, a humanitarian crisis is unfolding that is turning millions of people into refugees, many of them children.

America must maintain its support for Ukraine:

Echo opinion letter published in the Springfield News-Leader, a Missouri newspaper:

As the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine approaches, the war there still fiercely continues. While Russian missiles strike civilian targets and cripple national infrastructure, Ukrainian resolve remains unwavering as they fight to maintain their territorial integrity and their freedom. 

Americans, who are abhorred by these blatant and cruel violations of international law and human rights, rallied to support the young democracy in the first stages of the war, but as time progresses further from those early months when this crisis dominated the news cycle, it continues to drift out of the national attention and apathy increasingly settles in. This apathy, while natural, must be resisted as the stakes of this conflict remain as high as they were when it started.

Ukrainian support rally.

In a speech given upon the outset of the invasion, President Putin stated unequivocally that this war was a challenge to the United States and the international order it has maintained since the end of the Cold War. 

This is, simply put, a war on sovereignty and the consequences of a Ukrainian defeat would spread far beyond their national borders. Since Putin took office in 1999, Russia’s foreign policy has grown increasingly aggressive and there is no reason to believe that their military ambitions will cease if they succeed now, as they have already issued threats to other European nations in the time since the fighting began. Additionally, the eyes of all other ambitious despots rest firmly upon this conflict and the United States’ reaction to it. In this last year, China has become increasingly aggressive towards Taiwan and North Korea, likewise, has taken a more hostile stance towards their southern neighbor. 

A Ukrainian victory is an American victory and sends a clear message to the world that state sovereignty is still inviolable.

The Ukrainian military has proven beyond a doubt that they have the conviction and the willpower to win this war. What they lack, however, is the weaponry needed to fend off a foe with three times their population. Despite recent victories in their counter offensive, including the liberation of Kherson, the situation remains perilous. Many Russians reservists and released criminals continue to be deployed to the frontlines and the Russian Defense Ministry recently announced plans to further expand the size of its standing army.

Additionally, the threat of a new offensive from the north is growing as Belarus looks poised to invade in conjunction with Moscow, which would add a sizable wave of fresh troops and equipment to the already large enemy force. The United States and the West possess the funds and weaponry needed to defend against such a threat, but it must be provided swiftly so that proper training can occur before this next offensive begins. Americans must not let apathy, or the price of aid obstruct this crucial influx of support. The cost is undeniably high, but the cost of a defeat would far surpass this in terms of both life and money as aggressor states would feel emboldened. 

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While those who daily face the prospects of torture and death in Ukraine remain committed to this noble fight, let not us, who contribute in safety, be the ones who back down.

From Jesse Liebmann, Eureka Missouri

Russian Bounty intelligence - Danger! Donald Trump doesn't read and doesn't want to listen

Readers Write: Russian bounties to the Taliban: If Trump only gets what's credible, that means he has dismissed credible information.

This echo opinion letter was published in the Star Tribune a Minneapolis, Minnesota newspaper.

A recent report by the New York Times stated that the U.S. intelligence community concluded months ago, if not earlier, that a Russian intelligence unit secretly offered payments to Taliban-linked militants for successful attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan (“Sources: Trump told of bounties in ’19,” June 30). 

In the report, Donald Trump was reported to have been briefed about the intelligence in late March — and more reporting indicates it may have even been in 2019 — but he has not authorized any response measures. 

Instead, Trump asserts that he’s never been briefed, because it had not been deemed verifiable and credible. “Intelligence ... is vetted for its veracity, and it only goes to the president and the high-level officials when it is deemed as verifiable and credible,” the president’s press secretary (#MsBlond!) has stated.

This would indicate that earlier reports about many things — such as Russian intelligence interference in U.S. elections, which was acknowledged as received by the current administration — were vetted in terms of veracity and credibility.

The fact that the president has cast doubt on those reports, stating in at least one instance that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin instead, is truly alarming. Trump, our transitional president, finds it acceptable to disbelieve information generated and shared with him by the best sources of national intelligence that supersedes thresholds of veracity, credibility and truth.

From Jim Ryan, Golden Valley, MN

We cannot rush to create a new normal - learn from pandemic history!

Our best public health strategy to prevent community spread of the coronavirus is to be diligent about social distancing, practice relentless hand washing and to continue to shelter in place, for as long as it takes to see the pandemic begin to subside.

An echo opinion published in Minneapolis, Minnesota newspaper the Star Tribune, by Scott Gillespie, the editorial editor and vice president:

Members of the Red Cross were on duty to receive people affected by the flu in St. Louis in October 1918.

Commentary writer Christopher O. Moore, a retired teacher from Belle Plaine, Minn., provides a history lesson this morning.

Moore's grandfather died at age 31 during the 1918 influenza pandemic. He points out that Donald Trump, who often expresses his dismay that people die from the flu, also lost a grandfather during the 1918 pandemic.

Moore has some questions for the president. "Has Trump ever considered remembering the past and learning lessons from 1918 and the pandemic one science journalist called “the biggest disaster of the twentieth century”?

"Does he know that at first some public officials dismissed the 'Spanish' flu as seasonal, one that typically dies out in warm weather, nothing to be taken seriously? Or that it spread widely in the summer heat, then intensified in autumn, ultimately striking in three different waves?"

Moore's commentary is especially timely given that states such as Georgia are loosening restrictions on business activity in ways that conflict with guidelines the Trump administration has announced — and in ways that conflict with the lessons learned from 1918.

Let us learn from those who died in 1918, wrote Moore:
Donald Trump's grandfather, like mine, died in the flu pandemic of 1918. He was only 31 years old. He was one of millions who perished during the global flu pandemic of 1918.

Their memories can lead us in today's crisis.

Donald Trump wondered last month, “Does anybody die from the flu? I didn’t know people died from the flu.”

But his own grandfather did, like mine — in 1918.

Whether the president never knew or just forgot is unclear; unfortunately he seems to not know a lot. For example, that the 1918 flu infected perhaps 500 million people, one third of the world’s population at the time, and that somewhere between 50 million and 100 million died worldwide, more than in the two world wars combined.

Has Trump ever considered remembering the past and learning lessons from 1918 and the pandemic one science journalist called “the biggest disaster of the twentieth century”?

Does he know that at first some public officials dismissed the “Spanish” flu as seasonal, one that typically dies out in warm weather, nothing to be taken seriously? Or that it spread widely in the summer heat, then intensified in autumn, ultimately striking in three different waves?

He might be surprised to learn that some local governments downplayed the public risk. Philadelphia held a parade celebrating Liberty Bonds even as 600-plus soldiers and sailors stationed nearby lay seriously ill. Philadelphia’s public health director assured citizens that it was just the normal flu and would be contained before infecting the civilian population.

So on Sept. 28, thousands of soldiers, Boy Scouts, marching bands and local dignitaries paraded through downtown Philadelphia, as 200,000 spectators lined the streets. Days later, hospitals in the area filled with patients suffering and dying. Soon as many as 500 corpses awaited burial, some for more than a week. Cold-storage plants became temporary morgues.

Does the Donald Trump care to remember that?

He might find it worthwhile to learn that St. Louis suffered flu-related deaths less than half the per capita rate of Philadelphia. How so? They banned large gatherings, staggered work shifts, limited streetcar ridership and encouraged wearing masks. Then, when some of the public pushed back against this “decision that infringes on people’s rights,” the mayor and city health officials held their ground.

Remember: Half the rate of death of Philadelphia.

Remembering the past might inform the president that history often repeats itself — or at least rhymes, as they say. In 1918, health care workers became endangered eyewitnesses to the contagion as one after another of their patients passed, unable to breathe, delirious, turning blue, suffocating to death.

One doctor described “bodies stacked like cords of wood in the hospitals.”

Another witness: “The memory of this sight will haunt for life the minds of those who saw it.”

Today our minds are haunted by fears of shortages, diminished incomes, even lost jobs. Serious concerns, no denying. But watching from the wrong side of a window as a family member slowly suffocates?

An estimated 195,000 Americans died of influenza during one month, October 1918. Two who passed away days apart were Frederick Trump and Charles O. Moore — the president’s grandfather and mine. Like many others who have lost loved ones to influenza, we are touched by their deaths even today.

One of them left his son a real estate business and fortune that found its way to the presidency. The other left his wife with three young children who soon found their way to a home for orphans. The president boasts of his wealth; my father claimed he was proud to be a “home kid.”

I wonder who is yet to prosper, or suffer, or perish, especially if we fail to acknowledge the past before the virus touches us all.

Christopher O. Moore, of Belle Plaine, Minn., is a retired teacher.
That’s another matter. Lost profits and limited liberty? Or unlimited suffering and lost lives?

We’re faced with lots of tough choices. We’re told information from coronavirus testing and tracing is crucial, so making the right choice may be all in the timing. But as we rush to liberate ourselves from temporary isolation, let’s not forget: It’s a choice that will alter lives forever.

Republicans breaking their own Congressional rules

Two echo opinion letters published in the Minnesota Star Tribune newspaper.

Maine Writer- It was Republican Speaker John Boehner who signed the hearing rules to which the stupid Republicans staged an illegal demonstration while creating a sloppy white men show to object to the legal Congressional impeachment hearings. 

In fact, Judge Andrew Napolitano, on Fox and Friends, blamed Boehner, 2015, Republicans for House rules allowing closed-door impeachment proceedings. John Boehner enacted the rules  It was a Republican majority,” Napolitano explained.

Two Minnesota points of view:

Dear Editor:

Republican concern about due process with the confidential impeachment House meetings is misplaced. There will come a time when public airing will be needed. Now is not that time. But due process concerns should extend to the White House, too.

The White House has refused to disclose e-mails and other relevant documents and things that likely relate to Ukraine. In the laws of evidence, there is a doctrine providing that a party in exclusive possession of evidence who fails to produce it is subject to adverse inferences from the failure. We can make those adverse inferences, but wouldn’t it be better to have the documents and things that vindicate transparency and due process? What is the White House trying to hide? Where were those Republicans with respect to that obstruction of due process?

From Thomas W. Wexler, Edina Minnesota

Dear Editor encore:

Here we go again. The intrepid Republican representatives crashing a constitutional congressional inquiry into the possible impeachable offenses of the president is an eerie and painful reminder of another chaotic incident when well-dressed (white men*) Republicans created a disorderly demonstration during the vote recount in Brown County, Fla., in the presidential election of George Bush vs. Al Gore.

For the party that claims to be the law-and-order gang, it is remarkable how easy it is for its members to abandon civility and social order for the sake of expediency and cover-up. These two historical events are anything but coincidental. They are pathological tendencies of a damaged political party and its need to exercise dominance in America. It is dangerously difficult for them to make a full and necessary transition to a new kind of voter majority — women and minorities.

As a nation, we must reject this sort of anarchy. 

From Richard G. Hunegs, in St. Louis Park Minnesota

*MaineWriter- I simply can't imagine the volume of outrage Americans would have heard if the group that had illegally stormed a legal Congressional hearing had been, instead, the Black Caucus!  

Insulin should be free! Going to Canada to purchased insulin

"...for some patients, it is increasingly difficult to survive as a diabetic in America," Glenn Howatt, published in the Star Tribune, a Minnesota newspaper.  

Insulin outlaws: High cost of medication drives Minnesotans across the border to Canada

(MaineWriter-In my opinion, Insulin for diabetics should be free.)

Diabetes activists cross the border to snare affordable medicine and supplies.

Fort Frances, Ontario – Six Minnesota diabetes activists, who have dubbed themselves the “Caravan to Canada,” approached the U.S. border crossing last Sunday with a mixture of apprehension and defiance.

Their three vehicles were carrying insulin, carefully packed in coolers, that they had bought the day before at a Canadian pharmacy just three blocks away.

Together, they had spent $1,265 for insulin supplies that in the United States would cost an estimated $12,400 — a savings of $11,000.

But as they crossed the Rainy River into International Falls and made their way to the small border outpost wedged among industrial buildings, they wondered if they would be searched — or even if the insulin would be seized.

“I was nervous when all of a sudden we approached the border,” said Lija Greenseid, the trip’s organizer and mother of a teenage daughter with Type 1 diabetes.

Importing prescription drugs into the United States is illegal, and government health officials have warned consumers that drugs bought outside of American’s regulatory umbrella could be counterfeit and unsafe.

But as they crossed the Rainy River into International Falls and made their way to the small border outpost wedged among industrial buildings, they wondered if they would be searched — or even if the insulin would be seized.

“I was nervous when all of a sudden we approached the border,” said Lija Greenseid, the trip’s organizer and mother of a teenage daughter with Type 1 (insulin dependent) diabetes.

Importing prescription drugs into the United States is illegal, and government health officials have warned consumers that drugs bought outside of American’s regulatory umbrella could be counterfeit and unsafe.

But they made the trip because, for some patients, it is increasingly difficult to survive as a diabetic in America. 

High costs are draining their savings; insulin prices doubled between 2012 and 2016.

Insurance restrictions are making it harder for them to get the insulin that works best for them, as well as the supplies they need to test their blood and inject the medication.

“We talk about freedom here all the time, but the medical system here causes people to be shackled,” said Greenseid.

“I always thought it was just me that had these issues,” said Vicky Luedtke, a Type 1 diabetic who has never been involved with activism before. “I met these amazing people and I saw it is more than just me. It is a huge epidemic.”

Traveling with the group was Nicole Smith-Holt, whose son Alec Smith died about two years ago. He was rationing insulin because he couldn’t afford what he needed.

She made a symbolic purchase of a single vial of insulin — one vial would have extended her son’s life.

“There are so many what-ifs,” she said. “I would have crawled here if I had known that I could come to Canada.”

The public outcry over high insulin prices has sparked some movement. Congress has held hearings, one insurer has capped insulin co-pays and one drug maker will offer a generic insulin at half price. But even at that discount it will still cost five times as much as insulin sold in Canada.

In Minnesota, both the House and Senate have passed bills that would give people access to insulin during an emergency, although the differences between the bills need to be worked out in a conference committee.

Insulin’s high cost in the United States reflects many factors, including patent protections that keep competitors out of the market. The pharmacy trade group PhRMA contends that net prices have dropped but that consumers often don’t see that because they don’t receive the rebates that the industry pays to health insurers and their pharmacy benefit managers.

But unlike most other industrialized countries, drugmakers can set their own prices in the United States. The Canadian government, for example, negotiates with the three big insulin makers that dominate the market worldwide, which results in insulin prices that can be one-tenth of those in the United States. Insulin also can be purchased in Canada without a prescription.

The public outcry over high insulin prices has sparked some movement. Congress has held hearings, one insurer has capped insulin co-pays and one drugmaker will offer a generic insulin at half price. But even at that discount it will still cost five times as much as insulin sold in Canada.

In Minnesota, both the House and Senate have passed bills that would give people access to insulin during an emergency, although the differences between the bills need to be worked out in a conference committee.

Insulin’s high cost in the United States reflects many factors, including patent protections that keep competitors out of the market. The pharmacy trade group PhRMA contends that net prices have dropped but that consumers often don’t see that because they don’t receive the rebates that the industry pays to health insurers and their pharmacy benefit managers.

But unlike most other industrialized countries, drug makers can set their own prices in the United States. The Canadian government, for example, negotiates with the three big insulin makers that dominate the market worldwide, which results in insulin prices that can be one-tenth of those in the United States. Insulin also can be purchased in Canada without a prescription.

$410 v. $5,250

Travis Paulson, another member of last weekend’s caravan, can remember when insulin cost $8 a vial.

“It just kept climbing,” he said.

The medication is now so expensive that he doesn’t use health insurance to buy it. Instead, he gets it mostly from Canada — driving there from his Eveleth home when the weather is good or using a mail-order pharmacy in Vancouver. He hasn’t bought insulin in the United States for many years.

“It is just craziness to what the prices have gotten to in America,” he said.

Paulson paid about $410 in Canada for 15 vials of insulin that would have cost $5,250 in the States. 

The supply should last him three to four months.

On his insulin trips to Canada, Paulson often stays overnight. “They can get suspicious if you come and leave on the same day,” he said. “I don’t want my car to be torn up and searched.”

But he has never had a problem getting it across the border.
Although it is illegal, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website says “it typically does not object” to imports if they are for personal use and the supply is for less than three months.

Drug importation from Canada is not new for Minnesotans. Beginning in 1995, the Minnesota Senior Federation organized bus trips to buy drugs north of the border. They gained more popularity after Mark Dayton, then a U.S. senator, pledged his government salary to pay for the trips.

The state of Minnesota also got involved. In 2004, then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty set up the nation’s first state-sponsored program to help residents buy drugs from Canada. The FDA opposed the program but never acted to shut it down.

After Medicare introduced drug coverage in 2006, demand for both services dwindled. The bus trips stopped in 2007 and the state shut down its program in 2010 after facilitating 25,000 prescriptions at a savings of $1.7 million.

Dropped her insurance

Twenty years ago, the demand for Canadian drugs was not as high among Americans under age 65. Back then, most people with private insurance faced a small copay. But since then, health insurers have adopted deductibles as a way to control costs and shift more expense to the consumer. Many people now pay sums like $7,500 before their insurance kicks in.

That means diabetics often spend the first few months of each year paying the full cost of insulin. 

Additionally, insurers have limited the number of insulin formulations and supplies to one or two brands, another move to cut spending.

As a result, some people, like Luedtke, are going without insurance. “When I had insurance, I couldn’t get my medications,” she said. “I would rather take all my money and invest it in myself.”

Luedtke, who runs a fitness studio, works with doctors and other providers who specialize in cash-paying customers. Without having to employ office staff for insurance company paperwork, these providers can offer lower prices.

Still, she is concerned what would happen should she develop a major illness.

“I do worry about that a lot, especially with diabetes,” she said. But, she added, “I worry more about not having insulin than health insurance.”

Altogether, it took about 15 minutes for five people in the caravan to buy the insulin at a small Fort Frances pharmacy called Shoppers Drug Mart.

Customs turned out to be even faster the next day. As they had decided the previous night, they told the border officer that they were bringing insulin back in.

The disclosure drew no interest or questions from the agent. Instead, he asked about alcohol, tobacco and firearms.

After the caravan made its way through, they stopped to talk.

“That was a nonevent, huh?” said Greenseid.

“Let’s do it again,” said Luedtke. “None of us are asking for something free. We just want to be able to take care of ourselves.”