Republican attacks on Hillary without merit

Opinion: August 7, 2016 at 12:00a.m.

I’m speaking out about Hillary Clinton. Republicans knew she was running again in 2016. As House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told Fox, the GOP’s motives were “largely a political effort to discredit Hillary Clinton.” He also said “look at her poll numbers going down.”

That’s why the House Benghazi Committee was called together and after eight hearings at a cost of $7 million to taxpayers, Republicans found nothing she did could avoid this tragedy.

Under George W. Bush, there were 13 attacks on embassies and 60 deaths. No hearings.

Then they moved to her emails, which she admitted was a mistake to use a private server. Republicans then called the FBI in to investigate and after one year the FBI found no evidence she did anything “criminal” – just carelessness. Out of thousands of emails, three were marked with a “c” down the page with no heading of “classified” at the top, so she opened them.

George W. Bush used a private server in the White House, and Colin Powell used one as secretary of state along with a laptop and he destroyed all of his emails. No hearings.

The choice this November is a candidate who will protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, support raising minimum wage, create jobs and protect union jobs. That’s Hillary.

Donald Trump thinks wages are too high, supports Right to Work 100 percent, would do away with the minimum wage. He has clothes and items made in Mexico, China, Bangladesh, Vietnam.

Research Trump’s bankrupt companies, lawsuits for not paying all he owed people or the fraud case going on about Trump University. Economists said his policies will add trillions to our debt.

Republicans did a great job making Hillary look untrustworthy. Is Donald Trump more trustworthy? Is he going to release his tax returns? Last ones released in 1970 he paid “zero” taxes. Do you think he pays any now?

This is an important election – please vote.

Mona Rouser, Youngstown

Do not assume Hillary will get women’s vote

As a wife of a business- man and veteran, mom of a policeman and grandmother worried about my family’s safety, I will not be voting for Hillary.

I prefer a successful businessman knowledgeable in job creation rather than a career politician who appears to be above the law and is under federal investigation. While Hillary panders to the Black Lives Matter group, who disrespect our policemen, Mr. Trump believes that All Lives Matter, including those in blue.

I don’t trust Hillary to keep my family safe because she wants to bring in too many unvetted refugees and is not serious about securing our southern border. She wants to take away my right to carry a firearm and increase my chances of becoming a victim. My only choice for president has to be Mr. Donald Trump: the candidate of law and order; creator of jobs; supporter of our law enforcement and military; and a National Rifle Association member.

Shirley McMahon, Canfield

Another once-great Valley manufacturer bites dust

Commercial Shear- ing and Stamping was a locally owned family business. As this company grew, employment flourished to over 1,000 union workers and 350 office employees.

The Cushwa family invested in Youngstown by helping Youngstown State and St. Elizabeth Hospital financially. They were in business to manufacture the best products, proudly stamped “Made in Youngstown Ohio.”

Commercial grew from three plants (Youngstown, Chicago, Salt Lake City) to 15 plants worldwide. They expanded in hydraulics, pumps, bridge supports and cold-pressed tank heads. Products were sold all over the world. I was fortunate to work at Commercial for 42 years. In that time I was only laid off three weeks. No one could ask for a better place to work.

Then in 2000, Parker Hannifin bought Commercial. In 15 years, this once-thriving company has been run into the ground. Today it has fewer than 100 union workers in Youngstown and an empty five-story office building.

The doors will close in April 2017. Parker has announced it will be outsourcing 60 percent of business to other countries and the other 40 percent to nonunion shops in the South.

With good management this company could still be contributing to our community. Unfortunately, those days are gone.

Farewell Commercial Shearing and Stamping. You were great!

Robert J. Henik, Austintown

Whatever happened to ‘the party of Lincoln’?

The Republican Party was founded in Ripon, Wis., by abolitionist Whigs, Free Soil Democrats and Liberty Party members in a schoolhouse on Feb. 28, 1854, for the abolition of slavery in the United States. At their first political convention in 1856, the GOP nominated John C. Fremont for president. The Republican Party on May 16th, 1860, nominated Abraham Lincoln for president and later that year he was elected president.

I was born an African-American, and am the great-great grandson of a slave born in 1855 in South Carolina.

“The Party of Lincoln” has always been the party of African-Americans in America other than when blacks switched political parties and voted for Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Now today the African-American community has very little faith or hope in the Republican Party.

Over the last 50 years, “the Party of Lincoln” has been co-opted from its original founding. It began in 1964 with Sen. Barry Goldwater and continued in 1968 with Richard Nixon; it continues now with the GOP right wing, conservative platforms, conservative policies, the neo-conservative religious evangelicals, the tea party movement, the political home of the former Grand Wizard of the KKK David Duke, and now 2016 Republican Party nominee for president – Donald J. Trump.

I believe that the Republican Party of today as it is now built and constructed at the national, state and local levels in its strict conservative philosophy and platforms these last 50 years has truly become anything but the “Grand Old Party.”

Willie James Richards, Youngstown

Vote your conscience

I’m a bit confused about what took place at the Republican National Convention on July 20. The thing that is so confusing to me is what happened when Ted Cruz encouraged Americans to “vote your conscience.” He asked voters to “vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”

The reaction from the delegates shocked me. Cruz was booed off the stage for not endorsing Donald Trump as the party’s candidate for president. How was asking Americans to consult conscience when voting for candidates not an endorsement of Trump?

It seems to me that if you believe that Mr. Trump is the right candidate for the job of president and leader of the free world – one who will “defend our freedom and ... be faithful to the Constitution” – that you would agree with Mr. Cruz that people should vote for him based on their conscience. If Mr. Cruz’s exhortation to base one’s vote for president on his or her conscience, we should not vote for Mr. Trump?

I will, as always, vote for the candidates who don’t cause me to be at war with my conscience. Shouldn’t that be the way we all vote?

Pauline Beck, West Middlesex, Pa.