I initially had written a lengthy rebuttal to Ed Surgan’s response to my letter titled “Party of Lies” [May 19]. My “Party of Lies” letter was about the Republican gaslighting of America. Mr. Surgan took exception [“For The Record,” Letters, May 26].
Although his reasoning is faulty, and his grasp on public policy weak, I ask Mr. Surgan to agree with me that Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott is unfit for the high office he holds.
In the aftermath of the latest mass shooting, which extinguished the lives of Americans, gunned down with an AR-15 — this time, young elementary schoolchildren and their brave teachers — Mr. Abbot had the temerity to assert that the problem isn’t guns but mental health. He claimed that after speaking to other Texans, the issue is the lack of mental health services. NBC’s report: “‘We as a state, we as a society, need to do a better job with mental health,’ Abbott said during a news conference at Robb Elementary School.”
Governor Abbott made that statement knowing that he diverted $211 million from Texas’s mental health programs. The money instead went to his failed “Operation Lone Star” program — a border control effort that flopped.
The statistics about mental health in Texas? ABC News reports: “According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly 70 percent of adults in Texas with mild mental illness did not receive mental health care leading up to the pandemic, as well as 57.4 percent of those with moderate mental illness and 44.7 percent of those with severe mental illness.”
What would you call Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott?
Mike Anthony
Westhampton
Anthony is a former Southampton Town Democratic Committee chairman — Ed.
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