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Opinion

Letters to the Editor - Houston Astros, Canada’s health care system, the Federalist Papers, impeachment, Congress

Readers have no sympathy for the Astros for cheating, say our health care pales compared to Canada, talk about what Alexander Hamilton said about impeachment and say Congress has become a circus.

Astros players cheated, too

Re: “Astros toss manager, GM, over sign-stealing scandal — Team also fined $5 million, docked top draft picks,” Tuesday news story.

Let’s call it what it is. It’s cheating. It’s not sign stealing. It’s cheating. Two managers and a general manager are fired. Two years of first- and second-round draft picks forfeited. $5 million in fines. Now the Boston manager. And the Mets manager? Notice that the players who drove this cheating are not punished at all.

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Major League Baseball says it would be too difficult to hold individuals accountable. Maybe that’s true, but they have to dis-incentivize players for this cheating. So, don’t try to punish them individually, punish them collectively. They knew of or participated in the cheating. Players, staff or analytics people are involved up to their eyeballs.

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Here are the steps that can be taken collectively. Void the 2017 and 2018 World Series. Nobody won. Take all World Series rings back. Take down all World Series banners. Take back all the playoff money and not just the money from the playoff pool, but any contract incentive money as well.

Kevin Sherrington stated that with the firing of the manager and GM of the Astros, they can move forward with a clean slate. Without punishing the players that MLB said drove this cheating, there is no clean slate.

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Thomas Bogan, Dallas

Disgusted with sports

In this day and age, how does anyone think they get away with cheating in sports? The Astros have been caught. Now apparently the Boston Red Sox. Several years ago, the New England Patriots got busted for spying. I am getting very disgusted. I am on the verge of stopping to watch sports.

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Ronald Paris, Anna

U.S. health care is broken

Re: “Canada’s single-payer system less costly to run — Expense of private health care’s administration in U.S. is 4 times higher, study finds,” Sunday news story.

It can’t surprise anyone that Americans pay four times as much per capita as Canadians do for the administrative costs of health care. We shell out $812 billion every year for file-shuffling that plays “no direct role in providing patient care.” Enter a hospital and you plunge down a rabbit hole of stratospheric bills, “negotiated” down by 90% if you’re lucky. Even then, you can’t tell if your hospital charges you five times as much as their competitors for the same procedure.

What kind of business runs this way? You are adrift in a raging sea of bureaucrats pretending to be on your side while controlling every step to their advantage — and you really have no control.

Our system of buying and selling health care services is arcane, convoluted, corrupt and downright absurd. Has there ever been such a flawed commercial enterprise? The private sector has had enough time to develop and run a reasonable, not-insane health care system and they have blown it.

The government’s most important job is to have our backs in matters which we as individuals can’t control. That’s where we are with health care. It won’t be easy, but it is time for our leaders to step in.

Andy Shaw, Dallas/Lake Highlands

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Read Hamilton’s explanation

Much has been written and said about the impeachment of President Donald Trump. News reporting on the subject is contemporary and political. Almost everyone involved in the public debate, regardless of political party or position, is acting in some way contrary to the documented wishes of our Constitution’s framers.

As a public service, I respectfully request that The Dallas Morning News reprint article No. 65 of the Federalist Papers wherein Alexander Hamilton explained the meaning of impeachment and the intended judicial role of the Senate and Chief Justice in an impeachment trial.

If you choose not to reprint Hamilton’s article I ask that you please publish the link to the Federalist Papers in the Library of Congress digital archive (https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/full-text).

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Thank you.

Timothy James Daniel, Irving

No one really wins on this

The drumbeats will go on and on. The House Democrats will always be able to say, “We impeached the president forever.” The Senate megalomaniacs will always be able to say, “We acquitted the president from impeachment ‘crimes’ forever." And Donald Trump will always say, “I was impeached, but I remained president and I won the reelection as an impeached president.” Neither will see each of them really lost.

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And thus, the impeachment carnival will go on forever as part of our American history. The House and Senate let our urgent issues go on instead of doing what is best for our nation and American citizens. The Congress is so involved in Washington war games that it did not see that the American people have lost interest in their government, lost in the cycle of discontent and disenchantment. So who really won?

Peter Stern, Driftwood

What about unauthorized immigrants?

In referring to the impeachment of President Donald Trump, another Democrat recently stated that no one is above the law. So the Democrats’ definition of no one does not include unauthorized immigrants?

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Cissy Holloway, Richardson

Tired of the transgressions

I am so tired of reading about President Donald Trump’s many transgressions and seeing nothing being done to reel him in.

David W. McPeak, Vidor

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