The Public Pulse: Trump has no idea how hard it is to conduct a census

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Don’t take Trump census talk seriously

While I know Donald Trump spouts off on whatever comes to mind, his latest ramblings on having a census taken in the middle of the decade are quite dumb.

This president doesn’t know how much planning, time and resources it takes to run a census of our vast nation.

I worked for the U.S. Census Bureau for its count in 1980 and, after retiring from my post office job after 30 years, worked again for the Bureau in 2020. (The COVID year, which was different.)

I can attest that counting everybody in the nation is a huge task. It takes 10 years to organize. Trump can’t call one up to prove he doesn’t want supposed non-citizens counted.

Here’s another bit of bluster by the term-limited president.

Don’t take it seriously.

Ricky Fulton, Omaha

Civil discourse missing from society

After learning about Beto O’Rourke’s comments as well as the people who showed up at Congressman Mike Flood’s town hall, where is all the condemnation of the lust for power and strident extremism on display?

There are those claiming democracy is at risk, but it died at the very hands of those claiming to want to save it. Democracy requires broad civil discussion, but instead, a broad wall of intolerance against civil discussion was established many years ago, and it keeps on growing. Extreme partisanship and power plays have grown with it.

The world has changed, and many people are having difficulty understanding the information age in a digital economy. When I was young, I learned to type on a manual typewriter.

Today, I use a mobile device for two-step authentication, save documents as a PDF, do Zoom meetings, and more. In all these changes over the decades, we lost the ability to engage in civil discourse. Yet, what discussion does take place, educated people keep citing what they learned over 20 years ago, not understanding how to apply it to the current situation. How does anyone correct for this when the default position is “I am right and you are evil”?

Andrew L. Sullivan, Omaha

Some Republicans acknowledge Medicaid cuts

Congressman Mike Flood alleged that the GOP’s budget bill will “strengthen Medicaid.”

Interestingly enough, several Republicans disagree with his contention. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office , which is headed up by a Republican , has projected that the budget bill will take away insurance from 10 million Americans.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) recently introduced legislation to repeal the Medicaid cuts that he voted for.

Rep. Derick Van Orden (R-Wis.) sent a letter to his state’s Democratic governor begging him to save the rural hospitals from the Medicaid cuts that he supported. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Ala.) sold her vote by having Alaska exempted from the Medicaid cuts. She admitted that the bill would hurt the other 49 states.

The only response to this vote for the big ugly bill is to organize so that the Republicans lose their jobs and have to get the lousy health care they voted for.

Dennis Crawford, Lincoln

Credit to Flood for showing up, but more dialogue needed

In reading the recent letters to the Pulse supporting Rep. Mike Flood, I also have to give him credit for showing up.

That’s better than the rest of the Nebraska delegation. But one person stated that Flood considers it important to have a dialogue with his constituents. If that was the case, why didn’t he “dialogue” before he voted on the bill so he could have input from Nebraskans rather than try to excuse it after the fact?

Julie Thomsen, Wakefield