Oh, there were many more tasks, too numerous to mention, carried out by the Cianfrinis in the days and weeks before the carnival. All of their great work made things go so smoothly that the crowd reflected the joy that the Cianfrinis expressed in setting up and overseeing the carnival.
I saw no one get upset or even feel that they were left out of anything. As a member of the board for the Adams Square Merchants Assn., I want to publicly thank both of them for a job well done as they made all of us on the board and in the association look very good.
RONALD BANES
Glendale
Health-care votes were a real shame
Regarding the Dec. 7 letter “Rep. Schiff’s vote belies his promises,” (just last week — a week that will live in partisan voting infamy — both of our state’s U.S. senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, joined in a 58-42 party-line vote to defeat a Republican-backed Senate health-care bill amendment that would have restored Medicare Advantage Plan cuts. They then rubbed salt into the still-fresh wound by voting to defeat another Republican-backed amendment that would have restored cuts to agencies that provide home health care to Medicare-dependent seniors.
It was in good faith that Advantage Plan seniors (including myself) adapted themselves to the limited doctor/specialist/hospital choices that these plans require as a trade-off for their low, typically zero, monthly premiums and no-extra-cost gym memberships that, when diligently used, reduce sickness benefits the insurance companies would otherwise have to pay out.
This has become one of the most disgracefully partisan issues ever debated on Capitol Hill. Democrats see it as a signature President Obama initiative that simply must pass, and opposed Republicans may just cynically see it as an opportunity to muss up Obama’s image in the eyes of American voters.
