Thirty-six states and Washington, D.C. have Medicaid Expansion and this program, which funds the drug Buprenorphine, which helps opioid addicts overcome their addiction instead of dying from it when they overdose.

More than 48,000 people died last year from their addiction. Buprenorphine may be the reason I have not written about a local person in four years dying from their opioid addiction. New York State has Medicaid Expansion. As you might expect that states with only Medicaid are national leaders in Opiod deaths. They are Texas and Florida. Almost all of the states without Medicaid Expansion have Republican governors, who have signed on to a court battle to have Obamacare declared unconstitutional. If they succeed a lot more people will die every year from opioids.

In 2018 there were 56 opioid deaths in Ulster County. In 2017 there were 44.

Trump is hurting farmers three ways
President Donald Trump has come up with three ways to hurt our farmers: Global Warming, immigration, and Trade.

The farmers hurt the most are in the midwest along the Mississippi River. This year Climate Change has played a big role in the record flooding in the middle states and the nation’s biggest cheerleader for Global Warming is Donald Trump as he removes all of the Obama regulations to battle it.

The flooding has made it very difficult this spring to plant the crops. Trump’s immigration regulation has created all types of worker shortages in the nation. It has been becoming a major problem for a lot of businesses. Part of the shortage is caused because the people who are retiring do not have as many children as the generation that preceded it.

The country needs immigrants and Trump does not want to let business, including the farmers, have them. Down in Miami, Florida restaurant owners will hang out at the competition and offer their employees jobs. They are not the only ones.

China trade is bankrupting midwest farmers as China is not buying a lot of farm produce. A farmer who cannot sell his product can’t pay his bills.

In the second pregnancy trimester
Parents, who oppose the measles vaccination for fear it will cause autism in their children have not done enough research on the subject. The medical community has released the information that routine ultrasounds may detect autism in utero. A small study looking at ultrasound scans that checked for fetal defects showed that children who went on to develop autism had greater head and abdominal sizes at around 20 weeks in the womb than did their healthy peers.

Then there is the question, Can a Person Develop Autism After Early Childhood? To get the diagnosis of autism the child must have symptoms before the age of three. Medical officials said, “There is no official diagnosis called “late-onset autism.”’

Some parents oppose vaccinating their children before they start school for fear that they’ll get autism, when it is impossible to get it after a child is born.

What goes around, comes around

About 1972 Ulster County District Attorney Joseph Torraca and Assistant District Attorney E. Michael Kavanagh convicted Willie London of New Paltz, a seller of heroin. Some or all may have been used in the overdose deaths of six New Paltz kids. Torraca and E. Michael Kavanagh were ready. And thank goodness. Kavanagh, a young district attorney had come to Ulster County from New York City where he worked in the office of District Attorney Frank Hogan.

Torraca and Kavanagh had about 40 charges against London, but only used 20. The jury voted 11 to 1 for a conviction, which meant Willie London was going to walk free. The one vote was from a New Paltz resident who lived on Springtown Road. E. Michael Kavanagh might have been talking to himself, except he had a young baby son, Michael J. Kavanagh.

Torraca and E. Michael Kavanagh then wheeled out the other 20 charges. This time the jury voted 12 to 0.

Recently Assistant Ulster County District Attorney Michael J. Kavanagh got a conviction of Monique Dibble, 33, of Marlborough for selling Heroin laced with fentanyl, which killed 24 year old Celina Maldonado of Plattekill. Like his father, Michael J. Kavanagh got highly professional help, but this time from the detectives at the Ulster County Sheriff Juan Figueroa’s office and the Marlborough Town police under chief Gerald Cocozza. Doing the investigative work to put Willie London in prison was the Bureau of Criminal Investigation of the State Police.

Now Michael J. Kavanagh is running for Ulster County District Attorney, a position his father held for six terms before being elected to the New York State Supreme Court.

America is causing a gun epidemic
If you need a gun, and you live in Central America or the Caribbean, get someone in America to buy it in one of those liberal states like Texas, Virginia, Alabama or Louisiana where no questions are asked about the buyer or the seller. Then it is home free for the owner to kill, whoever he wants and whenever he wants. To the countries immediately to the south of us the United States is Murder Incorporated.

Gang members can buy them and families from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Jamaica want to flee with their lives to the United States, where the Trump United States does not want them.

100,000 have been killed in this region by American guns. How do these overseas killers have second amendment rights? How do people, who cause this epidemic have rights? Ask the NRA. Ask Trump.