30°Good Morning
The Suffolk County PBA's Instagram posts in support of Robert...

The Suffolk County PBA's Instagram posts in support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s nomination as Health and Human Services secretary. Credit: Instagram

Daily Point

Long Islanders push for HHS nominee Kennedy's confirmation

Dozens of Long Islanders headed down to Washington on Wednesday, leaving New York in the early morning hours to support Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during the first day of confirmation hearings on his nomination as secretary of Health and Human Services. Earlier, the Suffolk County PBA separately in an unusual move endorsed the cabinet nominee in social media posts.

Long Beach resident John Gilmore, who heads the Autism Action Network, told The Point that the group of Long Islanders who gathered Wednesday traveled on a bus that made stops in Nassau County, Queens and Brooklyn. By the time they got to Washington, the hearing room was full — and overflow rooms already were crowded.

So, the group ended up in the halls of Capitol Hill, along with hundreds of others, Gilmore said.

"We were there basically just to make a physical message to the senators that there are a lot of people who really care intensely about this and want to see Robert F. Kennedy as the HHS secretary," Gilmore said.

The group didn’t have a chance to meet with senators or have discussions with staffers, but they watched the hearing on their phones and spoke with other like-minded Kennedy supporters from all over the country, Gilmore said.

Gilmore said Kennedy showed he had "his facts solid," adding that he thought Kennedy’s comments were "consistent with what he’s been saying for a long time." And he said he wasn’t bothered by Kennedy’s remarks in favor of vaccination and the existing childhood vaccine schedule.

"He believes that people and parents should have choice with what they do with their own health and their children’s health," Gilmore said. "He’s also a highly experienced, highly skilled lawyer and he knows his audience. I don’t think he changed anything related to his views on vaccines."

By the end of the day, the group piled back onto the buses to head home in "very high spirits," Gilmore said.

"We thought we had a really good day," Gilmore said. "We came away feeling he did really, really well and they didn’t land any hits on him."

The Long Island support for Kennedy extends past the group who joined Gilmore.  The Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association on Tuesday posted a photo of Kennedy and President Donald Trump to its Instagram, with an endorsement of the Cabinet nominee. The post had more than 700 likes, and the PBA made similar posts on X and on Facebook.

"Police Officers, nurses and members of our military were terminated because they refused covid vaccinations," the PBA stated. "Since then we’ve learned about countless lies, censorship and a system that prioritizes profit over health ... We don’t need more of the same. We need to confirm @robertfkennedyjr as HHS Secretary."

Gilmore said the Suffolk PBA’s move didn’t surprise him, noting that Long Island has been at the center of much of the vaccine conversation for years.

"These Long Island moms, they don’t like to be messed with," he said.

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.comChristine Wallen christine.wallen@newsday.com

Great Eggs-pectations Point

Eggs get more expensive 

This week, 12 large white eggs are $6.99 a carton. Last week, the price was $6.49 at the same Long Island supermarket. There was a $0.50 increase.

Certainly, the spread of bird flu has increased the price of eggs all over the country. Yet, President Donald Trump ran on the promise that groceries would become less of a strain once he was back in the White House. The price of eggs will continue to be a conversation when determining whether this administration can deliver on its affordability agenda.

— Christine Wallen christine.wallen@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Flooding the zone

Credit: CagleCartoons.com/Christopher Weyant

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/0101nationalcartoons

Reference Point

Riding the rail, year after year

The Newsday edtorial cartoon from Jan. 30, 1954.

The Newsday edtorial cartoon from Jan. 30, 1954.

Any catalog of favorite topics over the year for Newsday’s editorial board would have to include the Long Island Rail Road. That’s a conclusion buttressed by a through-the-years scan of editorials that appeared on any random day — in this case, on this day, Jan. 30.

The board visited the topic repeatedly on that day. In 1953, it criticized a delay granted to the Pennsylvania Railroad, then owner of the rail system, for reorganizational hearings the board wrote were needed. Then in 1954, the board ran a cartoon called "He’s a Dead Duck!" in which a man labeled "The Commuter" is tied to railroad tracks between two trains bearing down on him — one labeled "MISMANAGED LIRR" and the other "TRAINMEN’S STRIKE."

On Jan. 30, 1959, Newsday’s board congratulated Gov. Nelson Rockefeller for his willingness to consider tax changes to keep the troubled LIRR afloat, writing that Rockefeller "is right, commuter lines must be kept running, whatever the sacrifice in tax revenues; and even if the eventual end is a subsidy."

The Newsday editorial from Jan. 30, 1974.

The Newsday editorial from Jan. 30, 1974.

And on this day in 1974, under the for-all-ages headline "Who’s to Blame for the LIRR?”, the board blasted a Metropolitan Transportation Authority panel investigating the railroad’s stranding of thousands of passengers in an ice storm the previous month, which concluded that the railroad’s management and workers "should be indoctrinated with a primary concern for passenger comfort and convenience in time of emergency." As the board noted: "Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? Yet the fact that the panel found it necessary to cite such an elementary rule illustrates the magnitude of the problem."

Still, our favorite Jan. 30 editorial might have been one of the earliest.

The Newsday editorial from Jan. 30, 1947.

The Newsday editorial from Jan. 30, 1947.

In 1947, the board wrote about complaints from commuters that they were forced to stand far too long on overcrowded cars, in a piece called "The Long Island Is a Subway." The occasion was testimony from the railroad’s superintendent, Eugene L. Hoffman, who told the Public Service Commission that most of those standing were on their feet for only 14 minutes, and that anyway the LIRR does not have to guarantee seats to its riders.

The board had no quarrel with the latter observation, while noting that "anybody who has ever plunged through the line of scrimmage at Penn Station or Flatbush Ave. can tell you that it takes a stout heart and a sharp elbow to get a seat on a rush hour train."

The board offered three ideas — subway-style poles and straps (which it acknowledged was "no real solution"), more double-decker trains (which would, the board wrote, "dig a little deeper to the root of the problem"), and expansion of the LIRR’s carrying capacity by altering tunnel safety devices to allow 15-car trains instead of 12 (which the board predicted would produce "a sigh of relief").

Financing and justifying such changes, the board conceded, were "confused and complex questions." And they contributed to the board’s bottom-line judgment, still valid after all these years: "Meanwhile, we might as well admit that the LIRR is a peculiar railroad with peculiar problems."

— Michael Dobie michael.dobie@newsday.com

Subscribe to The Point here and browse past editions of The Point here.


 

SUBSCRIBE

Unlimited Digital AccessOnly 25¢for 6 months

ACT NOWSALE ENDS SOON | CANCEL ANYTIME