Wa rd sR A ant A8 Sunday, April 14, 2024 The News Advance OPINION Youngkin should support SB256 I am writing to share my deeply induced by the TBI, chronic mi- troubling experience with a prominent insurance provider and the profound impact it has had on my life. For over a decade, ized treatments just to function. my wife and I faithfully upheld our policies with these insur- ers, entrusting our vehicles and homes to their care. However, our nancial ruin and facing imminent faith was shattered when tragedy foreclosure or bankruptcy. struck, resulting in severe injuries and a cascade of medical chal- lenges that persist to this day.
The aftermath of the inci- dent has been nothing short of a nightmare. Despite being the innocent party, I suffered a Trau- sured Motorist coverage, cou- matic Brain Injury (TBI), perma- pled with the insulting dispar- nent brain and cervical damage, requiring extensive therapy and surgical interventions. The phys- ical and cognitive impairments I now face, including ADHD graines, and sixth nerve palsy (double vision), have left me re- liant on medication and special- My once-stable employment was lost due to the time required for medical care, plunging me into fi- Despite faithfully paying premiums for years, the re- sponse from the insurance providers has been nothing short of callous. Their offer of $10,000 under our Underin- ity between the offered amount and their financial capabilities, underscores their disregard for well-being. It is particularly galling to dis- cover that these insurers have consistently given away more money annually than it would cost to honor the coverage I diligently maintained.
Furthermore, the legal con- straints preventing discussion of insurance in court proceedings shield the insurers from account- ability, perpetuating the illusion that policyholders are merely targeting innocent individuals rather than profit-driven corpo- rations. My plea is simple: the insur- ance providers must be held accountable for their egregious treatment of policyholders. GREGORY RICHARDSON Lynchburg Minimum wage veto I am so, so disappointed Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed a bill that would have increased the minimum wage from the current $12 per hour to $15 per hour by 2026. The current minimum wage is locked in at $12 per hour and an increase to $15 an hour is not extreme but essential in economy.
The current minimum wage is only of the median hourly wage today as compared to in 1968. This growing gap makes it much more difficult to afford essentials such as rent, food, utilities and calls out to be ad- dressed for low wage workers. A $15 minimum wage in- crease would help 1 out of 2 women of color; more than a million working Virginians would have their wages rise, including of Latinx work- ers, of Black workers, of white workers; and would increase the annual income of minimum wage workers by about $4,500. Research has found in- creasing the minimum wage in modest steps does not lead to detectable job loss. Also, a minimum wage increase is an economic stimulus as that money goes right back into the economy.
Virginia needs to get a $15 minimum wage bill passed next year. It is good for the Virginia workers. JAMES BARTON Monroe LETTERS TO THE EDITOR said his wife, Samantha. many things, from politics to excited to see a partial Afterward, Zee described what he saw through his pro- tective glasses as surreal; his children likened the image of the moon-obscured sun to Pac-Man. The eclipse and the me- dia obsession with it was a welcome departure, albeit briefly, from the rancor so often prevalent in American civic life.
As the total eclipse cut across North America, to be witnessed by millions of people, we experienced an increasingly precious moment can do said the Rev. of commonality. Or as Mary Beth Kinman said: feels like something we can all re- late to, no matter In our ego-driven culture, the blotting out of the sun is a reality check of how infin- itesimally small we are in the scheme of the universe and time itself. a shared experience through all human Bearden said. human society has encountered an We are fragmented by so gender to class to caste.
We treat our planet with callous disregard, as if as dispos- able as the pair of solar eclipse glasses that Cruz copped from Sonic with a Blackout Slush Float. Perhaps an eclipse pro- vides the necessary timeout for us to contemplate and ap- preciate the miracle that is the sun, the moon and our sweet spot in the galaxy, and to stop taking it for granted. In the process, we might rediscover and embrace what it means to be human. cannot drive out darkness; only light Martin Luther King Jr. cannot drive out hate; only love can do Perhaps that black spot on the sun can help remove our blind spots, so that love can eclipse hate.
Michael Paul Williams, (804) 649-6815 Williams From A7 realities of the human condition that is the lot of us all. A part of me has always felt though I have always also known it was not so that achievement and fame somehow elevate a hu- man to a level above the common fate. When I played as a child, I imagined the people whose faces were on the cards Sir Walter Scott, Henry Wad- sworth Longfellow, etc. were somehow in a category apart from the human crowd. But of course, not true, as the lives of the movie stars so frequently bring home to me.
A great many of those lives are really painful. Nothing about their talent and beauty and fame and wealth exempts them from unhappy marriages, drug addic- tions, diseases (Or tragedies with their children like how the exquisitely beautiful Gene Tierney caught rubella while pregnant, with the result that her child was born with seriously disabling birth defects.) All that may be obvious but I have often been struck by how often one can be by the And then time. Our temporariness. Nothing brings that so clearly into focus as the movies. In some ways, movies are timeless.
They present these stars so vibrant and immediate, never changing. But when we watch a sequence of their films, we also see them swept along by the force of time from youthful to changed by age. Watching John Wayne from Stagecoach (1936) to The Shoo- tist (1976), we witness how way of all carries even a national inexorably along. Such a display right before our eyes demonstrates inexorable power more impact- fully than what we can get from mere memory. And then, at last, as their bios show, these die.
So, of course, do all the other people made by their famous achievements (like Bach, or Einstein, or Michaelan- gelo). But we experience such people so vividly, for their achievements we take in at a remove from the people them- selves. Movie stars, by contrast, are themselves the vehicles of their achievement standing before us in all their beauty, in dramas that engage our passions and capture forever their charisma. A forever present. If seen in a People magazine way with their sometimes messy lives, are at all like gods, they are like the Greek gods who have all of hu- foibles and differ from their worshippers only in being immortal.
But gods live on only in their movies, while their lives reveal how inescapable are the challenges of being human. Andy Schmookler is the author of Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Schmookler From A7 SUBSCRIBE Call (434) 385-5440 434-979-5309 in a treatment plan from any competitor and we will beat the total treatment plan for comparable services. Treatment plan must come from a licensed dentist within the past six months for comparable services and is subject to verification. Some plans are excluded. Full details of the Best Price Guarantee are available from our web site or at this practice.
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