Readers sound off on a better Midtown hub, Pat Sajak and the national debt

East Northport, L.I.: The insanity continues. Madison Square Garden arrogantly wants permanent occupancy. The state, the MTA, Gov. Hochul or developers still want to create the illusion of a Taj Mahal above the dingy platforms of the pits of Penn. Presumably, they still want to tear down a historic church, remove homeless services and evict residential and business tenants from decent buildings around Penn Station to erect office buildings that no one needs.

Let MSG have five years at a time, contingent on better behavior requirements like not banning people they don’t like. Serve the homeless away from Penn. Require MSG to pay its fair share of all local taxes. No Taj Mahal, no glass ceilings — nothing that doesn’t make Penn work better. Realign Penn tracks and platforms to all be safe and sized about the same. Provide them viable heat and ventilation. If possible, add a track (north of 18?) sharing a platform with another track. Give all platforms multiple escalators up and down, and at least two modern, fast, cesspool-free elevators each. Give the LIRR area at least two more sets of waiting rooms and bathrooms specified by commuters, not LIRR paper pushers. Maintain and guard them.

Provide good ADA access to the western part of the LIRR area. Rebuild and improve the Gimbels passageway from Penn to PATH and the Sixth Ave. subway. Improve Eighth Ave. access to the subway and street. Start rebuilding the East River tunnels the way the NYC Transit Authority did with its tunnels nights and weekends. Get professionals to make Jamaica Station workable for all commuters. Start working on through-running LIRR-NJTransit. This would greatly improve Penn. Ron Troy

Brooklyn: The crusade versus privately owned cars set off by Mayor Mike Bloomberg continues to be waged against middle- and working-class New Yorkers, now led by elitist Councilman Lincoln Restler. His latest scheme is to raise the parking fines for alt-side violations, punishing drivers out of their cars and into overpacked, crime-ridden subways. New Yorkers continue to move out of the city, leaving our municipal coffers bone dry, but the anti-car coalition does not care. Nor is Restler concerned about the threats to life found every day on the subways. I hope the last voter in his district remembers to turn out the lights when they leave. Eric Wollman

Copiague, L.I.: Good Samaritans do not kill, they help. We will never know for sure, but I strongly suspect that whatever threat Jordan Neely posed could have been removed with a kind word and a sandwich. Jesus made His position crystal clear in Matthew 25:40-45: “As you have done to the least of these,” etc. I’ve been reading so many letters to the effect of, “We need more people with the courage to tackle an unruly person from behind and subdue them with deadly force.” I think we need more people with the courage to offer a kind word and a little help. Mitch Kessler

Scranton, Pa.: A tribute to the departing host of “Wheel of Fortune” / whose TV tenure was a prolific portion. / We will miss you, Mr. Sajak, dear Pat / The way you recited the letters that Vanna did tap. / You sold many vowels for 40-plus years / You were a legend among your game show host peers / and knew that a word ending in “at” could be hat, cat, bat, chat or fat. Vin Morabito

Rochdale Village: To Voicer Sarah Alboher: No, it’s not that the very air we breathe is toxic to foods. The fact that you’re opening packaged foods means it’s ultra-processed. Opening it sets it up to start expiring. If left unopened, it’s good for years. Those foods harm us all. Saul Rothenberg

Brentwood, L.I.: “Subtenant” is the title you get when you rent from people who do not own the place you live in and actually pay rent to the landlord. This could be a shelter, boarding house, room, etc. It doesn’t matter if you pay to maintain the upkeep of the property or pay the utilities. According to law, you have absolutely no legal standing anywhere. If the tenant defaults and is taken to court by the landlord, you will be shipped out unless you make some sort of deal with the landlord to stay on. This is not known by anybody, except maybe lawyers when you need to fight an eviction! All subtenants, Beware! I think the laws must be changed to give subtenants some legal means! Rochelle Davidson

Warwick, R.I.: There are upcoming political and personal concerns that will impact our lives for years to come. The 2024 presidential election and the current financial trends toward a possible recession are events that can alter our living standards. The present trend of our government spending well beyond our means may cause occasional shutdowns of key government services. Severe water shortages in the western part of our country and foreign entities buying up land and other resources can cause shortages of key essentials. How we act now to confront these and also address our civil unrest, public safety, race relations and placement and financial support of our refugee problem can affect our financial wellbeing. We presently have a $32 trillion deficit. Programs and solutions are needed now and should have far-sighted objectives that will benefit all Americans. Continuing on the same path is not a choice. Bob Sweeney

Brooklyn: So every investigation, close election, court decision and FBI raid that goes against Donald Trump is a partisan witch hunt initiated by the corrupt deep state or Democratic Party? This is the sad state of politics in America today. What’s worse is that this far-right wing of the Republican electorate will resort to death threats and other forms of intimidation on election workers and election officials to further their objectives. Even more distressing is that many Republican Congress members, including prospective candidates for president, are defending his actions and getting on the bandwagon to defund the FBI and the Department of Justice! A functioning democracy is based on the rule of law. How do we have justice when a major political party is buying into Trump’s lawlessness, claiming that everything is a partisan action by the Democrats? Who are the true hyper-partisans here? Irwin Cantos

Brooklyn: So, per the Ratpublicans, Hunter Biden got a “sweetheart deal” for his criminal acts. I wonder if that deal compares to the sweetheart medical deferment deal Little Boy Orange got due to his legendary bone spurs, thus preventing his military service (but not his insulting military servicemembers and families!). Was it comparable to those Trump sweetheart-deal pardons for his campaign associates, Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, or crooked congressmen Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter? Surely, it could never compare to the greatest sweetheart deal of all time when most congressional Rats voted no to impeaching the Trumpster, not once but twice, no matter his heinous crimes! Kevin Hanley

Ozone Park: The reason Trump had all those sensitive documents in his lavish bathroom has to be that he was planning to spend a lot of time in there. Maybe he was going to use them instead of Charmin. Ray Hackinson

Brooklyn: Lately, I’ve read letters to the editor qualifying the atom bomb being dropped in Japan. The first one totally knocked my block off. But when I saw more and more people agreeing with this, day after day, I was thoroughly chilled. One justification was that somebody’s 44-year-old father would have had to go to war otherwise. Well, lucky you. A whole multitude of 44-year-old civilians — men and women, and their kids and their grandparents — didn’t live to make those nice, neatly packaged choices. Multitudes more suffered with radiation poisoning for life for the mere fact that they existed. Out of every country in the world, those ruling ours stained her good name with rivers of innocent blood. Bad enough, horrendous enough, that it was committed. Still more horrendous that 80 years later, people are defending it. Joy E. Goldberg