Social Security must join in budget cuts
The president, Congress and senior citizens are living in a dream world when they declare that this country can reduce taxes, increase defense spending and balance the budget without touching entitlements, particularly Social Security.
The selfish attitude of middle- and higher-income senior citizens wishing to push the burden of increasing debt onto their children and grandchildren is unbelievable.
Granted, there are needy elderly people who need assistance. But as a group, seniors own more of the nation's assets than any other age group.
With the American Association of Retired Persons and similar organizations, seniors have the strongest and most vocal lobby in the country.
If we continue to pursue this impossible dream, those who will suffer the most are the poor and needy, particularly children.
I offer the following politically incorrect initial step toward solving our continuing and costly national debt:
For the next four years, eliminate the cost-of-living adjustment paid to Social Security recipients and government retirees whose gross annual income from all sources exceeds $50,000 per year for married couples and $35,000 per year for singles.
In this manner, hundreds of billions of dollars will be generated without any adverse effect on the needy and cause practically no change in the lifestyle of more affluent senior citizens.
Incidentally, I am a government civilian retiree and my wife is a Social Security recipient.
Bernard Siegel
Baltimore
Discipline priority
The editorial "Time to get tough on discipline" in The Evening Sun Feb. 1 should be read by parents, taxpayers and anyone interested in our schools.
Certainly, those running the Baltimore City public schools should read the editorial and, in retrospect, learn from it.
As the editorial makes clear, the problems exemplified in the Baltimore City schools should serve as a warning to other school systems that learning can take place only in schools that have discipline -- regardless of the money spent or the resources available.
For many years now the city school system has been warned by many that problems evolving from a lack of discipline are at the root of the education dilemma.
The storm warnings, in relationship to city schools, have not been heeded. We cannot continue, as the school system did, to treat discipline problems created by disruptive students as a mere fantasy that will go away.
In many cases, teachers' requests to have unruly and disruptive students removed from the school have been ignored by those in authority. The motto was that everything was fine.
Since those in authority in the city school system did not take steps to remove disruptive students, the problems increased.
As a result -- and this is not meant to place blame but to state a fact -- shootings, knifings and muggings have become the key words to describe the Baltimore City school system today.
The once proud and excellent school system has now, it seems, deteriorated into one of the country's worst. Daily we read in our newspapers and hear on the radio negative comments about the city school system.
Everyone who is honest will admit that the time has come to take the problem of disruptive students in the city school system to task.
The majority of students in the city school system, and for that matter in most school systems, are students who want to obey rules and learn. It is a small cadre of disruptive students that have become models for other students.
I feel the majority of city parents, taxpayers and citizens want to reclaim their schools -- and yearn for the day that learning will again become top priority.
Now the city school system must take decisive action in curtailing the actions of disruptive students.
First, a get-tough-but-fair attitude must be adopted. Those in authority must immediately remove from schools disruptive students.
Second, they must seek the help and advice of principals and teachers who have proven in their own schools that they can have an orderly center of learning.
Finally, the leaders in the city school system should seek the advice of Stuart Berger, superintendent of Baltimore County public schools.
Dr. Berger, without fanfare, has put together a "student behavior committee" chaired by the retired chief of police of Baltimore County, Cornelius Behan. This committee is working hard to improve discipline in a fair and realistic manner . . .
This school year should be the year that parents demand that public schools once again become safe places of learning for our young people. We must put an end to shootings, knifings and muggings in all of our school systems. This should be priority number one.
John A. Micklos
Baltimore
America's atrocity
The Smithsonian's cancellation of its atomic bomb exhibit and the recent memorial services at Auschwitz coincide to raise an interesting question -- when will the West, and America in particular, admit to our own atrocities committed during the Second World War?
I was a little surprised at the effort to cover up the facts of the two atomic holocausts we unleashed on the Japanese. Yet any schoolchild can see that showering atomic fallout on unsuspecting civilians is barbaric.
Perhaps age has clouded the memory -- or hardened the hearts -- of many veterans. Yet my father, also a World War II veteran, has no such aversion to the truth.
We are all familiar with the arguments for dropping the bomb. The one I hear most often, "to save lives," is specious at best, racist at worst.
In fact, it was a trade -- the lives of American soldiers for the lives of Japanese civilians.
Are veterans trying to say that they still consider the Japanese have no value as human beings?
Besides, the real message behind the bombs was to the Russians, not the Japanese. What better way to keep the Reds out of Western Europe that the threat of nuclear annihilation?
Few people remember that the 80,000 civilians killed in Hiroshima pale in comparison to the 110,000 civilians burned to death in the firebombing of Dresden.
Dresden wasn't one big bang that incinerated thousands of lives. It took days of coordinated bombing by British and American planes. We knew civilians had fled there, one of the few cities that had no military value, no heavy industry and no troop concentration.
The attack on Dresden was cold and calculated murder, revenge for Hitler's bombing of London. Calling it "retaliation" doesn't make it right.
The Germans finally came to grips -- or were forced to come to grips -- with their ugly past. Do we have to wait until every World War II veteran is dead before we come to grips with ours?
William M. Smith
Baltimore
Welfare reform
We've heard a lot lately about revamping welfare. Most hard-working Americans agree there is a great need to restructure the system.
Why are so many foreigners in the system? Recently I have taken different people to the Towson Social Security Office to apply for their retirement.
These people have all worked all their lives and are signing up for the money they have paid over the years for retirement.
Every time I've been there, there are people who do not speak English and bring an interpreter with them (probably also paid for by us). They are generally older people seeking SSI. How can they be eligible? Yet they get it.
I am sick and tired of being so overtaxed there's nothing left for family living. Our political leaders have no idea how hard the working classes have it -- how could they when they have such high salaries, pensions and perks?
Most Americans would like their tax money to serve the people of our own country who pay the taxes and do without all the luxuries.
Our government does more for those not our own than they do for the ones who work to pay the bills.
There just might be another revamping come next election. And we just might keep revamping until our leaders get the message: Keep our money in America and use it to help Americans.
Betty Lou Atkins
Towson