Maryland's 33rd District Democrat Club
Anne Arundel County, Maryland
These letters express the opinions of our individual members and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the 33rd District Democratic Club.
In the 2011 General Assembly(GA) session four Bills were introduced addressing same-sex marriage. Three were pro and one was con. The con one was House Bill 963, a Constitutional Amendment introduced by Del Don Dwyer et al. This Bill would have taken the wording in the Family Law Code about a marriage between one man and one woman and elevated it to the Constitutional level . I find this action absolutely unacceptable and this is what I deliver my testimony on at each session. Dwyer introduces this Bill at every session and it always fails to get out of Committee. For the first time there was not a companion Bill introduced in the Senate in 2011.
Of the three pro Bills, two in the House (HB55 &HB175) were exactly the same in body, were introduced at different times, but the difference between the two was that HB 175 had as co-sponsors the GLBT Delegates added. They received most of the hopefully positive publicity but alas they never made it out of Committee (Judiciary). The third Bill introduced in the Senate, SB116, was most interesting. Its sponsors contained some GLBT Senators. This Bill contained exactly the same language as the two pro House Bills, but went a step further. It added more categories to the existing lists of persons prohibited from marrying (e.g. mother-son, father-daughter etc). This Bill made it out of the Senate Committee after four of twelve introduced amendments were adopted and was passed by the full Senate. However, in the House, even thought it made it out of Committee it failed to pass in the full House and was re-referred back to Committee where it died. Perhaps re-introducing some form of SB116 in the 2012 session might have a chance.
15 November is the deadline for legislators to submit draft requests for "pre-filed" Bills for 2012, so one will have to start monitoring the GA website soon after.
Letter to The Capital, 7/6/2011
Regarding the letter, Cuts, (The Capital, July 4th) the writer, Lou Koschmeder, cherry-picked and listed "20" of the 51 recommendations from the Republican Study Committee's proposal that was published in January 2011. As a reader, I ask the writer why didn't he just refer us to the Republican Study Group Proposed Budget Cuts and save all of us some time.
On the other hand, instead of copying the litany of proposed cuts, I ask the writer if he actually knows or read what those cuts imply. According to Rep. Jim Jordon (R-Ohio), the intent of these cuts is to "return non-defense spending to 2008 levels and non-security spending to 2006 levels." Outside the writer's list of "20" usual whipping points like public broadcasting and the humanities, the true consequences of these proposals remain under the radar, and according to House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, the following are definitely on the chopping block. To name a few: Cuts to the FBI- do we really need to track serial killers, spies and terrorists? The Secret Service- do we really need their protection? The Federal Prison System- do we really need to confine offenders? Border Security Funding- do we really need to E-verify and border security fencing? The Coast Guard- do we really need to protect our waterways and aid in search and rescue? The DEA- do we really need to track and prosecute drug traffickers or monitor controlled substances? The National Institutes of Health- do cancer victims really need cancer research? Federal Retiree Pensions- (MD has 153,000 federal retirees) -should they continue to have their federal retirement and health benefit programs? Apparently not.
With no defense cuts allowed, the entire House GOP, including our own Congressman Andy Harris, applauds the above proposals. Borrowing the writer's own words, this is simple-minded.
Judith Moylan-Forman
Severna Park
Letter to The Capital, 7/7/2011
I have followed the recent letters to the Editor (The Capital, June 27th and July 4th ) with some interest as many of us agree that we need to begin to balance our national budget. I believe that there is merit in both listed suggestions. But the majority of our country now believes that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing this country too much and cutting funding would be appropriate in light of our spending concerns. Most of us believe that we did not get good value for the 10 years of fighting and the lives lost or ruined on both sides. It has also been difficult to watch the gouging usually practiced by entrepreneurs preying on war contracts and not feel that we were using our National wealth in foolish ways.
While I find some of Mr. Koschmeder’s proposed cuts reasonable, I also find most of them to be sadly depressing. Should we really be so mean spirited and angry that we would choose to purge everything that provides hope, beauty, kindness and education from our budget and keep every overblown military and terrorist program just because it is called military or anti-terrorist? Should we reduce ourselves to the kind of national zeitgeist found in third world countries where there is only survival, not civilization as we would like to live it? Or should we come together as a National community and work side by side to dig out of the deep hole where we have found ourselves as a result of war and inadequate regulation of Big Business? I choose working together. I choose investment in my country. I choose rebuilding America and the things that are really important to us as human beings.
Susan Guyaux
Crownsville
Published in The Capital, 6/27/2011
There's your $2 trillion. But if a little pork/corporate welfare is a must, compensate: Axe the Bush tax cuts for the rich and impose a minimum corporate income tax.
Ordinary Americans are wising up. A respectable poll finds 55 percent favor military cuts but only 21 percent Medicare cuts and only 13 percent Social Security cuts.
On Aug. 3, if Republicans prove pigheaded, Reggie Retiree may find no Social Security check in his mailbox. But Reggie shouldn't have to fear doomsday; it should be the pork chasers and corporate welfare queens who feed at the Pentagon trough.
James Hoage
Severna Park
Published in The Capital, 6/21/2011
It is beyond imagination that any Democrat would vote to seriously damage Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that are the proud legacy of the Democratic Party and its historic committment to the common good.
When Republicans demand budget negotiations for seriously weakening the protections offered by those programs, they are insisting that Democrats renounce the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and others who dedicated their political careers to developing an economic safety net for American families.
Democrats are the party of not only Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, but also of unemployment compensation, education assistance, nutrition programs for the poor, the federal wage and hour laws (including the minmum wage and mandatory pay), workplace safety laws, and the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively.
Under the Bush administration, the Republicans extravagantly and recklessly cut taxes while waging two wars and doubled the national debt. Having demolished the federal revenue base and caused the immense debt problems they created, they now cry "crisis" and want to slash the major safety net programs and others that protect the quality of life for all Americans.
No Democrat should flinch in the face of such callous demands.
Raymomd Gill
Crownsville
Letter to The Capital, 6/10/2011
Many of us read Ayn Rand's novels during our "coming of age" period. A twelve year old tends to be self-centered and egotistical, and Rand's novels justify greed as a basic human instinct. We outgrew that, and realized that compassion and caring about each other vastly outweigh the gluttony and greed that Rand preached.
Yes, if you feel that the forces of greed (FOG) are supreme, that each individual should rape the earth, steal from his fellow men and women, and pass by suffering people on the road to Damascus, then by all means vote Republican.
If, however, you have matured beyond the level of a twelve year old, if you believe that we are all in this together, and that we should care about our fellow men and women, then vote Democratic.
Yes, regulated capitalism works. Unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism does not. When the top two percent of the population control half of the nation's wealth, based on inheritance and shuffling paper on Wall Street, those who actually create the wealth-- the working class--suffer.
Jonathan Innskeep
Letter to The Capital, 5/31/2011
Just over a month ago I wrote a letter which left one of your other reads “almost speechless.” The respondent (“Columnist,” Apr. 22) was upset that I had criticized both Rep Paul Ryan (R-WI) and novelist Ayn Rand. The reader thought I was criticizing capitalism. Not so. The Rand philosophy I criticized is the extreme social Darwinism she espoused, a radical individualism in which only a few are qualified to control society and the average American is simply fodder for them. Rand and, apparently, Ryan believe in oligarchies, not democracy.
The respondent might be surprised that I agree with him that capitalism is a valuable part of our country. But capitalism is an economic philosophy, not a political one. It needs regulation by the federal government to assure that people are not preyed upon by the powerful. One could say capitalism needs regulation, a kind of Franklin Rooseveltian democracy.
Citing another capitalistic hero, the reader praises Henry Ford. All that he said about Mr. Ford is true, but he left out an important fact. When Ford created his assembly line, he raised his employees’ pay to $5.00 a day, much to the chagrin of his fellow captains of industry. He realized that people needed to be paid well enough in order to be able to purchase the cars they made. Poorly paid workers can’t purchase anything more than subsistence, if that much.
To me, one of the most distressing points of his letter is his apparent belief that the only people who should be allowed to express their opinions are those he agrees with, namely conservatives and Republicans, the folks that brought us to the edge of a second Great Depression, left us with the Great Recession, and failed in the prosecution of two wars.
Stanley R. Baker
Gambrills
Letter to The Capital, 5/21/2011
A wretched sickness afflicts our country when the historic achievement of killing the world's leading terrorist is followed by political wrangling over whether our president or the former president's administration should get the credit.
This is a moment when Americans would be embracing each other with relief and pleasure that years of intelligence work and a bold presidential command enabled an elite special forces team to kill Osama bin Laden in a raid on his Pakistan lair.
Let us recognize that intelligence work by the Bush administration developed early leads in tracking bin Laden, but the intelligence services under President Barack Obama collected and connected the many additional strands of information to find the terrorist chief.
It was Obama who ordered the successful raid in Pakistan, serving another notice to the world that killers of Amercan citizens cannot expect safe harbors in countries that shield them. Obama approved attacks by drone aircraft that have wiped out al-Qaida terrorists in Yemen as well as pakistan.
Obama is composed, analytical, even professorial, but he's probably one of the coldest, toughest guys you will ever meet in defense of our country.
Raymond Gill
Crownsville
Letter to The Capital, 5/11/2011
I condemn the churlish behavior of Councilmen Fink and Grasso in reacting to Councilmen Benoit and Jones retaining their health care benefits ("Councilmen sparing over health care" Wed 20 April 2011). However it is not just their behavior that worries me. I am concerned by the apparent lack of prior knowledge of legislative actions by the previous Council that would affect the agenda of Councilmen Fink and Grasso. I'm stunned that they apparently are just now finding out about the so-called "grandfathered" health care benefits in question. Didn't they know, before aspiring to Council seats, of the Maryland Constitution mandate prohibiting the stripping of compensation from public officials during their term (Article III, Section 35)? Before campaigning, did candidates Fink and Grasso research Council legislation that would concern them once elected? Did they research, and become somewhat familiar with the relevant instruments and protocols that govern legislative actions of our Council? Why, just now, do they come forth with this revelation, and why, just now, are they so vehemently upset? I submit that they probably embarked on their campaigns armed only with their personal political agenda, and were not "confused" by the facts they would later encounter when elected.
I am concerned that today, too many aspirants to elected office are fueled not by a sense of serving the greater public good, but by enraptured fervor, the bully pulpit, and a keen sense of ignorance in promoting their parochial agenda.
I would caution Councilmen Fink and Grasso to be very careful when they demand sacrifice from others, because one day, sacrificial demands they find unacceptable, may be made of them.
I firmly believe, that no caring father and his seriously ill child should ever be publicly pilloried in the stocks of vicious partisan politics.
Patric S. Enright
Gambrills
Published in The Capital, 5/8/2011
Regarding the letter, Tea Party, (April 30, the Capital), the writer sarcastically mocks President Obama as the "champion of ordinary Americans," rendering the Tea Party as the true advocate. As the saying goes, you can have your opinion, but you can't make-up the facts.
The writer refers to "they" (implying the Obama administration) for denying Social Security increases in 2010 and 2011. I hate to burst your Tea Party bubble, but it was the Republicans who contended that the nation couldn't afford this. Both House and Senate Republicans said that seniors had already received a significant "boost" in 2009, the "largest in 27 years." Remember too, it's the Tea Party, while opposing Wall Street reform, wants to privatize Social Security in the name of "personal accounts" and hand it over to Wall Street. No further comment needed!
As for being taxed on the $250.00 given to seniors as part of the Stimulus, this too is false. Check-out the website for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. Additionally, earlier this year, the Democrats urged another one-time payment of $250.00 to seniors, saying they faced undue hardships without the cost-of-living increase. Congressional Republicans overwhelmingly opposed this and the measure failed. While considering this extra relief to seniors too costly, the Republicans and Tea Party deemed it necessary to extend tax cuts to America's wealthiest.
Currently, under Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity, the Tea Party wants to replace Medicare with a voucher system, (likened to Coupon Care), forcing seniors to buy their own insurance. Since many "ordinary" seniors have pre-existing conditions, that coupon won't cover very much.
Filled with the usual Tea Party rhetoric and misinformation about the Obama administration, the writer managed one accurate assessment "...ordinary Americans are poorer and the rich are richer." The Tea Party is anything but a champion.
Judith Moylan-Forman
Severna Park
Letter Published in The Capital, 5/5/2011
I have refrained from responding to the subject of your article on 4/20 regarding Councilman Benoit's insurance. I have read it six times with my emotions erupting each time. I wanted to calm down before commenting.
I love politics because I love living in a democracy. Perish the thought of having everything my way or your way. Our country is based on intelligent and intellectual exchange of opinions, settling on a compromise. What we are evolving into is a government being infected with mindless, thoughtless attacks containing no basis for common sense. This is a good example.
If a government representative is incapable of participating in an intellectual dialogue too often he/she resorts to attacking the ridiculous. It is very much like the anger that erupts from an uneducated person who cannot communicate. Absent of knowledge, absent of critical thinking skills, absent of an understanding of logic, attacks are made with short sound bites created to put constituents with a similar lack of skills into a fit of unsupportable anger and call to action . . . serving no purpose but to falsely discredit.
Councilman Benoit had a choice of insurance programs. He chose the one best suited for his family, a choice any responsible person would have made. That is the end of that discussion.
I would hope that anyone who would launch an attack on such feeble, thoughtless grounds would themselves be held up as antagonists and creators of these tones of non-productive dialogue. We need to identify and replace them with promoters of understanding, civil conversation, and democracy. I submit two names to this replacement list, Fink and Grasso. Being of an opposing party is not an excuse for absence of dignity, character, and common sense.
Rusty Vaughan
Odenton
Letter to The Capital, 4/14/2011
As chairman of the House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R. Wis., proposes to replace Medicare with a program that would give vouchers to senior citizens and have them shop around for private health insurance.
You can bet the vouchers won't be enough to buy the insurance coverage needed for seniors. The premiums would be much higher than those charged younger and healthier Americans, which is why the Medicare program was created in 1965 during the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson. Republicans opposed it then as they do today.
Ryan also assaults the Medicaid program for the very poor. He would just turn it over to the states as part of a new federal bloc grant program that would be vulnerable to cuts in annual appropriations, and he has a tax reform plan that can have the richest Americans dancing.
While Democrats demand repeal of the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, Ryan wants more and deeper reductions in the taxes paid by the richest 2 percent of our population. It should not surprise us that Ryan is a fan of the late Ayn Rand, a writer who taught that the wealthy have no responsibility for the well-being of other citizens.
Raymond Gill
Letter to The Capital, 3/26/2011
Today I learned that GE's billions in profits totally avoided paying even one cent in Federal corporate income tax. All done by manipulation where profits and costs are accounted for in a world wide economy - much of which is beyond the reach of our tax laws.
Another report a few months ago on TV showed that drug companies have been paying less and less in corporate income taxes since 2000. These multi-billion $$ businesses claim that almost all the profits are due to their patents. They move their patents legal locations to places like the Cayman Islands tax haven, again outside the reach of our laws. Their offices there are little more then a file cabinet in a lawyers office.
There they use those "subsidiaries" and the profits held within to establish production facilities in near slave labor nations. Not only are the profits out of reach of our tax laws., but they fund the moving of jobs from America to the far east.
Also being involved with small aircraft, I've learned how to avoid sales tax - even on planes that easily can cost into the millions.. Set up a shell corporation located in a state without sales tax, like Delaware: there the shell corporation buys and owns the plane. Presto - no sales tax, even if the plane is based in MD.
Its time to end corporate welfare and multimillion $$ tax breaks while our government is cutting education, services and employees jobs and benefits. And Republicans are trying to gut social security.
We should all be outraged.
Stephen Kay
Severna Park
Letter to The Capital, 4/14/2011
To the Editor:
In The Sunday Capital you welcomed a “New Columnist,” Michael Collins, a Republican apparatchik to your editorial page. A year or two ago you were ecstatic to welcome Bob Williams. Both Mr. Williams and Mr. Collins can be expected to espouse a solid Republican philosophy. You concluded your Editor’s Desk piece “[Mike’s} comments should be of interest to many readers who wanted additional conservative views on countywide issues.” That’s nice. However, you’ve completely ignored Democratic readers. Democrats want “additional liberal views of countywide issues.”
What your column suggests is that the Republican philosophy is to provide a bigger megaphone for Republicans while offering the Democrats, apparently, nothing. Thus The Capital is just another mouthpiece for the discredited philosophy and policies of the floundering, failing Republican Party. Evidence of my claim about the Republican Party is the financial program presented by Rep. Paul Ryan (WI). Ryan thinks Ayn Rand’s philosophy is the salvation of the country, even though those ideas have not produced any contribution to the welfare of the country or its citizens. The only people who benefit from her philosophy are the wealthy, think the Koch brothers.
Several years ago I suggested that The Capital alternate columns by Republicans and Democrats. The contrasting columns would energize both parties and make the differences very clear. Instead, you’re larding your editorial page with the same tired, failed ideas rejected by the American citizenry after Franklin Roosevelt became president.
Stanley R. Baker
Gambrills
Letter to The Baltimore Sun, 4/13/2011
Thank you to Dan Rodricks for his excellent assessment of Congressman Andy Harris (The Sun, April 10). As a resident of Anne Arundel County, represented by Harris, I am appalled at how he has done nothing for his constituents regarding job-creation and betterment of the middle-class.
Besides signing onto multiple anti-abortion amendments, a legal medical procedure, Harris has shown his colors that pander to his Tea Party base. Remember, he was funded by American for Prosperity, the Tea Party organization founded by the oil and gas titans Charles and David Koch.
Recently, Harris voted to defund the EPA that not only protects all Americans, but particularly the state of MD and Chesapeake Bay. In that same voting cycle, Harris voted to keep an earmark for the Alaskan "bridges to nowhere" that are still being funded with federal money. So while stripping the environment and MD of its safe guards, Harris gave Alaska $183 million for their "bridges to nowhere" adding to the deficit with an earmark.
That he's a doctor adds to his pretense. Harris voted against an amendment (H147) that would protect construction workers and enforce safety standards for these workers- again the middle class. He voted against regulating mountaintop removal and strip mining allowing toxic poisons into streams and drinking water. The working poor and middle-class of West Virginia have no political clout, so what does he care? Harris also advocates hydraulic fracking of gas in Garrett County putting more carcinogens in their water and jeopordizing their real estate and tourism industry. Another assault on MD and the middle-class.
Harris calls himself the "caring conservative". Just who does he care for? And where are the jobs?
Judith P. Moylan-Forman
Severna Park
Letter to The Baltimore Sun and The Capital, Published in The Capital 4/10/2011
Maryland ranks 7th nationally in cancer mortality, yet our Congressional Representative Harris wants to totally remove the Environmental Protection Agency, whose job is to insure that the water we drink, the food we eat and the air we breathe are free of carcinogens.
His idea of reducing government expenses is his supporting Palin’s Bridge to nowhere, A $300 million boondoggle for favored contractors that benefits 50 people on an almost deserted island.. At $6 million per inhabitant, why not instead resettle those people at miniscule cost.
This reminds me of those advertisements Harris ran before the election, complaining about the government spending $100,000 on insect studies. The real objective of those studies was to understand life processes in creatures a million times simpler then humans with the goal of being able to develop life saving drugs for cancer etc. for us, our parents and our children.
One would think that Harris, a doctor, would do better. His comment last year about "living the American dream" is best described as his being "Our American Nightmare."
Stephen Kay
Severna Park
Letter to The Capital, Published 4/4/2011
I am concerned and disappointed in our failure to pass the gay marriage bill. Concern is that we are denying others the basic American freedom to live their lives as they choose where it does not interfere with ours.. Disappointed in citizens who want to deny their freedoms to others. What fears must be driving people to forsake the roots of their country and impose their beliefs on others.
I am a heterosexual male. As a child, I too was a pawn of these fears. As an adult, I questioned the source of choices homosexuals would make that cause them to lead a gay life. Then there was searching, a result of my need to understand. I learned this "choice" is as much in their individual chemistry as heterosexuality is in mine.
As I opened to biological facts and dropped my fears from ignorance, it became logical. What if, as a heterosexual male, I were placed in a society that allowed me to marry only other men. What if I could not live and love openly with women. My life would be tragic living contrary to my makeup. I would be fearful of being discovered, shunned if I were to follow my genetic inclination.
Homosexuality is no more a choice than heterosexuality. I believe it is one's right to FREEDOM in my America. Quality of a person is not determined by sexuality. This should not be a debate. Gay or straight we can still openly go to the same school and church, fight alongside each other, and marry the person of choice.
If not change, perhaps this will encourage more to stand up and support the freedom of adults to marry regardless of gender, race, age, or nationality. If we have no reason to be apart, we must work together.
Rusty Vaughan
Odenton
Letter to The Capital, 3/28/2011
This letter is in response to Mr. David Dirkes comments in Sunday, March 27,2011 letters to the editor. He made some serious allegations and errors in reporting the direction our current progressive leadership is taking us regarding our National energy needs.
Oil - Deepwater permits have, in fact, been issued in the past month by the Obama Administration.
Coal - Massey Energy, has applied for four permits to mine 6,600 acres of Coal River Mountain in W. Virginia. The permits would also allow for the construction of at least 19 valley fills, where mining waste would be deposited in nearly every headwater stream originating from the mountain.
A coalition of environmental organizations have proposed an alternative 440-Megawatt wind farm consisting of 220 wind turbines to be constructed on the land slated to be blown away for coal mining. This project would:
• Create 440 megawatts of power, enough to power more than 150,000 homes in West Virginia.Wind - President Obama recently issued permits for the mentioned wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod, allowing the project to proceed.
Nuclear - In the face of a horrendous meltdown of a still leaking Japanese reactor, the jibe at anyone who expresses a reasonable concern as to the ability to manage these facilities safely seems ridiculously cavalier.
In order to face the serious energy concerns of our Nation, it is necessary to state facts, not hyperbole, if we are to work together toward the common goal of safe, affordable, environmentally appropriate sources. Additionally, it is always easy to make fun of the concerns of others when you are not personally impacted by poor decisions allowing some of the unsafe and needlessly destructive sources we currently see in place.
Susan Guyaux
Crownsville
Letter to The Capital, 3/26/2011
Regarding the March 22 letter, Voting Record, and Congressman Andy Harris' vote to continue funding the "bridges to nowhere", the writer was too kind in calling him glaringly inconsistent. I call him glaringly hypocritical.
Just when we thought the Alaskan "bridges to nowhere" (AKA earmarks) had disappeared, it seems they are alive and well in the GOP House funding.
According to the National Journal (March 2), a Democratic motion to "recommitt the extension of the surface transportation bill", ( with a bipartisan vote of 421-4), Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo) offered another motion revoking $183 million still on the table for these bridges to 2 Alaskan islands- one of which serves 50 residents.
In misleading the American people that these earmarks had been eliminated, apparently Alaska has continued to fund these bridges with federal money: one costing $304 million and the other $1.6 billion. While viciously railing against the current administration about the deficit, every House republican, including our supposed deficit-reducing, job-creating, steward of the environment Congressman Harris, voted against Rep. Polis motion and for the earmark.
Adding to his pretense, Harris had the gull to recently announce his support for the GOP House ban on all earmarks for 2011. He said, " I am pleased that the House Republican Congress has taken a strong stand against earmarks. Earmarks have come to represent the broken system in Washington and how the process of appropriating federal tax dollars needs to be completely reformed." Really now?
So within 2 weeks, Harris voted to defund the EPA, which protects all Americans- particularly his own constituents and the Chesapeake Bay- and voted for an Alaskan earmark that funds 2 bridges that go nowhere and serve 50. This is not inconsistent but unconscionable.
Harris calls himself a "caring conservative." His voting record reflects the opposite.
Judith P. Moylan-Forman
Severna Park
Letter to The Capital, 2/17/2011
An ABC poll shows that while most Americans favor most of the Omnibus Package, 57 percent oppose the part which, for one year, cuts 2 points off the Social Security payroll tax. To buttress benefits during the year, $112 billion would be borrowed.
This destailizes Social Security. It funds it with deficit spending. What happens at year's end? Republicans will want to make the cut permanent and reduce benefits. Part of a plot to kill Social Security.
As funded before Omnibus, Social Security could have maintained full benefits for another 27 years. Democrats were planning these modest adjustments to prevent shortfalls thereafter:
1. Slowly lift the caps on earnings subject to the Social Security tax. The cap is now $106,800 and inches up automatically each year based on average wages.
2. Also slowly raise, 1/20th of 1 percent per year for 20 years, the payroll tax rate. Shortfall reductions- 23 percent. Yes, this is a sacrifice for the middle class and poor.
3. Extend Social Security to newly hired state and local government workers. Shortfall reduction- 10 percent.
4. Give Social Security just some of the tax on large estates. Shortfall reduction- 27 percent.
These adjustments would have, before Omnibus, cut the shortfall after 2038 by 10 percent. Who knows what will be necessary now to do that? Four things to remember: Every 6th American receives Social Security and every 7th retiree depends on Social Security for 100 percent of his income. Social Security is a pension to which workers contribute- not welfare. It's a major pillar of both the economy and the middle class. And messing with Social Security is playing with social fire.
James Hoage
Severna Park
Letter to The Capital, 1/25/2011
Thanks for your article on gay-straight alliances (The Capital. Jan.17). These are groups that foster respect and understanding among heterosexual and gay children in schools as well as providing "safe space" for gay kids, free from bullying etc.
Most remember the terrible scene of Tyler Clementi jumping off the George Washington Bridge because he was exposed as gay by some other kids via a PC video. But virtually every day, I see a news item, if you dig deep enough, of a gay kid committing suicide.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg. According to a psychologist friend a few years ago, and confirmed by an FBI agent I met some months ago, several thousand gay teens commit suicide annually. Driven to despair by jokes, endless bullying and being made a pariah among their peers in our society. So poisoned by hatred propagated in the name of God. As well as an unknown number of the other thousands of kids who commit suicide annually, who are secretly gay.
We went to war, rightly so, over 3000 people murdered on 9/11. How are we going to stop the annual mass murder via induced suicide of America's gay children?
Steve Kay
Severna Park
Letter to The Capital, 1/30/2011
In the fiscal follies of the Bush years, the Republicans legislated deep tax cuts, mainly favoring the wealthy, while waging two wars and padding every budget with old-fashioned pork. Vice President Dick Cheney even said "Reagan showed us that deficits don't matter."
Even worse than the spending binge was the love affair with the financial markets that allowed mountains of dubious mortgage debt to be traded as investments, despite the shaky nature of those bets, and the nation's economy collapsed when the truth became known.
The Republicans now have the nerve to complain about budget deficits and demand steep cuts in federal spending. At least a third of the current budget deficit is a product of the Bush tax cuts. Another third has been caused by a fall in federal revenues in the recession, which ruined many businesses and erased millions of taxpaying jobs.
President Obama inherited a budget deficit of more than a $1 trillion and had to spend on major pump-priming measures to prevent an economic catastrophe of another great depression.
In the congressional wrangling at the end of 2010, the Republicans insisted that the Bush tax cuts for the millionaires and billionaires be extended as their price for extending unemployment benefits and middle class tax cuts. A shameless group they are, serving the richest Americans while talking about reducing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Raymond Gill
Crownsville
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