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Letters to the Editor
What About Right to Opposing Views?
I
understand your position that signature gatherers have a right
to present their opinion and gather signatures. I do not
understand why others wouldn’t have a right to present
opposing views. Please explain this to me. I am not an
instigator, nor am I a homosexual. This is a legitimate
question. -
Philip Cavan Editor’s
Comment: You are absolutely correct that others have a right,
and a duty, to present opposing views. But that right is
bounded by the unwritten customs of society which are commonly
accepted by almost everyone. If people cannot follow these
customs, then we must sink to the lowest denominator which is
our laws. The conduct of most people is far above the law. If
it is not, the society will collapse. One
guiding custom is that everyone is supposed to be polite. If
the opposing side in the marriage debate wishes to have a
table thirty feet away and hand out pamphlets or talk to
people, everyone agrees that they should do so. However, if
they go over to the other table and physically touch someone
in any way whatsoever, they have obviously gone too far. In
that case, they have actually broken the law and committed an
assault, even though it was only a “friendly” gesture.
Whether they have gone so far away from custom as to break the
law is a matter for a judge and jury to decide. Clearly,
these blockers were breaking both the customs and the law.
They were extremely aggressive and obnoxious. It would appear
that they were trying to provoke violence so they could use it
to their advantage. But to their great credit, the signature
gatherers did not succumb to the temptation, despite extreme
provocation day after day. Even
an older woman who went to a Catholic college in Worcester,
Assumption College, was set upon by the professional blockers
who were allowed by the college to do so. She was physically
afraid to go back the next day and went only because our Ed
Oliver also went with his camera. The
supporters of the Amendment were in a dilemma. They wanted
everyone to know what was happening out there, but if they
did, they ran the risk of voters being physically afraid to be
a signature gatherer. It
was not a pretty sight to see our democracy being thwarted in
such an ugly manner. If
you disagree, please write back and tell us why. Go Nev
Nev
Moore is one of the hardest working advocates I know, along
with Tom, Clare, Stacie, Heidi and the others at Justice for
Families. I wish to God that what she does for Mass. comes to
Conn. for we have the same problem here, but our legislators
are not as interested. I
and others in Conn. have tried to get the attention of these
people that get their money when they are through traumatizing
our children. I have been fighting for many years to show what
they did to my family. Go
Nev. I do not condemn abuse and neglect, but I pray other
states follow, and soon, before all our families are accused
of one thing or another. -
Paige Belles Motherhood Is a JobI
disagree with the editorial “Can We ‘Afford’ Mothers”
because it makes it sound like women staying at home with
their children isn’t a challenge or a job of any kind and
they should put their children in daycare and that they should
be forced to go to work. My
mother stayed home with me and chose not to work, and I
definitely wouldn’t call her an “ultimate, useless
parasite,” as Maria Cohen calls stay-at-home moms in her
book The Sisterhood, which is quoted in the editorial. I think
that my mom staying at home with me helped me to have a closer
relationship with her. For
instance, she was always there when I got out of school. If I
had had a bad day, I knew that I could talk to her right away.
She took my sister and me to and from school every day. We
lived thirty minutes away from our school and on these days we
would talk about so many different things. I always loved
those rides to school. All my friends would sleep on the way
to school but I always stayed up so that I could talk to my
mom. A
lot of my friends’ mothers stayed home with their kids. For
example, the mother of one of my friends had three kids and
they all went to different schools and they were all involved
in different sports. She would have to take them all to their
schools in the morning, clean house, pick them up in the
afternoon and take them to whatever kind of practice they
would be having. She also had to find time to cook supper and
then take them to church functions. Unlike
a “job,” motherhood doesn’t end on the weekends; it’s
a twenty-four hour job. When you have a job you can quit, but
a mother can’t just give up on her child. I
realize that not everyone is able to stay home with her
children, but I don’t think that people should criticize
those who choose to stay at home. I think we have all learned
that making choices is a freedom. If a woman is a mother and
she chooses to stay at home, it doesn’t mean that she is a
mindless, unintelligent human being. -
Shauna Etter Editor’s Comment: Ms. Etter somehow saw an Editorial we wrote in October 1999 and misunderstood what we were saying. Now that we re-read it, it was confusing. Believe me, Ms. Etter, we agree with you 100%. Recycling Not for MassPIRGDon’t
you think it’s odd that the offices for MassPIRG, an
environmental organization started by perennial Green Party
presidential candidate Ralph Nader, do not recycle anything?
Not even office paper? Sounds a little hypocritical to me. -
Name Withheld Newton Lecture
‘Anti-American’
Thank
you for publishing Ed Oliver’s article on the public’s
reaction to Mr. Zinn’s mandatory lecture to students at
Newton North High School. The lecture was inflammatory and
anti-American. And no opposing views were presented. The
school’s administration sponsoring this lecture for their
students’ formative minds is an outrage. I hope your
publication will champion strong corrective actions to be
taken by the school to have opposing views to Zinn’s
presented soon to students and to not have such lectures ever
again forced upon the students. Though I live in Michigan, I appreciate your journalism. -
Leon H. Leutz Zinn Article ‘Inflammatory'Shame
on you for writing a thinly veiled, inflammatory attack on
Howard Zinn. I found your journalism, disguised as objective,
even more suspect than Zinn’s speech, which clearly was
offered as subjective and personal. You
flippantly and dismissively refer to Zinn as a “holdover
from the ‘60s,” as though this were an apparent,
substantive trait. (Your editors show this same lack of
respect and integrity in approving the article’s sub-header:
“Howard Zinn is a leftover from radical ‘60s.”) In
addition, your mention of Newton residents’ disdain of its
town’s “legendary embrace of the homosexual agenda”
shows a clear bias in its echoing of the language of the
religious right. Standing for tolerance and diversity in no
way equates “embracing.” This is the bedrock of our
country and constitution. While we may not embrace other ways
of being or thought, we’ve learned, to the benefit of all,
the importance of respecting others’ liberty and pursuit of
happiness. Otherwise, we risk the slippery slope to the depths
of those we now claim to abhor. We don’t need empty flag
waving and saber rattling to show our patriotism or
allegiance. We need to put into action the lofty, even sacred,
ideas that our flag symbolizes: tolerance for the stripes of
diversity. You and the “patriotic” Newton residents you
seem to speak for, could well learn, and remember, this
lesson. -
Andy Abrahams Wilson Editor’s
Comment: The only problem is that there is no diversity in the
Newton schools. “Everyone will accept the liberal mantra!
You have no choice!” It is PC at its worst. Retired Employees and Inflation
Inflation
is a financial disease. Some of the people who are currently
infected with inflation, or “consumer price-index
disease,” are those who are living on fixed retirement
incomes from companies such as Raytheon Co. that do not
provide yearly cost-of-living allotments or increase COLAS. Those who are terminal with the disease (or will go broke)
are the retirees that did not save and/or invest in such
things as 401’s or IRA’s during their working years in
order to account for the negative financial impact of
inflation. They looked at their year-end benefit statements
and thought, “Oh! I am in great shape. I am going to be able
to retire on almost as much as I am making now – great!”
They did not appreciate the compounding effects of inflation
and/or did not have the mathematical skills to quantify the
impact. So let us take a look at what has happened to these
people over the years gone by. The
national average yearly rate of inflation since 1913 has been
3.34 percent. This sounds like a small amount; however, it
translates into an average loss of income to retirees of 28.0
percent at ten years after retirement and a 48.1 percent loss
of income at 20 years after retiring. The
above numbers sound like a nightmare; but they are in fact
very optimistic. Between 1913 and 1945, ten of these years had
negative inflation or deflation and two of them had zero
inflation. So let us take a look at what happened between the
end of WWII or 1945 and the present. The
national average annual rate of inflation from 1945 until now
has been 4.18 percent. Again,
it sounds like a small number; however, it translates into an
average loss of retirement income of 33.6 percent at ten years
after retirement and a whopping 55.9 percent at twenty years
for people retiring from companies that do not provide COLAS
or cost of living increases. The
worst case scenario for retirees without COLAS over the past
88 years occurred for the people who retired between 1963 and
1973 since the average annual rate of inflation over the
following 20 years was at its peak and very nearly constant at
6.25 percent. These
poor souls lost 70.3 percent of their income by the time they
had been retired 20 years. Now
you say “I will never make 85-years-old.” However, it’s
a pretty damned good bet that if you and your spouse reach
65-years, one of you will make 85.
The conditional probability that one of you will make
85-years-old, given that you both reached 65-years- old, is
much greater than the probability that an individual will make
it from birth to age 85-years, since a lot of people die
between birth and age 65-years. So
what should you do? If you are a retiree without a COLA join
your retiree association. If you are a Raytheon retiree visit
our web site at <www.rtn1retirees.org> (note that the
character following rtn is the numeral one). You can also
write to The Association of Raytheon Retirees at Box 677,
Carlisle, MA 01741 and request an application for membership. If
you are working for a company that does not provide a COLA,
either find another company that does or invest every dime you
can afford in a 401 and or an IRA. If
you are young with small children, make certain that they
acquire at least enough mathematical skills to be able to
calculate and appreciate the effects of compounding financial
mathematics. Their life, liberty and most assuredly their
pursuit of happiness will depend upon it. The
National Inflation Data used to derive the results presented
in this letter was acquired from the Federal Reserve Bank of
Minneapolis. -
Earl Pearson Community Colleges Secretly Raising
Salaries?
As
a state contractor analyzing financial data (up to October
2001), I ran a “pay-change” statistical report by agencies
and discovered many community colleges have 100 or more
“pay-adjustment” or “other-pay” transactions since the
beginning of FY02 (July 1, 2001).
The
top three on my report were Springfield Tech Community
College, Salem State College, and North Shore Community
College respectively. I strongly believe many of these
community colleges have an average salary north of $50,000.
University of Massachusetts isn’t far better (or worse) than
the community colleges. Pay raises have been given to many of
their $100,000-plus annual salary Chancellor and Staff
Associates. In
addition to these ridiculous “pay-adjustment” transactions
in the higher education branch, the legislative branch tried
to make themselves on par with the higher education branch by
giving substantial pay raises to many of their employees.
Both House and Senate had hundreds of
“pay-adjustment,” “merit-increase” and “other-pay”
transactions since July 1, 2001. Jane
Swift and other leaders stated that health and human services
and the judiciary branch are in the list of “severe” cuts.
My first reaction gave me the perfect word: scapegoat.
According to my report, pay raises given to health and human
services or judiciary employees are far less than those
mentioned in previous paragraphs. Many
of our fellow Massachusetts taxpayers may not know about these
facts. I’d appreciate it if your press would kindly publish
this public information to the general public. -
Joe
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