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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 17, 2008

Dr. Berrios: A 'Real Doctor'

I just felt I needed to express my sympathy for the Berrios family.

As a young girl in 1978 and '79, Dr. Berrios operated on me even though I didn't have any insurance or any money, raising two children alone. His first surgery was a double cone biopsy of the cervix for cancer. Then he had extracted fluid from a large tumor in my breast for several years and tested the fluid, and finally in 1979 said the tumor must come out. That was a Monday and he made arrangements to operate that Friday.

I said, "Dr. Berrios, I don't have any insurance or any money." He said, "Connie, it is coming out whether you pay me or not, that is fine; but this tumor has to come out."

He was not concerned about the money. He said I would just have to make arrangements with the Brooksville Hospital to make payments with them. He never asked me to make arrangements with him to pay. He never charged me for either surgery, only the hospitals; and I paid $25 a month to pay them.

Dr. Berrios is what we all used to call a "real doctor." His concern wasn't money; he was concerned only for the patient. He was a dedicated man who cared about people. I even called Dr. Berrios when I had the flu, and he took care of me.

Dr. Berrios was so gentle, loving and caring about his patients. He would explain and talk to you, and you actually felt his true concern and interest for you. What a dedicated, true doctor and person.

My heart goes out to his family and friends. A true man and a true heartfelt doctor who will be missed.

Connie Brandon

Brooksville

Democracy For Sale

Will the one "honest" politician left in this country of ours please stand up? Someone? Anyone?

With the FBI arresting the governor of Illinois and his chief of staff for trying to sell a Senate seat, I have my doubts if there are any left. One politician hiding money in a freezer, another getting thousands of dollars of work done on his home for free by contractors, some being bought by lobbyists, others caught in sex scandals. Some are perverts. On and on it goes.

Every day we wait for the next scandal to pop up. Greed and corruption is bringing our country to its knees. CEOs of banks and other companies getting millions in salary and golden parachutes at the same time their companies are collapsing. Sports stadiums being built for millionaires with the public's money, with no return on that money. Politicians wanting to build bridges to nowhere. Our own Gov. Charlie Crist taking a dozen or more people on, in my opinion, nothing more than a vacation to Europe with $450,000 of our tax money. Workers losing their homes because their decent-paying jobs are being sent to China, Mexico and India, all due to the greed of these big companies.

No country in the world can survive for long if it exports all its good-paying jobs. Nikita Khrushchev once said that when the United States is buried, it will be with the shovel we buy from Russia. He should have said China.

People who have 401(k)s and stocks have lost trillions of dollars that they had been saving for retirement. And who gets bailed out? The banks.

Bush starting a war with Iraq and Afghanistan that nobody wanted, and now those countries are bleeding us of more of our wealth and young men and women. And the sad thing about this whole mess is we are powerless to stop it. Whatever happened to "Government of the People," "For the People"? It's unbelievable.

If all this seems like doom and gloom, it is. What is happening in our country is unprecedented. We are not going to recover the America we once had. We had a good ride, but now it's over. Even our roads that were built with our tax money are being sold to other countries so that they can put in toll booths. What's left?

Richard Nicks

Spring Hill

Implement Debit Cards

For Stimulus Package

Another stimulus package is likely to come along soon or, as professor of economics and finance at Yale University Robert Shiller suggested this past June, policy makers should "stand ready for another after that, and another."

Details on how and where the next bailouts will be spent and to which bailiwicks they will be given are speculative, but the possibilities are considerably different than those rebate checks that dribbled through the economy during the past six months. More banks? More to Wall Street? The auto industry? Most Americans feel these are lost causes and do little to help them through their personal financial challenges.

President-elect Barak Obama is floating around the idea that, in addition to the Bush administration's $700 billion bailout, another $700 billion may be necessary just to make a dent on the burgeoning challenges of the economy. One provision would allocate billions of dollars in funds toward projects to upgrade roadways, bridges and water systems, although this is but a trickle of the $1-trillion some deem necessary to avoid further deterioration of the infrastructure.

The home mortgage crisis still demands bailout funds to hopefully avoid the next landslide of foreclosures ... and the one after that. Governors want the assistance of federal dollars to meet their states' needs for Medicare. Some would exempt the first $15,000 of income from payroll taxes. Extended and expanded unemployment benefits have already been given.

However bailout dollars are divvied up, people still want their own share of handouts and be given control over how they spend whatever happens to be thrown their way, whether it's spent, saved or invested. Immigrants, legal or otherwise, often send their money shares to families in their countries of origin. Using stimulus dollars in such a way defeats the purpose of getting money circulating in the American economy.

In 2007, immigrants sent more than $40 billion to Latin American countries, of which more than half found its way to Mexico. Putting this in perspective,$20 billion is more than Mexico's yearly revenue from tourism. Although safeguards have been implemented to keep illegals from receiving rebate checks, this hasn't prevented eligible immigrants from sending the money outside America's borders. Regardless the exchange rate, it's a bad trade off for the greenback.

Economists admit that a good amount of stimulus dollars already end up in foreign economies simply by Americans purchasing the endless variety of products manufactured overseas. This is unavoidable, but there are steps that can be taken to make it more difficult for rebate recipients to exchange dollars for pesos or any other currency.

The Treasury Department already issues pre-paid debit cards, called a Benefit Security Card, to Social Security recipients who don't have a bank account for electronic direct deposit. They have proven to be an affective deterrent to identity theft and the added problem of stolen checks. Nominal fees may be incurred for certain transactions on the debit card.

This same method of supplanting funds to taxpayers could be used to administer stimulus dollars, guiding all recipients to the intended goal of bolstering the economy through spending. Cash advances at ATMs could be restricted entirely. Other applications, such as money transfers outside the United States could also be restricted.

Debit cards would divert consumers away from putting their moneys into personal savings and investments - the only investment intended with a stimulus package is in the American economy, a concerted effort if it is meant to make a sizable difference.

Perhaps economist Shiller will prove to be a bit of a prophet with his visions of multiple stimulus packages. Then again, perhaps fewer packages will be needed if consumers are made to spend their debit dollars on the goods and services offered by American businesses.

In any event, no one would turn down the opportunity to spend their token bailout funds with an extended arm offering payment with a piece of plastic saying, "Let me put that on my debit card..."

How stimulating!

Ron Rae

Spring Hill

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