Letters

Letters to the editor, Nov. 16

TBO.com
Published: November 15, 2011

Correction

Gerald Lesmeister's Nov. 4 letter erred regarding my remarks during C-Span's broadcast of an Urban Institute forum, "The Nation's Priorities and Children: How Well Do They Go Together?"

During that event — which readers can find at — I discussed a colleague's suggestion that states would place education high on their priority lists if they received incentives to devote more resources to improving school programs.

I never mentioned students as possible recipients of such funds.

Margaret C. Simms, PhD.

institute fellow

The Urban Institute

Washington, D.C.

Cartoon out of line

I can't imagine what would possess you to run the irresponsible "cartoon" by Andy Marlette in Sunday's edition, regarding the sexual abuse at Penn State.

As a Penn State fan and a former Pennsylvanian, I take offense to the assumption that anyone would think it was the fault of the children.

The only one responsible for this mess is the sexual predator and the people who covered for him! It is a tragedy that it happened to innocent children and that it has marred good works done at Penn State. As in any organization, the bad spoils it for the rest.

The reputation of Penn State is marred forever, but don't blame the innocent for the bad deeds of a few. Don't believe all Penn State fans are as crass as Andy Marlette would lead you to believe

Suzanne Dilts

Spring Hill

Insurance a riot

I just received our homeowners insurance; and we are insured against riots, explosions, weight of snow, ice or sleet, falling objects, volcanic eruption — but no coverage for the walking dead.

I do like the falling object protection if a meteor falls out of the sky.

I wish the insurance folks who approve the rates (our elected officials) would have the insurance companies add the chance of a plane landing on our roof or snow causing roof collapse — like $1,100,000.

What I want to know, with all these raises in cost, where and who has the extra hurricane emergency management fund and so on that has been collected since Hurricane Elena? Instead of raising rates, we could use this fund or a part instead of more raises?

Is this like our Social Security fund that has been used in the general fund with IOUs taking the place of real money?

Arthur Croci

Spring Hill

La-la land

Editor's note: This letter is in response to letter writer Abel Tarrada.

You have proved me right again! This is like shooting fish in a barrel. Another petty, angry rant. Unemployment rate 2008 was 5.8 percent. Look it up.

I will not subject the readers of this paper to a tit-for-tat with you. I do, however, have some bad news for you. Bush has been gone for three years. Get over it. From now on, I will let the readers decide who is credible and who has no idea what makes this country great.

Mike Flavin

Spring Hill

How to grow jobs

There is an answer to unemployment, but we must just face the truth about the reason for our unemployment.

Let's face it, U.S. industry cannot grow but must shrink with loss of employment because we cannot compete with the prices of foreign products entering the U.S.

Foreign countries can produce their products much cheaper than us in the U.S. The average wage in China is $2 per hour. Their government in various ways is subsidizing their company's sending products to the U.S., and their currency is undervalued thus keeping the price of their products very low.

You must be aware that industry has been leaving the U.S. for more than 15 years or more for Asia and other countries. In addition, thousands of companies have gone bust because they could not compete with the very low prices of foreign goods, particularly with Chinese products.

As a result of all of these large companies, like General Electric, moving their plants out of the U.S. and all of the companies going bust, we have lost millions of jobs; and this will continue in the future if no change is made.

An additional cause for our U.S. companies moving their plants and headquarters to a foreign country is to take advantage of low income taxes since the U.S. income taxes on businesses is the highest in the world. This tax must be reduced in order to keep more U.S. companies from leaving the U.S.

Congress refuses to look at this problem and keeps saying "free trade" is good for us, whereas it keeps us from competing and keeps us losing industry and jobs. The only way we can compete price-wise with China and other countries is to establish tariffs on all foreign products brought into the U.S.

The tariffs require foreign companies bringing goods into the U.S. to pay a fee on the goods. The amount of the tariff fee will be a sum added to the sale price of the foreign product, which will equal the cost of producing that product in the U.S. Thus, we will have a level playing field with the foreign product and we can fairly compete. We must immediately install tariffs if we want to save industry and jobs.

Congress does not have the guts to do what is necessary to truly face this problem. Write your congressman and tell him we need tariffs. Send him a copy of this article.

Norman Pallot

Weeki Wachee