Letters - Saturday

Businesses need reform plan

Our health care system is broken, and American small businesses urgently need a solution.  Across the country, more than one third of small businesses have been forced to reduce or eliminate benefits altogether in recent years.

As a small business owner, I believe I speak for others when I say that it’s hard for small business to create jobs if they also have to bear the weight of skyrocketing premiums.  Congress must pass real health insurance reform in 2009. If we fail to act, more Americans will lose their coverage, more businesses will close their doors and rising costs will continue to explode our deficits. 

I’m counting on Congress to pass real health insurance reform in 2009.

Deborah Crowley, Colorado Springs

Gazette series explains a lot

Dave Philipps’ series “Casualties of War” (July 26 & 27) is both outstanding and disturbing. Until I read it, I never understood how German soldiers, many who were wearing belt buckles with the inscription “Gott mit uns” (“God with us”), could execute the entire male population of the Czech village of Lidice in 1941. Nor did I understand how a platoon of American soldiers under Second Lieutenant William Calley, Jr. could massacre everyone — babies included — in the Vietnamese village of My Lai in 1968.

The pattern through almost 70 years remains the same: when soldiers are pushed too hard, witness and commit too much horror, they lose their souls. For a good many men in units such as the Lethal Warriors, it is time to bring them home for good: physically and mentally.

My wife and I were discussing Kenneth Eastridge’s description of how he murdered Iraqi men, women and children who were peacefully sitting under trees having picnics, when our six-year-old son overheard us. “Dad,” he asked, looking at the article’s pictures, “aren’t they supposed to be the good guys?”

Holmes Brannon, Woodland Park

Vilifying of taxpayer’s rights

Two recent articles in the Gazette compel me to write you (“Though many don’t even vote, others add value to our city,” by Bernie Herpin, July 21; and “Effort is launched to de-Bruce the city,” by Daniel Chacón, July 22). Herpin and Tom Gallagher (mentioned in the second article) are members of our City Council. The two men vilify the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights and the refusal of taxpayers to approve city tax increases. They claim that we do not care, that the government ought to be able to collect and keep as much money as it can get its hands on when the economy turns around after a long downturn, and by golly that all we knuckleheaded taxpayers want to do is destroy the city’s quality of life.

The members of the working class (whether rich or poor, union or non-union, white collar or blue collar) are at a crossroads. We are held in contempt by the political class because we dare suggest that our money has priorities that are different from theirs.

Our other problem is that the “takers” have reached critical mass and have exceeded the capacity of the “payers” to pay.  We can follow the “takers” riding the gravy train and choose the left fork in the road while passively supporting an increasingly arrogant and condescending political class, or we can take the fork to the right that rejects the notion that the political class is the source of prosperity and happiness.
I know the City Council won’t be listening, and I know that Washington is too far away to hear anything anyone has to say, but I promise my vote in the next election will be loud and clear.

Samuel Grier, Colorado Springs

Politicians prefer non-voters

I read the Gazettes’ house editorial daily and generally agree with the message they send. The July 30 Our View “Politicians reject the will of voters” is no exception.

I have to say it’s a little irritating that our city officials seem to think the people who don’t vote should have a say in the outcome of elections or how the government is run. If people are so apathetic or lazy that they can’t fill out a form and drop it in the mail, they shouldn’t have a gripe with the outcome.

To imply that since I vote I’m not in the majority is a kind of a silly thought process, but it seems to me that’s what’s being said in City Council.

Tell ya what Bernie Herpin. I voted in the last election but I won’t vote in the next one.

At least not for you!

Dana Neidhardt, Colorado Springs