Letters: Everyone should pay
September 4, 2012 8:40PM
Updated: October 6, 2012 6:04AM
I was recently pleased by the news that Illinois congressional persons voted for lowering their pay. The governor was also calling the legislators back to work on pension reform. These are good positive steps, but only baby steps.
Statewise and nationally, we are in dire financial straits. We all must agree and participate in economic steps to resolve this problem.
To start, all salaried state employees, except legislators, making more the $60,000 a year need to take an immediate 3 percent pay cut for 2012-2014.
All state employees need to transfer health care to a private medical insurance and transfer from state retirement to private (IRA, 401K, investment accounts,) immediately, so that they join the rest of us.
All state offices, departments, consultants and other entities must reduce their annual budgets by 3 percent. These departments may find economies of scale, but, if not, unions must offer employment scale reductions. The failure of this would be layoffs, and/or reduced services. It is imperative that agreement of meaningful pension reform be achieved.
The public must also share, besides learning to do with a little less, a mandatory tax of .5 of 1 percent based upon their total income (line 22 on the long IRS form) needs to be instituted. All must pay, even those who don’t file taxes. So all must file a tax return. This tax item should not be deductible on state and/or federal forms.
Only in this way can we all work together to start resolving our state’s grave financial mess. All of us need to share in the responsibility.
Mark Turk
Joliet
Drinking that Kool-Aid
This is in response to the Aug. 14 letter, “Free stuff,” by Gloria Weidner. Gloria, you should know as much about Obama as you seem to know about Mitt Romney who is an open book compared to the president. Since all we know about the president is his public record, let’s see how he has done:
1. Forty-two straight months of unemployment above 8 percent.
2. Twenty-three million struggling for work.
3. Sixteen trillion dollars in national debt and climbing.
4. Forty-five million Americans on food stamps, highest in our history.
5. A record 45 million people in poverty.
6. Over 200 fundraisers and counting.
7. Million of dollars sent on vacations at taxpayers’ expense.
8. A president, who through executive orders, bypasses Congress and disrespects our constitution, such as granting amnesty to several million illegal aliens — a bill Congress voted down several times and his disregard for freedom of religion.
9. A president who thinks small business did not build their business; that someone else did.
10. A president who does not miss an opportunity to create class warfare in this country. Why? Because it plays out well.
Sorry, you and so many people like you, are drinking the Kool-Aid.
John Thompson
Plainfield
Ditch birth control
I’m responding to the Aug. 14 column “Great Improvements in Health Care for Women” claiming that free HHS mandated contraceptives and abortion-inducing emergency contraception are essential to the health of women. In the 50 years since oral contraceptives have been prevalent, they have been linked to increases in migraine headaches, heart disease, heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, increased blood pressure, uterine cancer, infections, depression, uterine fibroids , anxiety disorder and breast cancer (http:/www.ditchthepill.org/).
In fact, the World Health Organization has classified synthetic estrogen and progestin in contraceptives as carcinogenic to humans. The injectable contraceptive Depo Provera is associated with an increased risk of contracting and transmitting AIDS. Five studies have also strongly linked Depo Provera with a 1.5 to 2.3 fold increase in breast cancer risk. According to the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, it is now well established that contraceptive steroids increase breast cancer risk, especially if taken before the first full term pregnancy when breast cells are still immature.
In one study, women who took the pill before the age of 20 had a more than tenfold increased risk of breast cancer. Furthermore, among the HHS mandated methods are abortion inducing agents such as Plan B and ELLA, which are not always contraceptive but abortive. Their drug labels state that these potent hormones may alter the lining of the womb, preventing the implantation of the embryo causing an early abortion.
Taxpayer funded Obamacare will further Planned Parenthood’s agenda of expanding sexual license, providing dangerous and often deadly hormonal contraceptive steroids while receiving a flood of taxpayer funds. This is hardly health care.
Beth Hansen
Joliet
