Letters: Ryan sets a bad example
September 27, 2012 9:58PM
Updated: October 29, 2012 6:05AM
The family unit is not important to society, and there is no God. Because it does not matter, the middle class should be ignored, along with the poor and disadvantaged.
Who believes in this garbage?
Paul Ryan does. He has been a devotee of Ayn Rand for almost 30 years, motivating him to choose his calling by entering public service; spending 20 years in Washington as intern, political operative and, finally, a congressman.
Of course, he abruptly disavowed Rand’s atheist opinions just four months ago.
With the combination of family money and success in Washington politics, Ryan is rich. He’s not as mega-rich as Romney, but you get the picture. Ryan is following Romney’s lead by revealing only two years of income tax returns.
By contrast, nobody is attacking President Barack Obama’s tax returns, because there is nothing to attack. If there was any ammunition on Obama’s returns, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, the Koch brothers, Fox News, the religious right and tea-bagger crazies would have found it.
Ryan is a fiscal smarty pants, planning to cut benefits enjoyed by the middle class, from Medicare and Social Security, by raising eligibility for Medicare to age 67. And when 19 million Americans are denied Medicaid, hospitals will pick up the tab and pass it along to the rest of us.
If Ryan had practiced fiscal responsibility years earlier, he wouldn’t have voted for unfunded big pharma and both Bush tax cuts, which got us into this fiscal mess in the first place.
Margaret Dahlke
Custer Park
Ruling is hypocritical
On Aug. 28, in Openline, Ellen Canisius said: “The Boy Scouts ... should not be forced to accept immoral and repugnant behavior in the name of tolerance or anything else.”
Ms. Canisius, the issue is not about behavior. It’s about a trait with which some people are born. In none of the news reports I have read is anyone being accused of actually engaging in any kind of behavior, immoral or otherwise. Children, youths and adults are being removed from the Scouting program, not because of behavior, but because of a trait with which they were born.
Speaking of behavior, do you suppose the Scouts would ban heterosexual teens for experimenting with or engaging in sexual behavior with their girlfriends? Or what about heterosexual, single adult leaders — would they be put out of Scouting because they engaged in sex with the opposite sex, or were in a common-law relationship with someone? These are actual behaviors traditionally considered immoral. Would such people be sought out and removed from the program?
I doubt it. Certainly there is no witch hunt being waged to remove heterosexual sinners from the Boy Scout organization.
Ironically, my parents wouldn’t let me join the Scouts. To them, Scouting milieu was “immoral and repugnant.” To them the uniforms, the different ranks Scouts can achieve and plethora of badges were a deliberate imitation and glamorization of war and military values, making Scouting diametrically opposed to Jesus’ admonitions to love your neighbor as yourself, and therefore, to my parents, immoral and repugnant.
Paul Brumbaugh
Joliet
Abusers must be punished
I would like to see much tougher legislation to protect animals from abuse and neglect. (“Cops on drug search find mistreated dogs,” Aug. 24).
I am referring to the horrible conditions that 15 pit bulls and other dogs were forced to live in. Conditions were so bad that 10 of the animals had to be euthanized.
How would the owners, and those involved, like to be put into a small cage and have feces and urine dropped on them? The 21-year-old owner has no compassion or empathy for other forms of life. A dog is an intelligent and feeling animal. No animal is as loyal and caring.
To know they’re treated this way upsets me greatly. I would like to see those cruel and cowardly owners and abusers have to face the same treatment they doled out to their animal victims.
A wise judge did sentence the same punishment to a cruel owner after he left new puppies to die during a cold Minnesota winter in a garbage dump.
The abusive owner was sentenced to choose jail or spend three days and nights in the cold on the same garbage dump. He chose the dump. He couldn’t take it for one night and begged for mercy, and he went to jail. At least he had a choice; those puppies didn’t.
I believe if more abusers got similar treatment it would help to deter such acts of cruelty.
The Joliet police should investigate this case further. It sounds like those pit bulls were used in dogfights. I hope the judge throws the book at these people.
Shirley Valevicius
Bolingbrook
