Letters to the Editor
jebldmm
Published Letters: 933 Editor's Choice: 164
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I don't understand this issue
[Read the article: RU-486 did not cause woman's death]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It seems that all of the women who have died have used RU-486 as a vaginal suppository. This is NOT how the manufacturer recommends it be used. So, WHY IS IT BEING USED THIS WAY? Why not take it orally? And why haven't we heard about multiple deaths from RU-486 in Europe? Are they also using it in this off-label way? Are there death's there as well? And the most important question: Why doesn't anybody seem to care that young women may be dying unecessarily because of an off-label use of a prescription drug? This goes way beyond abortion politics. There is a great story here if anyone (from Salon?) would like to cover it.
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There is nothing wrong with patriotism
[Read the article: Country boy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I get the feeling reading this that the author feels that "patriotism" is a bad thing. Maybe I'm not reading it well, but if I am reading correctly, then I have to disagree. It's good to love your country and want it to be the best place it can be. The problem with the right's idea of being patriotic isn't that it requires allegiance to the United States - it is that it requirs BLIND allegiance to the U.S.. Blind, unquestioning loyalty - to anything or anyone - is never a good idea. But you don't have to be blindly loyal to love the good things about the United States of America. You don't even have to agree with the current political regime. There is a lot of good here, although it may be hard to remember that when we are in the middle of this ridiculous "War" on an idea. You can love America and still recognize that we are far from everything we should be.
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This isn't about labor at all
[Read the article: The left splits over immigration]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And creating a newly invigorated labor movement isn't going to fix the problem. This is about wages. As long as employers can get away with paying below minimum wages to people, they will. Those who don't want to do so will be forced to by competitive pressure from those who do (think of local grocery chains being forced to drop wages because of Wal-Mart's competition). Creating "guest-workers" will not fix the problem, all it will do is create another group of people who can legally work in the U.S. for minimum wage. But if immigrants work under the guest-worker program, then their wages will be paid legally and monitored by the state, and employers will have to find somebody else to hire who can be paid sub-minimum wages. Most immigrants currently working under the table will continue to do so, because they will be competing with others who are willing to work for less.
The only solution here is to stop focusing on the workers and start penalizing employers for violating the minimum wage laws. When is the last time you saw a newspaper headline stating "Employer fined $100,000 for minimum wage violations"? Never? Right now, employers can safely break the law because they know that the only recourse employees have is to sue them. Illegal aliens don't even have that recourse. Now, we raid shops and arrest illegals, and, unless the employer's behaviour has been truly egregious, they get nothing more than a slap on the wrist. When employers know that paying sub-minimum wages will cost them more in fines than they save in wages, then they will stop hiring people who work for less. Then Americans can compete on a more level playing field. This won't solve the entire problem, of course. We also need to get minimum wages raised to something people can live on, but at least we will have a chance.
Americans will do the same work immigrants do, if the wages are high enough to make it worth their while. They just won't do it for $4.50/hour.
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There is no double standard
[Read the article: Undoing the double standard on leaks]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Because the information released by Rove and Libby wasn't leaked, it was planted. "Leak" implies that information is being released by people who are not authorized to do so by those in power. This information release was authorized from the very top, by people who sought to influence the public by planting false or misleading information in the media. They've been doing this all along, having people pretend that they were leaking secrets, when they were actually planting lies and half-truths to mislead the public.
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Why should oil companies put in more refineries?
[Read the article: Hundred-dollar-a-barrel oil, or five bucks?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We seem to be foolishly assuming that oil companies exist to make gasoline. They don't. They exist to make money. They are currently making record profits by tightly controlling the market. If they put in more refineries, then there will be more gasoline, but they will make less money. They have all kinds of plausible reasons for not putting in more refineries, but a lot of these outfits are the same people who had plausible reasons for not having enough electricity for California during the power crunch a few years ago. How good are their reasons? And is it really reasonable to expect a company to undercut it's own profitability by increasing supply when they have an effective monopoly?
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I don't care if people profit from this
[Read the article: "United 93"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't disapprove of them making the movie. I don't care if it's a good movie, or a bad one, or an exploitative one. I just don't want to see it. I sometimes watch things that are distasteful because I feel that watching might help me to understand things better. I made myself watch a video clip of a man being beheaded by terrorists, and I'm glad I did, although it haunts me and I will never watch that clip or anything like that again. I did learn something from it. But I can't see how I could learn anything from this movie, and I won't watch it. If somebody makes a movie about 9/11 that helps people to understand things better, then I'll go.