Why are we paying Congress?
Elections have consequences. The Republicans hold the majority in both houses of Congress as well as the White House. The most important job we task Congress with is keeping our government operational and functioning. For this, we pay them a minimum of $174,000 a year. Congress members receive benefits along with this more-than-adequate salary; such as health care, retirement, and staff allowance.
This year is the worst flu season in years; the hospitals are full, and there aren’t enough doctors to treat the overwhelming number of sick people who need treatment. During a shutdown, the Centers for Disease Control furloughed 65 percent of its employees. Congress is still doing a victory lap for the tax cuts that some Americans will enjoy, but they can’t keep the government from shutting down. If they can’t keep the government operational, why are we paying them?
DAVE FEDACK, DOUGLASVILLE
Letter-writer living in their own reality
A letter-writer accuses columnist Leonard Pitts of “disregarding reality” and claims “the left and the Democrats” were the ones really responsible for 2017’s bizarre political behavior (“Pitts disregards reality of politics,” Readers Write, Jan. 17).
Really? Was it “the Left and the Democrats” who body-slammed a reporter for asking a legitimate question? Was it they who threatened North Korea with “military solutions” in a tweet? Or claimed that white supremacists were “very fine people?”
I don’t know what reality the letter-writer is living in, but its only sources of information are plainly Fox News and Breitbart.com. While no one claims Democrats or liberals behave appropriately all of the time, the fact remains that every last one of the acts and statements noted by Pitts originated with Donald Trump and Republicans, and no one else.
MATT G. LEGER, ATLANTA
Accept teachers’ assessment of students
Here we go again. They want to see that all kids are successful in school, whatever that means — new programs, new curricula, and, of course, standardized testing? Reminds me of the definition of insanity, doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
Suggestion: Let the teachers do the testing. Accept the teachers’ assessment of their students. This has merit because the teacher knows the student the best.
Teachers all know that students learn in different ways and at different paces. Why give every student the same test, especially using multiple-choice questions - denying students their right to self-expression - and put a time frame on the test too.This would also eliminate “teaching to the test,” which some educators have been known to do, and it would eliminate the grotesque expense of standardized testing.
Who knows the students better than their teachers?
RALPH MURCHISON, SNELLVILLE
Rural dwellers don’t need Bookman’s wealth-sharing
When liberals like Bookman run out of disparaging remarks for our president, they fall back on the old socialist remedy of sharing the wealth (“Memo to rural Georgia: Sorry, no,” Opinion, Jan. 21). They encourage and support taxpayer funding of the Medicaid welfare system. Bookman uses the old foggy notion that federal funds will pay for the state’s cost of providing medical care for rural dwellers, but he never mentions there’d be no federal funds if working Americans didn’t provide the money for the funds: or he implies that a rising tide lifts all boats as liberals are wont to do. Rural dwellers choose to live in rural areas knowing well in advance that medical care may mean traveling miles to the nearest doctor or hospital; that doesn’t mean they’re supposed to enjoy welfare to provide local services. Taxpayers are already burdened with providing support for illegal immigrants and their ever-increasing families who come here expecting to enjoy Obama’s open-arms policies. The Bookmans of the world need to lay aside their Marxist views and join with us who want to make America great again.
JACK FRANKLIN, CONYERS
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