Letters to the Editor
Finally, I understand the race card. It is the bottom card in the deck. The one that is up the sleeve. The one suit that will trump all other cards, regardless of how well you played your game.
Left has overplayed the race card
Finally, I understand the race card. It is the bottom card in the deck. The one that is up the sleeve. The one suit that will trump all other cards, regardless of how well you played your game.
Until now. Now, that card has been played and played 'til its edges have been dog-eared and you can see it in the deck, and you know when it will be played, with all the predictability and certainty of a summer thunderstorm. It has lost its edge, its power.
The charges and countercharges of who exactly is racist have been played out on national television over the past few months to the mighty dismay of most Americans. And yes, we know there are those, black and white, who will take their abiding hatred to the grave.
But why does the political left keep throwing the race card on top of the pile? Simple. Leftists know they are losing their grip on the black community. They can see the awakening of the black conscience from the government-induced drug of dependency, and progressive leftists are very afraid that they will be exposed for the liars they have been.
What do tea parties around the country owe the black community? Nothing. No apology. No political correctness. Nothing except a welcome. A welcome to our ranks as we gird ourselves for the fight for the soul of the Republic.
Christine Armstrong
Pitman
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No wonder care is so expensive
In May, I had an MRI of the lumbar spine to confirm a diagnosis of spinal stenosis. Although fully covered by my Medicare and secondary insurance, the amount approved, and paid by Medicare, $2,245, astounded me. The total amount billed was $2,389.
Wow! This hardly sounds like a negotiated price to me. I thought an MRI was an $800 procedure. No wonder MRI suites are popping up all over the area - it's obviously a very lucrative business.
When I questioned my doctor about the charge, he said the hospital had to charge the maximum, or risk having its coverages cut back. This looks like bureaucracy at its finest.
Ed Crocheron
West Chester
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Library bonuses violated the law
Our laws should be applied equally to all ("Former library president has earned his bonuses," Sunday).
There is a clear prohibition in the Philadelphia City Charter against any city employee's accepting any form of payment or compensation from an outside entity for doing the job he or she is already getting paid to do by Philadelphia taxpayers.
There should be no difference between the city sanitation worker who gets fired for accepting a $20 tip at the curb or the former director of the Free Library of Philadelphia who accepted more than $236,000 in illegal "bonuses" from a non-city trust fund since 2001. Both clearly violate the City Charter.
Why the trustees of the Free Library of Philadelphia chose to ignore a 1999 city solicitor's legal opinion informing them of the illegality of paying bonuses to then-Director Elliot Shelkrot is a question they should ask themselves.
Alan Butkovitz
City controller
Philadelphia
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Papers' release should spur critics
Your headline "New fodder for war critics" on Tuesday is puzzling because the 250,000 pages of raw information that troops and commanders in the field reported to other military officials is not fodder, nor is it especially valuable only to war critics.
It is valuable to the general population because it reveals the hollowness of the rhetoric of the current administration around this war and the futility of continuing it. The report will I hope mobilize people to put pressure on their representatives, as did the release of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War.
Thank goodness there are whistle-blowers like Daniel Ellsberg and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks who expose official deceptions and get the truth out.
Judy Rubin
Philadelphia
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