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Letters - Feb. 27

ISSUE | PENSIONS Clarke had a plan Farah Jimenez and Phil Goldsmith criticized City Council for failing to address the city's more than $5 billion unfunded pension liability but missed a strong effort by Council President Darrell L. Clarke to do just that ("The pension problem," Feb. 22).

ISSUE | PENSIONS

Clarke had a plan

Farah Jimenez and Phil Goldsmith criticized City Council for failing to address the city's more than $5 billion unfunded pension liability but missed a strong effort by Council President Darrell L. Clarke to do just that ("The pension problem," Feb. 22).

No one was a more aggressive advocate than Clarke for an effective option developed by a working group convened by Temple University's Center on Regional Politics. That option, one of many identified in a report titled "What to Do About Public Pensions: Options for Funding and Reform" (temple.edu/corp) was to extend the city's one-percent sales tax enacted in 2009 and dedicate it to reducing the unfunded liability of the pension fund.

Clarke fought to preserve that option even after the Corbett administration recommended instead that the tax support the schools.

Although that option has been lost, the principle behind it almost certainly is the only route to addressing the pension burden: New revenues are needed but only with cost-saving reforms..

|Joseph P. McLaughlin, Jr., director, Temple Center on Regional Politics, Philadephia

ISSUE | NEW JERSEY

Tax the rich?

To fix the decades-old New Jersey pension funding problem, State Senate President Steve Sweeney's only proposal is to tax the rich ("Christie asserts pension victory," Feb. 25). Why the rich? Don't they pay their fair share? How do they benefit by this supposed extra tax? Those who directly benefit from pensions should be more responsible for their own retirement funding, just like the rest of us without pensions.

|Michael Woloshin, Medford

ISSUE | HONOR TEACHERS

Classroom heroes

Each year, the National Liberty Museum hosts its Teacher As Hero Award to recognize area teachers who inspire, educate, and motivate. With a deadline Saturday, we'd like to hear of teachers in our community who are building the leaders of our future. Visit libertymuseum.org to nominate.

|Gwen Borowsky, chief executive officer, National Liberty Museum, Philadelphia

ISSUE | IMMIGRANT WORKERS

The guy with a rake didn't steal your job

Contrary to professor Jan C. Ting's assertion, illegal immigrants aren't the ones taking away our good paying jobs ("History is on workers' side," Feb. 20). The vast majority of those people come from Latin America, escaping from dire economic and political conditions, and they are handicapped by being poorly educated and not fluent in English. Here, they are eking out a living by doing essential but menial and backbreaking chores.

The good-paying jobs - the ones instrumental in creating our great middle class - have been shipped overseas. Any serious effort to help Americans recover their dignity and lost wages would start with bringing back those jobs, and stop blaming immigrants.

|Anthony Marquez, Bear, raton711@verizon.net

ISSUE | OIL TRAINS

Communities left at the station on info

Gov. Christie's administration has detailed information about highly explosive and flammable Bakken oil trains that have started passing through our towns, but won't provide that information to the public ("Danger on the rails," Feb. 22). Obviously, any terrorist who wanted to figure out where these oil trains are could do so, but innocent families who want to protect themselves are being kept in the dark.

The Christie administration is required by federal law to make sure each county and municipality provides public access to an updated emergency response plan. The New Jersey Work Environment Council (WEC) asked local governments to see those plans, but more than two-thirds refused, and Christie did nothing.

It is time for politicians to worry more about protecting the public and less about oil and rail-company executives.

|Colandus "Kelly" Francis, president, Camden County NAACP Branch and WEC board member; and Janice Selinger, acting director, New Jersey Work Environment Council, Ewing, jselinger@njwec.org

ISSUE | TEEN DEVELOPMENT

Getting young minds around brain growth

Having taught high school psychology for 10 years, I realized that knowing how the brain functioned actually empowered students in making good choices ("Teens need to understand how their brains work," Feb. 23). Psychology not only teaches how some things can affect brain growth and function negatively, but also demonstrates how the brain's elasticity allows positive changes as well.

My students learned that immature brains are prone to make bad choices, and that their brains were still able to be rewired to improve memory, IQ, even adapt to physical impairment (hearing compensating for sight loss, meditation used to control blood pressure, half a brain doing the work of a whole brain, and more.)

But not only teens benefit from an understanding of the brain's mechanism and functions. Even elementary school children have been shown to benefit from understanding the power of their brains and how they can improve that power through fun activities.

Brain science is sorely lacking in health and biology classes. So much attention is given to many of the other organs and body parts, but the primary control center for everything, the brain, is often left out of classroom lessons. If any subject should be added to the curriculum, neuroscience is certainly at the head of the class.

|Gloria Finkle, Philadelphia, gfinkle@comcast.net