Letters

>Archive - PWW Print Edition Archive - 2003 Editions - Nov 15, 2003


 

Illuminating bus ride

On a cross-town bus the other day a tired looking woman got on with her bundles and settled into an empty seat. Finding herself next to an old friend, she brightened up and greeted her with “Hi, Samantha!” and the familiar “Long time no see!”
“Ya got that right, Harriet,” Samantha replied. “How you doin’? Makin’ lots of money?”
“Of course I am,” said Harriet, and with a wry smile added, “for the boss!”
I thought about their conversation for a moment. Then it struck me. Whether she knew it or not, Harriet is a Marxist! She had just stated Marx’s principle of surplus value.
“Right on Harriet!” I mused. Then “Damn, too bad I left my People’s Weekly World on the subway seat!”

Charles Keller
New York NY



Voting rights under siege

Re: “GOP to challenge Black voters in Louisville” (PWW/NW, 11/1-8), I think that we need to be very concerned about this kind of activity to disenfranchise Black and other working-class voters in 2004 on behalf of George W. Bush. I hope you are planning a more in depth follow-up to this story. I’ve read that Chandler lost, and it would be very important for the whole country to know how much such racist attacks on the right to vote might have played a role.
Thank you. And keep up the good work.

Ted Pearson
Chicago IL



Uplifting journalism

The People’s Weekly World is the best written material I receive. You give me hope.

Lorena Tinker
Fayette MO



For quality, public education

Polls show most Americans want universal medical care by a single-payer, federal income tax funded system like that of Canada.
Overdue is a U.S. outcry for single-payer public education. Voucher plans, charter schools, and “No child left behind” fail to bring equitable public education to both rich and poor.
Congress should scale federal income tax rates steeply upward, close to 90 percent of income from the richest, to pay for both universal health care, and a single-payer K-12 nationwide public school system of equal expenditure per pupil, after initial rehabilitation of presently under-funded schools.
Also needed are standardized national proficiency testing of teachers and a nationwide, modern and flexibly wide in scope core curriculum, to start with and enabled by mastery of the three Rs.

Judith Segard Hunt
Berkeley CA



On ‘partial birth’ abortion ban

Although the specific abortion practice in question is probably inappropriate in most situations, at prescribed times it is the best and only option available to physicians to save a woman’s life due to complications in the second trimester. Interference in complicated medical procedures by people with absolutely no medical background places American lives at risk. All politicians, including Mr. Bush and his so-called bipartisan group of legislators, should be reprimanded, not commended.

Matthew Watson
via e-mail



NBC victimized Jessica Lynch

Jessica Lynch was a patient, not a prisoner. She needed a ride home, not a rescue. By its retelling of the lies surrounding her ride home, has NBC lowered itself to the level of those who made propaganda films for the Nazis? Where is the moral or journalistic distinction between the two?

Richard Curtis
via e-mail



Guns or butter

The stories of the killings in Iraq of our occupation forces and the tragic abuse of neglected children placed in foster homes in New Jersey and elsewhere are not unrelated.
It was predicted that as Bush gave his tax abatements to the wealthy and allocated those billions to Iraq’s infrastructure (read: contracts to Halliburton), our own people would suffer.
Our worst fears are being realized. The strangling of our infrastructure is resulting in the horrible mistreatment of our children due to lack of funds for proper supervision.
Butter before guns and people before profits takes but one thing: a change in those priorities.

Don Sloan, MD
New York City