Letters to the editor (9/1/09)

Again The Obama Administration is showing Americans how they feel about the safety of our country and military.

Mohammed Jawad, captured in 2003 after throwing a hand grenade, was released from Gitmo last week. He claims he was 12 at the time of capture; to some that makes a difference?

Over three dozen service members have been KIA in Afghanistan this month, many more wounded. Yesterday we gave one healthy fighter back to the enemy.

This is not the first enemy combatant released back into the fight. Former President Bush released a few, too, including former Gitmo prisoner Said Ali al-Shihri, who has emerged as the second-ranking al-Qaida leader in Yemen.

Remember the outrage over Bush's surge in Iraq? Where's the outrage over Obama's surge in Afghanistan? Where are the protestors? What's different now?

Is health care reform, cap and trade, cash for clunkers, and transforming America into whatever the President and Congress envision more important than the lives of these brave men and woman? I say NO!

-- James Rintz

Anchorage

Cap and trade bill will harm Alaska's small businesses

The cap and trade (emission trading) bill is an administrative approach used to control pollution by providing economic incentives. These incentives will primarily go to big businesses and special interest groups and will be financed by a big new tax.

The trillions of dollars being spread around is stunning, amounting to $5.6 trillion. Who gets how much of these incentives? Senator Barbara Boxer is a key player in the allocation of the incentive money. Google and read her Committee report "A summary of the Boxer Substitute Amendment to the Lieberman Climate Security Act."

Consider the geographical disproportional impacts of mandatory greenhouse gas reductions on Alaska and our small businesses. The $5.65 trillion cap and trade bill, with its regressive tax, will result in a massive redistribution of wealth out of Alaska and will have no significant impact on global climate or ocean acidification. Please contact Sens. Begich and Murkowski to voice any opposition.

-- Rick Williams

Petersburg

Fagan should research city salaries before spouting off

Dan Fagan's Sunday column was grossly unfair, both to the employees whose earnings he published and to the public he purports to serve. Typically municipal salaries are midrange to low when viewed against comparable markets. It's the overtime (OT) that generally drives high earnings.

Who authorizes OT? Who supervises OT? Not the employees. OT is often a function of hiring freezes and low staffing levels. It results from the city trying to deliver the same services with fewer employees. It's unfair to the point of dishonesty to suggest that these earnings prove that employees are overpaid. In many cases, they've overworked.

Typical Dan Fagan. No backup. No analysis. Selected facts that distort the truth. Damaging and unfair to the civil servants he wrote about.

Dan, the cost of downsizing is OT. OT is cheaper than having more people employed. When you run the city with skeleton crews, OT is the result and, yes (duh!!) the employees who are left will make more money. With fewer employees the choice is OT or less service. Plain and simple. So, in truth, the salaries you complained about are a management choice. The employees just work here.

Dan, show some fairness and print your 2008 W-2 earnings in your next column.

-- Charles A. Dunnagan

Anchorage

EDITOR'S NOTE: The writer is an attorney whose clients include city employee unions.

Smaller doses of medical reform more effective

Instead of being forced to swallow one BIG health care reform pill, H.R.3200, let's reduce it to a series of coated, easy-to-swallow caplets. Such as... H.R.3200a tort reform, H.R.3200b buying insurance form across state lines (like car insurance now), H.R.3200c personal accounts for everyday medical needs and catastrophic insurance for the big stuff, etc. Instead of a thousand-plus page bill we might be looking at several bills of a hundred pages. Or less. Everybody in the Republic could read that. Even senators.

-- Paul Thompson

Seward