Government spending attracts corruption Re: “Corruption charges rock D.C. politics,” June 17
Thank you for pointing out the link between D.C. corruption scandals and the nearly doubling of the District’s budget to $10.8 billion. Government spending attracts graft as surely as uncovered food attracts roaches.
Ethics regulations, in turn, are like laying out poison:You can try it, but the problem will never go away unless you eliminate the source.
Merrill Smith
Washington
Class envy generates demands for other’s wages
Re: “Capitalism is all about living off another’s sweat,” Letters, June 16
Johnny Panic’s fanciful view of capitalism demonstrates an utter lack of economic and moral sense. He imagines that greedy employers are ripping off their employees’ wages to pad their own wallets.
Let’s be realistic: Your wages are your own business. Other people’s wages are not your business. If you agree to work for a certain salary, you should be happy. If you think you aren’t being paid enough, you can ask for a raise, find a new job or start your own business, but at no point is it your right to demand that others be penalized to make you feel better.
If Mr. Panic lacks the motivation to take any of these options, he should at least stop asking the government to take the wages of others to pay his way through life. We have names for the disorder that causes people to demand a share of the money other people make: It’s called class envy (or covetousness), and it is a breach of the 10th Commandment.
Joe Garber
Leesburg
Metro should adopt an open-door policy
Re: “Metro operator refuses to open train doors after child separated from mom,” June 16
Last year, it was a baby in a stroller who got stranded on a Metro train when the operator slammed the door in the mother’s face as she tried to board. Now the same thing happens again with a 5-year-old left on the train alone and her frantic mother on the platform.
Metro predictably denies culpability in the matter, even giving the operator some sort of credit for following protocol by not opening the doors of a train that had moved up the platform a few feet to allow for a mother-and-child reunion.
Here’s an idea for Metro based on my own experiences in the vastly superior New York City subway system and NY-NJ PATH system: Don’t close the doors until everyone has boarded! Unless there are 10,000 people on the platform, the “schedule” (which seems to be the only measure under which Metro can appear even modestly competent) won’t be severely affected by doing so, but it will stop the bad publicity that comes from separating a mother from her child.
And as we’re all taught as children, slamming doors in people’s faces is just plain rude. Beyond that, a business that slams the door in customers’ faces is stupid as well.
John Woodmaska
Kearny, N.J.
