Watchdog should watch County Council Re: “MontCo watchdog seeks advice from residents,” Aug. 30
It’s extremely funny that Montgomery County’s inspector general has declared himself a solution in search of a problem. If he wants to see some real dysfunction, all he needs to do is observe the County Council in action.
This is the council that recently institutionalized tax-free disability awards of $200,000 in the first year of retirement at age 42 (when our public safety employees miraculously go from 100 percent non-disabled to 100 percent disabled), which go up to $500,000 a year when the retiree reaches 82.
This is the same council that told the unions to bypass the county executive and negotiate directly with them, leaving him with little to do but play cards with his four-man security detail — each costing taxpayers more than $100,000/year.
This is also the council that is frequently threatened with lawsuits by the Board of Education and the employee unions even though it is adamantly in favor of collective bargaining, which enables unelected arbitrators to rule in favor of the unions 100 percent of the time.
Dissatisfied folks who are literate and read about this joke of a government in The Examiner are not so happy. But since the Democrats outnumber them and there is no properly functioning opposition party, good government has become a lost cause in Montgomery County.
Richard C. Kreutzberg
Bethesda
America’s economic troubles are deep-seated
I wonder what the president will say in his speech on Thursday that will solve these problems:
In the 1970s, the United States was at the peak of its economic growth and had a positive trade balance. Two generations later, our trade deficit is colossal. Our four-seasons food stores (thank you, South America) are the envy of the world, but two-thirds of our people are overweight.
The items I purchase are made in China, India, Vietnam, etc. because American and European know-how has been transferred to countries where industrialists make products that are intensely competitive by ignoring human rights. They use cheap labor, including unpaid prisoners, do not pay social benefits, and obey no costly environmental rules.
Dictatorial decisions like the one-baby rule in China allow for a preponderance of male births, which favors industrial production, while millions of American births have been sacrificed since the 1970s, creating a shortage of citizens to fund Social Security. Thanks to the overseas competition, many of the survivors are unemployed and there is increased concentration of wealth in the hands of a few who do not contribute to Social Security.
Madeleine Soudee
Washington
Bush/Cheney’s delayed response to Kurd massacre
Would someone in Examinerland please explain something to me. It seems no one in the mass media is asking this question.
While promoting his new book on various television stations, former Vice President Dick Cheney justified going into Iraq because he said Saddam Hussein had used “weapons of mass destruction” in the gassing of the Kurds.
This happened in March 1988. Cheney convinced President George W. Bush to go to war with Saddam 15 years later. If it was so important to respond, why did we wait so many years after the fact?
Jack Donner
Alexandria
