Blame financial problems on warfare, not welfare Re: “The welfare state is destroying America,” Jan. 23
Philip Klein speaks of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, prescription drug coverage, and the recently passed national health care bill as albatrosses destined to facilitate the destruction of American society as we presently know it. His assessment could not be further from the truth.
Granted, Americans are living longer and there are obviously more Americans today than there were in the early 20th century. But Klein conveniently fails to mention what I consider to be the No. 1 cause of the nation’s debt: the warfare state.
As recently as 2000, at the end of the Clinton administration, the federal government had a $1 trillion surplus. Subsequently, we became involved in two wars while still maintaining more than 900 military bases around the globe. Add the costs of the continuation of the Bush-era tax cuts and it becomes increasingly clear that the major culprit is not the welfare state, but the warfare state.
Marvin E. Adams
Washington
Montgomery’s bag stats are unbelievable
Re: “Only environmentally friendly bags are reusable,” From Readers, Jan. 22
Examiner editors should have applied a little arithmetic to the statistics submitted by Montgomery County Public Information Officer Esther Bowring in defense of her county’s bag tax.
Ms. Bowring states, “Statistics indicate that each year, Americans use about 10 million paper bags and some 14 million trees are cut down annually for paper bag production.” But that works out to one bag produced for every 1.4 trees cut down for paper bag production. I suspect the paper industry is a tad more efficient than that.
Furthermore, given that the current U.S. population is 310 million, each of the 10 million paper bags produced annually would be shared by 31 persons. I don’t think that is the case either.
If The Washington Examiner is going to publish statistics, it behooves you to verify that they are accurate or plausible. A little arithmetic would have shown these statistics are neither.
Daniel P. Hale
Woodbridge
Ask Chinese to pay for underground Dulles Rail station
Re: “Board weighs eliminating Silver Line stop at Dulles,” Jan. 19
Concerning your story that the Washington Metropolitan Airports Authority is considering eliminating the anticipated Metrorail station at Washington Dulles International Airport, which mentioned a Chinese company that wants to help finance Metro to Dulles:
Metrorail riders like me feel sold out by last year’s intensely politicized decision to jettison the underground station. How about asking the prospective Chinese investor to finance the unfortunately scuttled underground Metro station at Dulles?
Finding the money (and the long-term perspective) to restore the underground solution would obviate this silliness about Dulles Metro not stopping at Dulles Airport.
Michael J. Grace
Arlington
