Gray’s salary cuts are insignificant Re: “Gray chops salaries of top political appointees,” March 16
Mayor Vincent Gray’s “cuts” to the salaries of his top administrators ($195,000 or $200,000 down to $193,125, and $180,000 down to $179,096) are so small compared with the initial 25 percent increases over their predecessors’ pay as to be insignificant.
Clearly, these cuts are intended to satisfy statutory limits rather than to address the apparent favoritism Gray exhibited when the salary increases were granted.
When a D.C. voter is called for jury duty, a mandatory public service, that person must accept $6 plus bus fare as full compensation. It would seem appropriate that when an appointee accepts voluntary public service, that person should exhibit some willingness to sacrifice for the sake of the District.
Vernon Mallu
Washington
Public indecency reveals moral decay
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stuart’s famous declaration that “I may not be able to define pornography, but I know it when I see it” sets a terribly amorphous standard for determining what is vulgar and obscene. Based on Stuart’s philosophy, where can one actually draw a line in order to merely set decent limits on personal expression in public?
A recent exhibitor of vulgarity — a Code Pink demonstrator attired only in a jock strap — was cheered on as I was attempting to get from the Renwick Art Gallery back to Vermont Avenue during the noon hour because LaFayette Square was inaccessible to the public. In Thomas Jefferson’s time, the man would have been immediately arrested for indecent public exposure. Yet today, such a person is applauded and/or tolerated by the onlooking public.
There are, unfortunately, no real standards for public decency anymore. What was once called vulgar, indecent and even pornographic is now accepted as ordinary, dependent entirely upon the eye of the beholder. But as political philosopher John Locke once quipped, “A civilization without standards of decency will surely experience an eventual decline.”
Norton R. Nowlin
Woodbridge
Federal regulators cost farmers big-time
It is very difficult to find tools, clothing and other products manufactured in the United States. The only way to get American jobs back is to get the Environmental Protection Agency and its environmental wackos off the backs of business and agriculture. They have no respect for private property owners.
As a farmer, EPA regulations, U.S. Fish & Wildlife easements, and the “swampbuster” part of farm programs have cost me well over a million dollars, thousands of tons of food, and thousands of gallons of fuel. Think of all the jobs we could have created and the taxes we would have paid without their interference.
Within a few miles of our farm, F&W has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars and ruined some of the best farmland and recreation areas in the state. Most of what these federal agencies do is not about bird and animals; it is about control.
Gordon Bischoff
Jamestown, N.D.
