Highlighting income extremes fuels class warfare
Re: “The Districts’ rich are nation’s richest,” March 8
This article does nothing but exacerbate class warfare. Courtney Zott does a nice job showing the extremes of rich and poor in the District, but her reporting is incomplete.
She needs to add Medicaid, CHIPS, school lunches, school vouchers, food stamps, housing assistance, energy assistance, transportation vouchers, additional dependency credits, child care and programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit to the lower end of the income scale.
It would also be very helpful to state the contributions made by upper-income D.C. residents in the form of much higher income and property taxes, both federal and local.
This wouldn’t change the overall effect that there are rich and poor among us, but would give Examiner readers a more complete picture so we can make fully informed decisions.
Bill Johnson
Annandale
Maryland budget is far from ‘Doomsday’
Re: “‘Doomsday budget’ would slam Montgomery, Prince George’s,” March 7
Maryland’s “Doomsday Budget,” cited by officials looking for big tax increases, should really be called the “Chicken Little Sky is Falling” budget.
Pennsylvania, with a population of 12.6 million, had an operating budget of $27.1 billion in fiscal 2012 — or about $7 billion less than Maryland’s, even though Maryland’s 5.7 million population is less than half of Pennsylvania’s.
Maryland also has about 5,000 more full-time state employees than Pennsylvania. Obviously, the Chicken Littles should be looking for some featherbedding instead of talking about tax increases.
Between fiscal 2006 and fiscal 2012, appropriations for Maryland’s operating budget increased 32.4 percent — from $25.29 billion to $34.15 billion. Instead of using scare tactics to balloon taxes, all Maryland has to do is control its spending increases.
Robin Ficker
Boyds
Editorial gets my Red Line crash comment wrong
Re: “Metro settlements leave too many unanswered questions,” Local Editorial, March 2
This editorial incorrectly states that I said that the “Metro Board could not have done anything to prevent” the June 2009 Metro crash that killed nine people. The editorial is based entirely on an 18-month-old Examiner article with the headline: “Graham: Metro board could do nothing to prevent deadly crash.” But the article has no such quote attributed to me, and the editorial is simply not accurate because the headline was not accurate.
What The Examiner article quoted me as saying is: “What could I have done differently? I’ve asked myself that question on a personal level, and I conclude I don’t know what I could have done.”
When I made that comment, I had in mind a similar track circuit failure that occurred on June 7, 2005, and led to a close call in the Arlington tunnel. The track circuit failure that led to the 2009 crash was very similar. But Metro staff had assured the board that the problem had been fixed after the 2005 incident. What I said is very different than saying that the “Metro Board could not have done anything to prevent” the June 2009 Metro crash.
Jim Graham
Former board chairman,
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
