Families, not jobs, create law-abiding, industrious citizens
Re: “Kwame Brown for Council chair,” Sept. 13
According to your endorsement of Kwame Brown for D.C. Council chairman: ” ‘If people don’t have training and education, they’re not going to get a job,’ [Brown] said. And without a job to provide self-sufficiency, what’s left is a Faustian choice between government dependency and life on the streets.”
Liberals often explain pauperism and crime this way. But the way America is supposed to work is that the economy generates jobs, and intact, functional families raise their children to be law-abiding, industrious, and self-respecting adults able to get those jobs or to become self-employed.
Brown’s mentality — with its passivity and fatalism — is shared by all too many D.C. residents. The city’s future depends on a more conservative climate, both morally and economically.
Sharon Kass
Silver Spring
Pretreating sewage had greatest effect on Potomac
Re: “Potomac River cleanest in decades, scientists say,” Sept. 8
Since 1950, the amount of dissolved oxygen in the Potomac River has increased. Getting carp out of the river is not a great indication that the water quality has considerably improved since carp can thrive even in septic water with dissolved oxygen lower than 2 milligrams per liter.
Introducing the pretreatment program in sewage treatment plants’ industrial discharge in the ’80s has, no doubt, increased the dissolved oxygen content in all the rivers that end up in the Chesapeake Bay. I am sure that the river’s water quality will continue to improve in the coming years.
Daniel Chellaraj
Arlington
Wrong time to let Bush tax cuts expire
The Obama administration and our liberal Congress continue to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. Our economy is weak and unemployment is high, but the Democrats are on the verge of letting the much-needed Bush tax cuts expire.
When these tax cuts expire, our income tax will rise by 10 percent or more for every tax bracket. Likewise, capital gains taxes will also rise by one-third and the top rate on dividends will triple.
These uncalled-for tax increases will have a devastating effect on our economy. Expect a major market decline when investors sell their stocks and bonds to lock in profits at lower rates in 2010. When will these liberal Democrats finally understand that raising taxes in the middle of a recession is nothing but a recipe for disaster?
Al Eisner
Silver Spring
