Today's Letters: Don't let U.S. debt cloud future

National debt reaches $9-trillion Nov. 8

It is disgraceful and sad to hear that our national debt has hit $9-trillion. That means every man, woman and child in the United States is in debt for more than $30,000. Who is at fault for putting us in this situation?

From the founding of this country to the beginning of the Reagan administration, our national debt grew only to $1-trillion. From then on, the Reagan and Bush administrations have taken us via tax cuts and deficit spending into our $9-trillion debt. Under Bill Clinton, the administration achieved a balanced budget.

Time for a reality check: The presidential elections are coming up, and we as citizens of this fine country need to think about how and when are we going to start to pay down the national debt and how can we stop our government from happily being involved in deficit spending. The future is truly bleak for the next generation and our country if we continue in our present ways.

V. Paradis, Seminole  

Comparing resumes for highest U.S. office Nov. 7, story

Serving in the Senate offers insufficient experience

It is quite apparent why senators are generally ill-qualified and rarely elected to be president. They generally have no experience in actually running anything. Senators tend to support or oppose issues and take nuanced "positions" on various things but seem to have no accountability for their actions or lack thereof.

They are good at giving pompous speeches, shamefully grilling judicial nominees, investigating perceived corruption in government, criticizing the president, trying to rewrite history and basically being armchair quarterbacks.

I think your chart showing various kinds of experience for each of the candidates is very interesting. Note that relatively few of the Democrats have any executive/managerial experience. It is a huge stretch to assign eight years of managerial experience to Hillary Clinton based on her being first lady! She ran nothing of consequence then and the only thing she supposedly had responsibility for was a dismal failure. This woman is utterly unqualified to be president based on experience and seems to be a favorite primarily because of having married Bill Clinton and because of a favorable press.

The Republican front-runners, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, at least have had some actual executive experience where they were responsible for doing something.

Bob Bryan, Seminole

Forced Iraq postings

Troubling development

The Times has reported that several hundred State Department employees protested a new policy of "directed (involuntary) assignments" to Iraq which they likened to a death sentence.

The protest itself is astonishing, but the politics behind it give cause for concern. One protester said, "It's one thing if someone believes in what's going on over there and volunteers but it's another thing to send someone over there on a forced assignment." In other words, if a State Department employee personally disagrees with a national foreign policy he should not be required to participate in its implementation. This is, of course, silly.

Our national decisionmakers require Foreign Service officers to set aside their personal views and dedicate themselves to pursuing the nation's best foreign policy interests. Otherwise not only State's policy recommendations but also the data from which those recommendations are derived cannot be trusted. All those who protested knew this and presumably accepted it - until now.

It would be bad enough if this were a case of individual political opinions trumping the national good, but proclaiming that assignments to Iraq are equivalent to "a potential death sentence" rings hollow considering that conditions in Iraq are improving daily.

All this leads one to suspect that there is more to this senseless ruckus than simple opposition to personnel assignment policies. Whatever that may be, all of us better hope that it has more to do with stupidity and incompetence than nourishing the antiwar movement.

John H. McFadden, Inverness

Fire them

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should fire all of these complaining bleeding-heart liberal Foreign Service officers who refuse assignments. It's about time that the State Department purged itself of these ingrates.

Dayle Stevens, Largo

A job for Bush

Since the State Department seems to be having trouble getting some of their men and women to accept an assignment to the new embassy in Iraq, I hope that George W. Bush would do his patriotic duty and announce that he is volunteering to become our ambassador in residence in Baghdad as soon as his term in office is complete.

It would be a great move. Who knows more about Iraq than him?

Len Wilson, St. Petersburg

School suspensions can be useful Nov. 8, letter

Questionable defense

This defense of the practice known as "suspension pending conference" by Hillsborough school superintendent MaryEllen Elia consists of her assertion that "our experience in most cases" is parents respond immediately and the student and principal benefit.

Since this practice is neither monitored nor documented, what evidence does she have of its efficacy? I would have liked her to explain why it is so necessary in Hillsborough when administrators in Pinellas and Pasco manage similar problems without resorting to barring students from class.

If she continues to condone this practice, then it should be codified in the student handbook with clear prerequisites for its use and documentation. I have no doubt that if it is tracked, it will show that it is used disproportionately on black children.

Kathy Troy, Tampa

Hardly conservative

Republicans like to use the phrase "tax-andspend liberals" (or Democrats). As someone once described (by a man from Utah no less) as "the most conservative person" he ever met, I cringe every time someone describes the "borrow-and-spend" Republicans as "conservatives."

It seems to me that honestly conservative persons should believe in paying for their expenditures, not expecting our children and grandchildren to pay for their enormous debts.

President Bush has increased the government's debt ceiling five times since taking office. How many times has he asked for tax increases to pay for his quagmires? Yet he considers adequate health care for America's children to be far too expensive. Republicans clearly have their priorities! But please don't call them "conservative."

Pamela Muller, St. Petersburg

[Last modified November 11, 2007, 20:26:43]