Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 2, 2000
Re: Gore tries to lure mothers with plenty of goodies, June 25.
Robyn Blumner thinks she has it all figured out when it comes to us "homemaker-mommies," but her views are a little off base. She laments the "goodies" that Al Gore is promising in return for the mommy vote.
From the perspective of a full-time mom, I see things a little differently. Why shouldn't moms who voluntarily stay home to raise their kids receive Social Security credits? We work full time for no pay for years. It is a personal choice, just as the choice to work is a personal choice. We measure the benefits to our families versus the benefits of a paycheck and we choose to work as mothers full time.
Surely Blumner doesn't assume that we while away the hours unproductively. The benefits society gains by having mothers stay home are many: We run the PTAs, take care of working mom's kids when they are sick and volunteer during business (school) hours, to name a few.
Social Security benefits are currently contingent upon the dollars a person earns. Might the new trend be to base those benefits on the person's contributions to society -- paid or unpaid?
-- Eileen Taylor, Tampa
Re: Gore tries to lure mothers with plenty of goodies, June 25.
The points Robyn Blumner made in this column on Al Gore's campaign are familiar to us in the child-free world. It depresses me to see the extent to which the leading presidential candidates think that "women's issues" center pretty much solely on reproduction and child-centric topics and that women apparently have no concern for the trade imbalance, urban sprawl, monetary policy or foreign affairs.
Something I keep wondering is, "How stupid do Gore and Bush think parents actually are?" I ask parents: Are you really that shallow, that you can be bought off by some tax credits and pats on the head? Forgotten in a lot of this is that when a tax incentive is given to people with children, people without children pay for it. Yet Gore makes it sound as though the money somehow falls from the sky or gets dug up in a mine in Colorado or something.
The unemployment-insurance giveaway is the most pernicious thing of all. That fund is for emergency use by all contributors, in the event of involuntary unemployment. Since just about all the pregnancies since the Virgin Mary have been pretty voluntary, I don't know how anyone can, with a straight face, put a middle-class suburban mother on the same funding source that's going to be genuinely needed by the factory workers that Gore's trade policies will doubtless throw into unemployment! Thanks for pointing this out.
The more people understand that women's issues aren't superficial or narrow and can't be glossed over with bribes, the more comfortable they'll be in trusting decisions at the federal level.
-- Scott Wenzel, Knoxville, Md.
Re: Instead of paternity test, give thanks for fatherhood, by Rick Baker, June 25.
Thank you, sir, for your rebuke of Robyn Blumner's poorly timed column about a paternity test as a Father's Day gift (Can it be Father's Day if the DNA says otherwise? June 18). Her timing was grotesque when there were so many positive stories about good fathers for a change.
American men have been so verbally beaten down by people like her for far too long. No wonder so many men just give up, go away or strike out at others. People like her help destroy hopes and reality. They, in fact, spread fear and guilt and not knowledge and wisdom. Maybe it is Blumner's American Civil Liberties Union roots that drive her. Or is it, simply, that she is mean-spirited?
Anyway, thanks again, attorney Baker, for reminding us of real fatherhood. It is much more than genes. God knows that.
-- S. L. Paszko, Tarpon Springs
Re: foster care.
It seems that almost every week we read another horrifying story about a child being killed, abused or neglected in foster care. While I'm sure there are many good, well intentioned foster parents who take in children out of love and a desire to help, there are too many foster children who are suffering at the hands of incompetent, uncaring people who are only after the money the state offers for the care of the child.
Our overworked, overloaded child welfare workers seem unable to weed these people out. In the not-too-distant past, every city had an orphanage or children's home that was staffed with trained professional personnel to care for the children. Isn't it time for the state of Florida to look into re-establishing these homes? Isn't it time that we try to save these children?
-- Dee Kacarka, Weeki Wachee
Re: A few days at the front.
It is no wonder that Al Gore's campaign is struggling, considering the "spin" being employed by the news media.
Sara Fritz, Times Washington bureau chief, in her June 25 article on Al Gore's campaign wrote: "... he appears determined to solve all the nation's social problems at once -- each with a complex government-funded program." The entire article had a very negative political tilt and slandered Gore at every opportunity.
On the other hand, Tim Nickens' accompanying article on the George W. Bush campaign highlighted only the positive aspects, failing to address the negatives. With Bush's state of Texas having executed a possibly innocent man and the financial non-accountability of Bush's Social Security and Medicare plans, Nickens had plenty of negatives he could have listed.
If the voters were given a fairer representation of the news, perhaps they could make a better judgment of who would make a better president.
-- Guy Bickerstaff, St. Petersburg
We think that we are so advanced with all our fancy-schmancy technology toys, and yet we execute the mentally ill. We also feel justified in executing others when there seems to be a reasonable doubt about their guilt because a legal technicality says the condemned have had enough choices.
What kind of society have we become? It takes no strength of character to treat good people well. It takes a lot more effort to treat our less likable members of society with good intentions instead of a desire for revenge. But there is where, I think, our sense of humanity is truly tested.
So far -- in my opinion, anyway -- we still need a lot more work.
-- Loren Buckner, Tampa
Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe was quoted in your paper as saying that "when someone takes a human life they must pay the ultimate price for the most heinous crimes" and that the death penalty is reserved for "the worst of the worst."
If it were so, there might be significantly less opposition to the death penalty. However, it's not so. It's pure myth.
The death penalty is, in fact, a lottery in which the number comes up for those too poor to play the game.
The late Gov. Leroy Collins once wrote, "Who gets executed is still a freakish thing and depends on wealth, power and many unusual circumstances. Most who are killed are poor and friendless."
To the poor and friendless of which Collins spoke we can add the mentally handicapped.
The worst of the worst? More often, it's the poorest of the poor who are executed.
-- George Hanna, Tallahassee
They buried my favorite uncle recently. He was 77; he died of lung cancer. People were puzzled by this: "But he never smoked." He will be included in the statistics with those who died of lung cancer without any history of smoking.
What the stats won't reflect is that his good wife of 50 years smoked for 40 of those 50 years.
-- Florence Buchholz, Treasure Island
Re: FDA considers more over-counter drugs, June 28.
If the FDA goes ahead with the plan to change a vast amount of drugs from prescription to a non-prescription status there may even be a greater cause for alarm. All too often, people do not take the time to read the small print on the label. And when numerous drugs are being taken together, due to multiple illnesses, one drug may adversely interact with another, causing serious complications or even fatalities. However, when a pharmacy keeps an on-going file, which lists all the medications given to a particular individual, the chances are considerably lower for this type of accident to occur.
Let us hope that the FDA will take all measures into consideration before coming to a decision that could do more harm than good.
-- JoAnn Lee Frank, Clearwater