Bush is turning our nation into a police state

Your May 13 editorial "Spying on Our Own: Congress Needs to Stop Bush on Phone Surveillance" describes the latest abuse of the Constitution by the Bush administration.

This is just another action of a rogue president who has no use or respect for the courts, Congress, the Constitution or the American people. While he tries to keep his actions secret and avoids accountability, he has effectively destroyed the constitutionally protected privacy of all Americans.

Many are again saying that people with nothing to hide have nothing to fear, but if that were generally true, why did the founders of this nation provide so many protections of the innocent in the Bill of Rights? They had this debate more than 200 years ago and concluded that neither the executive branch nor its agents are to be trusted on their own, and they built into the Constitution a balance of powers in which court review is essential.

Now all of this is being thrown away.

Some are saying that it's OK for the phone companies to give records to the government since these records are getting out to other groups anyway. However, Congress is currently acting to prevent individuals from getting records from the phone companies, and if I don't like what my phone company is doing, I can go elsewhere, and I will.

It's time for me to go beyond Verizon. But I can't on my own switch to a different government. I have no protection from this administration's excesses other than the courts, and they are being ignored. There is a name for a nation in which the government gathers the records of innocent citizens in secret with no checks by courts. It's "police state."

ROBERT J. REILAND
O'Hara

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For our safety

There is an underlying synergy between the U.S. border problem and the National Security Agency's phone call pattern analysis. Of the millions crossing illegally from Mexico every year, al-Qaida could easily get a thousand safely into America. How do they communicate and coordinate? How can we find them? Citizen profiling is an option. So too is systemic immigrant worker checks. These methods are highly invasive and constitutionally objectionable.

Generic phone and Internet records are publicly available data. Hundreds of corporations buy this data every day for market analysis. Why not take that same identity-safe information and look for suspicious patterns that our homeland defenders can use?

Americans have their heads in the sand regarding the skill and intent of our avowed enemies. Privacy is a legitimate concern. Dialogue is fundamental. But security must take precedence if another coordinated domestic attack is to be prevented.

JEFF THIERET
Harmony

The writer is a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel.

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No consent

I agree with the point in the May 13 "Other Agencies Mine Data, Too," that every time I give a store an Advantage Card, for example, it accumulates potentially useful information about me. Each time I make a purchase I consciously decide whether to use the card.

Is it to my advantage to do so? It is a question of whether the benefit to me is worth the invasion of my privacy. However, the National Security Agency's acquisition of my telephone information is quite different; I did not agree to provide the information to it and it is not legal for Verizon to do so.

Perhaps should President Bush offer me discounts in return for the data, I will provide it to him.

JACOB BIRNBERG
O'Hara

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Bring it on

As the chief of an ambulance service, I read the April 26 Midweek Perspectives piece "Health Insurance for All -- Yes We Can" with great interest, but must admit that it took Cindy Donnelly's response ("Socialized Medicine," May 10 letters) to get me to sit down and do some math.

I currently pay about $204,000 annually for health insurance for my employees. Under SB 1085, I would pay 10 percent of gross payroll, which comes to about $140,000 -- a savings of $64,000. More importantly, instead of losing approximately $1,170,000 in revenue annually due to the record number of uninsured people we provide care for, we would probably receive payments in excess of $430,000 (assuming the new program followed the Medicare fee schedule).

I say: bring it on. The only problem is that this bill will never pass -- the insurance lobby will certainly see to that.

By the way, true socialized medicine exists where doctors receive a wage for their services, much like a police officer or garbage man. In a socialized system, there is no incentive to excel, and as a result you have long waits for treatment, etc.

However, single-payer health insurance simply replaces inefficient private insurers with a system that favors those actually providing patient care.

GEORGE DUDASH III
Kennedy

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A better system

Cindy Donnelly ("Socialized Medicine," May 10 letters) writes that Pennsylvania Senate Bill 1085 "requires the formation of a government-run layered bureaucracy and would require a tax increase."

It is true that the bulk of the funding for the single-payer health-care system proposed would come from a 10 percent payroll tax levy on employers and a 3 percent individual income tax on all earnings. These levies would replace (not supplement) the premiums, deductibles, coinsurance, etc., that both employers and individuals now pay for health care.

This means that an individual earning $30,000 would pay $900 a year for comprehensive health care. Assuming that this individual's employer has a total payroll of $300,000, the employer would pay $30,000 a year for comprehensive health care for all of its employees. I suspect this is a good deal less than most employers and individuals currently pay for health care that is far from comprehensive.

In our current health-care system, executives at multiple health-insurance companies earn six-figure salaries. Twenty-five percent of every health-care dollar goes to administration, marketing, bill collecting and cost shifting. By contrast, the government-run Medicare system spends about 2 percent of its budget on administration. The system proposed by SB 1085 would be required to cap administrative costs at 5 percent.

We have been programmed, like Pavlov's dogs, to shudder at the mention of "socialized medicine." Under the plan proposed, health-care providers would submit their bills to one place rather than to thousands of places -- and those bills would be paid. If an efficient system that provides comprehensive health care for all is socialized medicine, I'm all for it.

ELEANOR MAYFIELD
Squirrel Hill

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Fighting for values

How are we going to leave America for our children, grandchildren and those who will follow us? Are we going to sit back and watch while our long-held values fall away? I am very concerned about the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman and the traditional family being taken away by those who would ask us to accept and certify a marriage between same-sex partners.

As a nation we already have laws that would not allow marriage of plural partners or between very close relatives. If we legalize same-sex marriages, even those laws will be threatened. I am not willing to endorse and certify such marriages.

Some say that those of us who believe this are not tolerant. Please know that God is not tolerant! God will not say that if you are doing something wrong that it's all right with Him. He does say He loves you and He forgives you and tells you to "Go and sin no more".

I want my grandchildren to know that their grandmother did what she could to leave a wholesome America for them to live in.

If you care about the America we leave the next generations, please call or write your state representatives and senators. Ask them to support state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe and HB2381 to amend the Pennsylvania Constitution to define marriage to be between one man and one woman.

Also, I would like to thank and commend Rep. Metcalfe for his courage to stand for what is good and right.

MARLENE LOTT
Butler

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Fences and troops at the border will be futile

Regarding the May 5 letter "Under Attack" by Jim Welch of Upper St. Clair: As a proponent of open borders and as a Native American, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokees, I say to Mr. Welch, "Good luck in closing the border with Mexico."

In my opinion, the construction of a $50 billion fence will not close the border and the stationing of the military along the border cannot close the border. Either of these actions would only add negatively to the current embarrassed situation of the United States in the world and make the country much less secure.

I say just open the border because the United States today is just as successful in closing the Mexican border to illegal immigrants as my ancestors were successful in the 16th century keeping illegal immigrants out of their country.

LEONARD C. LAMBERT
Shadyside