Letters to the editor
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Reassessment will hurt people already hurting
I cannot believe Judge R. Stanton Wettick's wanting this reassessment or the people writing in to say it is correct. Are they not aware of the pages of sheriff's sales in the Post-Gazette every week, or the astronomical pharmaceutical bills many are trying to pay?
Do they not hear our churches pleading for donations for the needy? Do they know that oranges are now $1 each?
Along with county taxes, we have these boroughs and townships building schools and extensions that resemble Parthenons. They go into the high millions. For instance, in the 1940s and '50s a small Mt. Lebanon high school housed two or three times as many students as today's enrollment, but now we need an extension to the school, although 46 years ago there was an extension. I realize more things may be needed in the schools now, and I do not want to take anything away that the students need, but these things are raising taxes.
Some seniors may have paid their homes off but are now living on Social Security. These huge reassessments and taxes could mean losing the homes they worked to pay off. It is all right for some to agree with the assessments because they are not hurting.
Anway, I have not yet found the answer to why Judge Wettick decides the assessments. As Anna's king of Siam would say, "It's a puzzlement."
JEAN PIROTH
Mt. Lebanon
It is inexcusable
I will not stand idly by while a gung-ho ex-Marine tries to convince us that inappropriate behavior by four current Marines should be excused because "war is hell" ( Jan. 26 letter by Herman J. Bigi ).
Heroes are people whose actions and reactions in times of peril and stress are above the ordinary. The Marine Corps has the respect of our country and the world because they have shown themselves to be heroic. But just being a Marine does not entitle you to that label, nor does it entitle you to be excused when your own behavior does not rise to the level that others have established as the norm for the corps.
We Americans are proud of our country and what it stands for and when our representatives, in whatever capacity, violate those standards they are to be admonished, not excused.
Among the things we are proud of is our freedom of speech. So I will not "sit down and shut up," Mr. Bigi. You may explain the behavior of those four young men; you cannot excuse it.
JOE LODGE
Bethel Park
Reject circumcision
I enjoyed your Jan. 23 article about unnecessary medical procedures ("Doctors at Erie Practice Accused of Unnecessary Medical Procedure"), but you missed the elephant in the room (Harrisburg, actually).
The Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare wastes an estimated $2 million annually in Medicaid payments for newborn male circumcision, despite its lack of medical necessity. The American Academy of Pediatrics calls it "not essential to the child's current well-being" and says the data are "not sufficient to recommend routine neonatal circumcision." The American Medical Association calls it "non-therapeutic."
Not a single national medical organization recommends infant circumcision; some worldwide organizations (like the Royal Dutch Medical Association) strongly oppose it.
Our organization has requested that DPW do what 18 states have already done -- stop wasting taxpayer dollars to excise healthy, functional erogenous tissue from nonconsenting persons. DPW attempts to rationalize this cost based on common practice, speculation and parental preference but cannot justify their policy based on established medical need. The recent canard of "HIV prevention" is nonsense -- children cannot contract this disease until much later in life. As adults, they can compare this questionable approach to more effective methods and decide for themselves.
I urge the Post-Gazette to investigate this issue -- the facts are fairly straightforward. In an era of tight state budgets, our commonwealth could certainly make better use of these funds. DPW reimbursement of infant circumcision is tantamount to institutionalized fraud.
GREG HARTLEY
Director, Pennsylvania Chapter
National Organization of Circumcision
Information Resource Centers
Franklin Park
A right to advance
I was annoyed that throughout the article essentially supporting organized medicine ("A Clearer View on Eye Care?" Jan. 15), the physicians interviewed and the Post-Gazette both failed to mention that non-physicians have provided surgical procedures already in the United States for decades. What do you think podiatrists and dentists do? Nurse practitioners also provide limited surgery to patients.
Optometrists have also provided surgery to patients for years in other states. Note that no harm has been done to the public, while on the other hand former U.S. attorney Jamie Bennett remarks that unnecessary invasive and surgical procedures by cardiologists are a national phenomenon! Aren't cardiologists medical doctors?
Organized medicine should police its own ranks. Optometry has the right to advance as a profession just as any other profession in the United States. It seems to me that patients should welcome more checks and balances in the system, especially from a proud, diligent, cost-effective and geographically distributed profession such as optometry.
GEORGE BANYAS
Optometrist
Richland
Downward slide
The defunding of education that Gov. Tom Corbett has initiated is a travesty that will have negative repercussions for many years to come.
Without good public education, our children will have problems getting into good colleges, getting decent jobs and becoming productive members of society. They will have more physical health problems, more mental health problems and higher rates of crime. This is especially true for children of the poor and lower middle class.
Regarding private and charter schools, and cyber education: for many people, these are not options. There are not enough schools to take in all the children, the vouchers will not last forever and travel distance is a barrier in many cases. Cyber education requires that a parent stay home and supervise -- a task for which not everyone is suited or able.
Having smaller public schools in neighborhoods helps build community, which helps local businesses to thrive, which allows the local residents to support those businesses. But you are taking money away from the schools so there will be fewer of them. This will lead to the breakdown of communities, less support of local businesses and loss of jobs.
Gov. Corbett, please stop this terrible downward slide that you have initiated and restore the money to public education so that we can have healthy communities and our children can grow into their greatest potential.
ELAINE RYBSKI
Point Breeze
Anti-abortion piece incites women's fear
Jeanne Monahan's Jan. 23 Perspectives piece "The Mental Toll of Abortion" takes an ancient right-wing argument against women's freedom and boosts it with a sob story and cherry-picked research.
Throughout the piece Ms. Monahan attempts to appear objective in the anti-choice, pro-choice debate (my rhetoric makes no such feints), citing a website called "Feminists for Life" and using rhetoric that overtly calls for pre-abortion education while slyly calling on people to fear-monger with misused statistics and the unimaginative method of inundating women with scary sob stories.
If Ms. Monahan's goal was education, then she would also call on people to teach the numerous studies that show the bright side of the choice to abort, instead of her studies with their dubious correlation versus causation language.
Visit Planned Parenthood's website for a concise rebuttal to this ridiculous anti-choice tactic at www.plannedparenthood.org
Planned Parenthood says that "most studies in the last 25 years have found abortion to be a relatively benign procedure in terms of emotional effect -- except when pre-abortion emotional problems exist or when a wanted pregnancy is terminated ..."
Ms. Monahan's supposition that women who choose abortions will later suffer mental health problems and regrets implies that once a woman is pregnant, she must become a mother to remain happy and healthy. Here we see the constricting, anti-freedom argument that one must progress along a "natural" female path, and any drifting from this path will cause horrific suffering and emotional trauma.
Does Ms. Monahan truly want to improve a "woman's informed consent" (a labyrinthine phrase), or does she want to incite fear? Trickery abounds in her piece.
LIAM SWANSON
Squirrel Hill
First Published January 31, 2012 12:00 am
