Letters to the editor
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Drilling could soon be in your backyard
People, it's time to get involved. The Marcellus Shale gas companies are hard at work promoting their attributes by constantly bombarding us with TV advertisements. Behind the scenes they offer nothing but destruction to our beautiful state while signing deals to export much of the gas to foreign countries.
Unless currently dealing with the drilling, most Pennsylvania residents are apathetic of all ramifications of this industry and content in believing "it won't affect me." The old saying "just so it isn't in my backyard" applies.
However, our state representatives, with the passage and combination of Senate Bill 1100 and House Bill 1950 will remove all local rights of control. Drilling will be permitted in residential areas, and it will happen in your backyard.
Wake up and speak up! Time is of the essence. We're losing all our rights.
MARIAN SZMYD
Jeannette
They're living large
Hey, I want to know how I can become a nonprofit organization. It must be great to have exorbitant amounts of money at your disposal, buy buildings and land, start businesses in Europe and not pay taxes on anything. How about having your name put on the top of the tallest building in Pittsburgh? That must have cost a fortune.
Why are these companies nonprofit? At this time, with the economic and health insurance crises and Pittsburgh cash-strapped, why are they continuing to be allowed to be nonprofit? I am not kidding, I want to know.
KATHRYN D. KING
Mount Washington
Ad fact-check
In a mid-November edition of the Post-Gazette, I saw an ad by a group called the National Taxpayers Union. The ad praised Sen. Pat Toomey while criticizing President Barack Obama for wanting to enact a "23 percent tax on low-income Medicare prescription drug benefits."
I recently decided to investigate this claim, because I had never heard of such a thing. According to the fact-checking website Politifact.com, the ad is false .
The president's recent $3 trillion deficit reduction proposal contained a suggestion that the government collect rebates from drug companies for seniors on Medicare who receive the low-income subsidy, just like Medicaid has done for years. Coincidentally, that rebate is 23.1 percent.
Hardly a "tax," this proposal would not impact seniors at all. The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 stipulates that the government cannot negotiate for Medicare drug prices the way it can for drugs under Medicaid and veterans benefits. It seems to me that the president is trying to make Medicare less expensive without cutting benefits for seniors.
The ad gives the impression that Sen. Toomey is against this proposal. If that is true, then shame on him! He spent the last few months as a member of the "supercommittee," which failed to come up with a deficit reduction plan and should have reviewed this proposal.
We need more ideas like the one in question and fewer mixed messages from Sen. Toomey and the National Taxpayers Union. I wonder if the senator approved this message.
JEAN FRIDAY
President
Pennsylvania Alliance for Retired Americans
Belle Vernon
U.S. overspending
Many American people, I am afraid, do not understand what is happening in America now. The administration wants us to believe that if we tax the rich even more, our financial problems would be solved. The top 1 percent pay 38 percent of the federal income tax. The top 10 percent pay 70 percent.
Taxing the rich even more does little or nothing to solve our financial problems. Even millionaires go broke if they spend more than they make.
Our financial problems are not because our government does not have enough income. It does. No, our problem is that our government spends way too much money. Even if it taxed every one of us even more, we still would not solve our financial problems because our government would spend that additional income.
The solution should not be left to the government -- it creates problems, not solves them. The solution will come only when enough Americans understand the problem and force the government to act. Until then, we will be on the path of Europe: spending ourselves broke.
PAUL SAMMARTINO
Whitehall
Christians and riches
As a Christian for many years, I had always believed that Christians were pretty much all the same. It seems that there are now two types of Christians: OFCs (old-fashioned Christians) and 21Cs (21st-century Christians). They are very similar in all but one belief. A 21C believes that rich people help take care of them and therefore should be looked out for by a 21C. (And it appears that the best way to look out for the rich is to make them richer.)
An OFC, such as myself, believes that God has, does and always will take care of us. We firmly believe that to give anyone else credit for taking care of us is to take credit away from God.
As I went through my Bible, I could not find anything good that was said about the rich. Jesus went as far as to say that "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
Personally, I don't have anything against the rich as long as they earned it honestly, ethically and morally, and there are certainly good rich people in the world. I just don't believe that they take care of me.
I can only wonder that when a 21C prays, does he or she thank God for rich people?
DWAYNE KIGER
Brighton Heights
Beneath the PG
Considering the state of science education in the country today, your story "Talking to the Animals" (Dec. 14 Magazine) is worse than deplorable -- it is despicable.
The reporter repeatedly affirms the validity of mental telepathy, never once employing reason or science to challenge the claims of supernatural powers. You debase your paper and your profession with such trash.
DANIEL PEDEN
Brookline
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First Published December 17, 2011 12:00 am
