Government needs to spend less
Several articles have appeared in The Daily Star about "Occupy Wall Street." Why has so much ink been wasted on this topic when our country faces so many important issues?
The federal government has now amassed a $15 trillion national debt and we are paying $900 billion a year in interest on that debt. Isn't that critical issue more important than "Occupy Wall Street?"
I have paid into Social Security for 40 years. President Barack Obama made a point of calling our Social Security payments a payroll tax. If you call our Social Security payments a tax, then his eliminating the payment by people is a tax deduction, even if the people are supposed to get their money back when they retire. That was White House double talk! In the meantime, Social Security is going bankrupt. Did not the staff at The Daily Star have the courage to cover that issue?
We the people are witnessing uncontrolled and unexpected federal spending and waste of our hard-earned tax dollars. Why doesn't The Daily Star take issue with the appointment by the White House of some 30 czars and their large staffs. They do nothing more than duplicate the work of the under secretaries of Energy, Transportation, etc. What about the federal government adding 140,000 new government jobs? No wonder our federal debt is higher than the Gross National Product of all goods and services produced by this country.
Every woman who runs a household knows she can't spend more money than she has; every minister, priest or rabbi knows his church of synagogue will fail if he spends more than his flock gives; every small business and large corporation has to make more money than they spend. The issue is clear. We must demand less government spending.
Stan Hall
Cooperstown
DEC should make tire company clean mess
Your article in the Jan. 20 Weekend edition of The Daily Star titled, "DEC hires firm to remove stockpile of buried tires" failed to mention a few things. To nonresidents of West Edmeston, it would seem environmentally heroic of the DEC to clean up these buried tires.
The DEC was very much aware of this tire issue well before being "tipped off" a few years ago and well before Thomas Price owned that property. It visited the village in the 1980s and chose not to do anything about the tire problem despite pleas of help from West Edmeston residents. We filed numerous complaints and petitions to the DEC, with help from Bassett Physician/Health Officer, Dr. Donald Pollock, to have Mr. Harris' tire company clean up endless piles of tires that were lying on this property and hundreds lying in the bed of the Unadilla River. As was stated, fires and mosquitoes can be a result of waste tires, and they were. Because of the infestation of mosquitoes, we could not enjoy any time outdoors. Our 2-year-old daughter suffered 102 mosquito bites within 10 minutes one day!
The tires did catch on fire and almost wiped the entire town out because of the thick, black smoke and toxic fumes. In 1988, after Mr. Harris abandoned the property, and left the tire waste and stagnant water it had collected behind, the towns of Edmeston and Brookfield combined efforts for the well-being of the residents of their townships, and buried the tires. They were our heroes!
Instead of being ignorant, wouldn't it have been cheaper if the DEC had forced the tire company to clean up its own mess when there was a problem, rather than waste this money now when our state is in such financial stress?
Brenda Belden
West Edmeston
