Letter to the Editor

Letters to the editor

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Residents should support local park tax

Dear Editor:

My name is Dick Staihr. I am an 83-year-old resident of Nevada-Vernon County and I love it here. Our Park Tax needs to be extended. We have wonderful parks, a new senior center and places our people and visitors can really enjoy. Extending this tax lets our visitors help in keeping and improving all these things -- not just our property owners. I really don't know of a single bad thing concerning this tax extension -- it's really good. I hope that you -- like me -- will keep it going. Please vote.

-- Richard Staihr

Nevada

Social Security Reform -- what a joke.

Dear Editor:

When the president started talking about reform I thought that everything that they undertake to accomplish for the benefit of the American people is always slightly slanted to aid and assist someone that thinks the American people are stupid and afraid to open their mouths. What I say is someone has found a hidden agenda in the Social Security system that can benefit them financially. The people are completely unaware of this because it has been 51 years since the incident took place. I will lay out the scenario as I remember it.

In the year of 1953, I was still in high school and the President of the United States was Dwight David Eisenhower and social studies was the one subject you could take to discuss current events. The current event of the time was the raiding of the Social Security trust account by the government. They removed from the account an un-godly amount of money -- $4.3 trillion -- and placed it in the general revenue. The reason, at the time, was to shore up the economy of the country and make the American dollar more sound.

HA! They raided Social Security because it continually kept on increasing and they had to find a reason that we would accept.

I remember my teacher at the time telling us that the ammount of money that was take away from Social Security, if layed end-to-end in $100 bills, would stretch around the world 77 times. At the time I did not realize that the federal government was to pay it back to Social Security in full as that money did not belong to the government but was paid into the system by the employee and the employer. The government pays nothing into the system and wants to control it -- the watch dogs are asleep.

While watching the senators talking about Social Security, they made a blunder that I picked up on. In 1950, there were 17 people paying into Social Security and only one receiving benefits. Today the ratio is quite a bit closer -- seven paying in and two receiving benefits. I can see that the ratio is close but has not gone to the negative side yet.

All the federal government has to do is pay back to Social Security what it removed from the trust fund. In this case, it is a trust fund and if they pay it back we will not have to worry about the fund going broke until the year 2151. The government should not treat it like it is their nest egg.

It is time for our government to start being responsible to the people. If the government returns what belongs to the people, this will make the government stronger and more secure.

--Jerden E. Dunfield

Metz, Mo.