Letters to the Editor

The proposal by Sen. Edward Kennedy to require the administration to submit to a vote before escalating the Iraq war is an excellent opportunity for Congress to meaningfully re-engage in foreign affairs. The Iraq War Resolution of 2002, which authorized a war against Saddam Hussein on the premise of irradiating weapons of mass destruction, is now irrelevant. The nature of the engagement has changed, and consistent with the War Powers Act, Congress should seize its right to place appropriate limits on presidential war-making.

Although Kennedy's proposal won't bring our men and women home, it will cap the conflict at the current number of troops without affecting military spending for those troops.

My hope is that our entire delegation, Republican and Democrat, will put their differences aside and vote as a block for this important proposal.

Perry G. Parsons
Seattle

Airtight bill should end tax cuts for rich

Whether they call it a "surge" or an "escalation." it's what you get when you cross a John McCain pipe dream with the emperor's new clothes.

If Democrats cannot agree on whether to withhold funds for the war in Iraq, at a minimum they should pass an airtight bill that includes elimination of tax cuts for the wealthy as a condition for any funding.

A prediction: Bush will back off lickety-split.

David Rupel
Olympia

MINIMUM WAGE

Raise would address income inequities in U.S.

As a pediatrician taking care of poor, working families, I am confronted daily with the difficult decisions they must make daily. They include deciding to forgo purchase of medication for their children's asthma because they cannot afford the co-pay and need food and to pay for transportation to a minimum-wage job to keep a home for their family. Poor working families need more income just to make it day to day. Raising the minimum wage is a social measure that will help to address the income inequity in this country. I urge readers to support this legislation.

Elinor A. Graham, M.D.
Seattle

A sure way to increase the minimum wage

Instead of raising the minimum wage, Congress should cap all salaries to 15 times the minimum wage.

You can bet minimum wage increases would swiftly follow.

M. E. Gorman
Seattle

Driving down standards for some affects all workers

Bonnie Erbe's Tuesday column ("Raise minimum wage, but for jobs filled by U.S. citizens only") misrepresented the AFL-CIO's position on guest worker programs and the proposed minimum wage increase.

While Erbe rightly asserts that it's long past time low-wage workers in this country receive a pay boost, she misses the mark as to why it's so important. It's as simple as this: When you go to work, you deserve to earn enough to live on. In this country, that's a question that's been decided -- but the federal minimum wage has not been allowed by the Republican-led Congress to keep pace.

All workers, whether they are citizens or not, foreign born or native born, deserve to earn a livable wage for a hard day's work. When standards are driven down for some workers, it pulls down standards for all workers. The AFL-CIO is deeply committed to ending the exploitation and abuse of immigrant workers who are working hard, paying taxes and contributing to our economy.

The AFL-CIO opposes guest worker programs because they treat guest workers as second-class citizens who are not afforded the same rights and protections as other workers and who are ripe for exploitation because their legal status is tied to their employers. They are essentially indentured workers. Immigrants, like all workers in this country, desperately need and deserve full rights, including a fair minimum wage.

John J. Sweeney
President, AFL-CIO

Raising wage essential step in economic justice

When someone works full time at any job and still cannot afford food, clothing, shelter, transportation and health care, "working for a living" is a cruel deceit. When a society permits the executive officer(s) of an organization to earn more than 800 times what the entry-level employees make, disaster is the historical destiny of that society.

Raising the minimum wage at this time is a small but essential step to restoring justice in the U.S. economy.

Mary Margaret Pruitt
Seattle

PANHANDLERS

Direct giving only perpetuates problem

This is in response to Bruce Deile's Sunday letter regarding the push by the Seattle Downtown Partnership for people to donate to "non-profits" instead of giving money directly to panhandlers. I doubt that the initiative is asking people to give to large non-profit health organizations, so why did he quote the salaries of their CEOs? I believe it's asking people to give the money to charities that work against homelessness, getting people off the streets and on the road to self-sufficiency. Does Deile think CEOs of multimillion-dollar charities should be less educated and less worthy of competitive salaries? Instead of quoting the salary of one such charity, why doesn't Deile look at the fact that, overall, workers in non-profit charities, including the CEOs, receive only one-third the salaries of similar workers in for-profit companies.

How Deile concludes that the non-profit system "fails" eludes me. The fact that the "tax transfer programs" in Britain, Australia and Canada work probably has to do with the fact that they actually transfer those dollars to programs that reduce poverty (including universal health care). The government funding of such programs in the U.S. has plummeted because of "other" $6 billion per month expenditures that have nearly bankrupted this country. I have no doubt that if our self-sufficiency programs received that kind of financial support from the government, the outcomes would be phenomenal.

The people who panhandle represent only 3 percent of homeless people and usually involve either "professionals," who actually make a living at it, or addicts who, 9 times out of 10, spend any cash they receive on drugs and alcohol. Does that help anyone get off the street or does it just perpetrate the problem?

C.J. Moray
Seattle

GLOBAL WARMING

Catalyst can start catastrophic events

I hope everyone is ready for the impending climate changes resulting from decades of rampant industrialization on our planet. Those changes will not happen gradually, and may appear on a scale of months or years, rather than in hundreds or thousands of years. Climate change is like an earthquake, requiring only a catalyst to start catastrophic events that happen in a very short time.

So to all the Doubting Thomas types, I say, "Chicken Little was right!"

Jay Kridner
Seattle

OWNING A HOME

Male renter might as well sit in squalor and wait

As a young male who rents his home, I was disappointed to learn from reporter Aubrey Cohen ("Single female home buyers have lots of company," Monday) that my decision to rent is due to the fact that that "there's just something about young men" that makes us bad with money.

For years, I've been paying less in rent than the cost of a monthly mortgage, diligently saving my money and avoiding the rampant price speculation that has made local homes all but unaffordable without the help of "exotic" financing. I thought I was being responsible. But as it turns out, renting is just another deficiency I can attribute to my Y chromosome.

Sigh. I guess my only choice now is to live in my squalor, eat some cold pizza and wait for a good woman to rescue me from my life of financial destitution (I hope she finds me before she's underwater on an interest-only mortgage.)

Tim Robertson
Seattle

FAT FIDO

Find a better use for our tax dollars

It certainly warmed the cockles of my heart to see that the Federal Drug Administration is spending my tax dollars to fund and research diet pills for overweight dogs (Saturday P-I). Does anyone think this is acceptable? Can't dog owners just say no when Fido begs for a biscuit? It is not right that our taxes are being used this way.

What else is the FDA spending our money on?

Dorothea Kreklow
Kent

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