Tuesday's letters

Salesman also showed

hard-working attitude

A few days ago, a young man came to my door asking me to buy a cleaning product. He politely demonstrated it.

I was really impressed that he was out trying to work despite the difficult times and the scarcity of jobs. I wish him and other young people well in their endeavors.

Lee Campbell

Vinton

Ferentz's pay can

only be called obscene

Obscene. It's the only word that seems to fit the news that Kirk Ferentz will pull down more than $3 million a year as Football Coach for Life at the University of Iowa.

And let's throw in access to a Gulfstream 5 corporate jet so that the poor, overworked lad can get some well-deserved R & R.

As a UI alum and former faculty member, and as an Iowa taxpayer, I have to suggest that a salary of more than $8,000 a day is more than excessive. It's obscene.

Tom Walsh

Gouldsboro, Maine

Perks needed to attract

the best subs also

As a reader of The Gazette, I find some interesting news items, most recently those concerning money. I found the editorial “What a superintendent actually costs” interesting and informative, the cost of caring for a paralyzed inmate incredible and the retirement benefit of GM CEO Chairman Rick Wagoner appalling.

But, getting back to the superintendent editorial, Jill Cirivello, director of human services, says that contract “perks” help attract and retain the best. This is a completely different attitude of the Cedar Rapids School Board members who supported no raise in pay for substitute teachers for 2009-10 school year. There are a lot of subs out there trying to prove that they are worthy of being hired for permanent positions. School boards, the substitute teachers need some “perks” too.

Les Yeager

Cedar Rapids

Health plan needs

careful consideration

Citizens of America need a wake-up call. Ask Congress to take enough time to study and understand this enormous health plan before voting on it and come to their region to educate us.

I understand there are more than 1,000 pages to study. By listening to C-SPAN, we can hear Congress discuss and debate it. I heard page 11 being read, and I'm concerned about losing the freedom Americans have always known.

I hope and pray that we did not elect a president who would choose to become a dictator, to run our lives or tax everything we do.

We are so fortunate in Linn County to have both Mercy and St. Luke's hospitals. I want folks to be able to choose their own doctor or health plan.

Myrna Carter

Marion

Time of the essence

to fix health system

If the billions spent in premiums to health insurers all went directly to health care instead of supporting inflated profits, exorbitant executive pay, and $1.5 million A DAY lobbying to buy off Congress, there could be enough money to cover everybody.

As with Medicare 50 years ago, the insurance industry is opposing any measures that would reduce their profits and require coverage of people who really need it, not merely those who can afford the premiums and don't get seriously ill. Spurious and false arguments are trotted out: no choice of caregivers, long waits for treatment and a wasteful government bureaucracy. Frequently cited is the “socialist” health coverage in other modern industrialized nations, none of which seem dissatisfied with it. Notably, the overhead of Medicare (a “socialistic” government program) is about one-quarter that of private industry.

The world's best health care is irrelevant if you can't afford it.

Any meaningful reform will cost money, and some of it inevitably must come out of wasteful spending, duplication and excessive paperwork, as well as insurance-industry profits. The longer we wait for legislation, however, the more expensive the remedy will be.

The Republicans to date offer no alternative except more of the same broken system. That is not an option for the world's richest nation.

Like it or not, we have to do it now - or not at all.

James B. Larkin

Cedar Rapids

Gates case better understood with history

The controversy over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. shows that the issue of race in America is as explosive as ever.

It seems clear that African-American Gates lost his temper at the white arresting officer. An article by Stanley Fish in the July 25 New York Times may help us understand why.

Fish, a friend of Gates, says that when Gates arrived in Durham, N.C., years ago to become chairman of the English department of Duke University, Gates bought a grand older home and renovated it. During the renovation, workers would often mistake Gates for a servant and ask to be pointed to the house's owner. The drivers of delivery trucks made the same mistake. Fish says, “The message was unmistakable: What was a black man doing living in a place like that?” At Duke University, which not long ago did not admit blacks, some white professors questioned Gates' credentials, which were vastly superior to theirs. Members of the black faculty cautioned Gates not to upset Duke's (white) traditions.

This is the daily reality of racism. As a white man, I have never experienced it. It must be very tiring to experience on a daily basis, and might even lead a man to lose his temper out of frustration. It may also explain why another black man, our president, might rush (prematurely) to his defense. I don't excuse bad behavior, but I can understand why it happened.

Justin Holdes

West Branch