Letters
Letters you have lately called for the triumph of “patriotic, public interests” over “selfish, private” ones-an unobjectionable piety, though reminiscent of the sentiments which gave us such...
...The four sites in the highest income areas contribute almost nothing...
...His deification of the automobile made me wonder if I had not opened The American Motorist by mistake...
...6 In St...
...I agree that the elderly should be heard, and their legitimate needs met...
...DAVID EORTMAN Chicago, Illinois...
...But with the publication of Joseph Smith’s “The Future is In Florida”[December, 19781 you get appallingly specific: “Florida shows that old people, banded together as a special interest group, could be the most powerful-and the most selfish -of the political interest groups,” writes Smith...
...to make Florida’s streets safe for pedestrians...
...Persons at the two places iv, the poorest neighborhoods served by the program contribute five times more than any others...
...I am a member of the local body in Jacksonville which runs the free meals program mentioned in my article...
...Opening with a gesture towards journalistic balance, Smith acknowledges that the elderly lobby is responsible for a host of major, statewide consumer reforms...
...As for the number of elderly who refuse free benefits, I am aware of them too...
...Shame on you...
...But I also want to live in a country where people consider the common good as well as their own, and where the needs of the vast majority of the elderly are met in the process of satisfying those common needs-not primarily through programs that automatically assume that the elderly are separate from the rest of society, thereby contributing to the separation...
...What a difference a couple of generations makes: the erstwhile “malefactor of great wealth” has become a widowed septuagenarian living modestly in Miami...
...The author ieplies: The National Council on Aging says in its 1978 Fact Book on Aging“the older population is not as a whole sick and frail, or poor, or forgotten residents of institutions, or consumed with unproductive leisure...
...would that there kere affordable bus systems...
...That you chose to portray such as these as selfish enemies of the public interest-flippant cartoons hnd all-was unworthy of The Monkhli...
...He then begins his counterattack by citing the “Great Traffic Light Wars” that the elderly have been waging locally...
...His Reagariite perspective predictably overlooks the more common pattern among older Americans of spurning benefits rightfully theirs as being too much like charity...
...Two other omissions, of many: If we required every older American to live on the meagre stipend of a VISTA volunteer ($3804 a year), about half would become wealthier than they are now...
...He pictures theelderlyas obsessed with crime despite being infrequently victimized, and then asserts that many are habitual thieves...
...YOU snicker at law firms for their “subtle” announcements when former government lawyers join their staffs...
...Petersburg and other Florida communities offer practically no public transportation...
...Contributions average six cents per meal...
...Yet it is the physical isolation of older people that most often poisons their lives...
...He rails against the elderly’s “entitlement syndrome...
...The not-atypical, surviving widow is a stranger in a strange land, bereft of family, friends and companions...
...Petersburg (and probably other Florida cities) 80 percent of the retirement community is composed of quondam couples , separated by the death of one spouse within six months of settling there...
...Smith complains about elderly rip-offs of the public purse, like getting subsidized bus fares...
...kxemplified by a woman driving her Cadillac to a nutrition center to sponge a $1.34 meal...
...Stein ,is deput.11 director qf the Criminal Justice and the Elderlv prograni ofthe National Council qf’ Senior Citizens...
...Nonsense: the elderly are vastly more lawabiding than the rest of us...
...Letters you have lately called for the triumph of “patriotic, public interests” over “selfish, private” ones-an unobjectionable piety, though reminiscent of the sentiments which gave us such flawed schemes as civil service...
...The lawyers in our firm had quite a chuckle over the blatant inconsistency in your December “Tilting At Windmills”column...
...I paraphrased this assertion at the beginning of my article, because 1 considered it a balanced premise from which to proceed...
...Recipients of our federally-funded lunches are asked to contribute what they can afford, so that more people can eat...
...Would that there were many more...
...There are 16 medl sites...
...Yet, later in the same column, you “subtly” mention that James Fallows, a tormer White House speech writer, has joined the staff of your magazine [as a contributing editor...
...Let me offer one additional statistic: I have been working with officials of the Florida Institute on Aging for the past year, and their figures indicate that only 14,:8 per cent of those over 65 in the state are below the poverty level...
...JOHN HOLLISTER STEIN Washington...
...More importantly, they maintain their low victimization rates by abandoning perilous freedoms (like taking an evening walk), appreciating that crime, like pneumonia, entails more ominous risks in old age...
...1 still do...
Vol. 11 • March 1979 • No. 1
