LETTERS
LETTERS On Fallows on Fussell We expect Mr. Fallows to be tiresome, sanctimonious, petulant, and wimpish; but in his underwhelming, over-reaching broadside against Paul Fussell's minor and...
...Pension contention As a psychiatrist who spent his entire career with the Veterans Administration instead of money-grubbing from the well-heeled (as Charles Peters calls the rich), I know something about the federal Civil Service Retirement System...
...Government schools have no incentive to be good...
...Upon retirement the part paid in is returned first but income tax is paid on the annuity from then on...
...But we did, and our failure to own up to such modern-day excesses will lead to others...
...The later "Americanization" of the war Alter cites must be placed in the greater historical context of our involvement in Southeast Asia...
...We did not spend any money on booze or high living...
...JACK MEYER Green Bay, Wisconsin Voucher-safe education Your thoughtful interest in the issue of educational quality merits consideration by parents and taxpayers everywhere...
...We just don't wish him success—at least until it becomes clear that significant reform of the public schools is an unattainable goal...
...The 7 percent comes out of the income on which federal income tax has been paid...
...Only monopoly control permits the government school system to ignore the concerns of parents and to treat teachers in such a shabby manner...
...We have only ourselves to blame...
...Is that what you call "equity...
...Some of those people who did now find themselves "in need...
...Only when government schools no longer have a monopoly will genuine educational reform be possible...
...Fallows's self-righteous indictment of Fussell, which occupies five pages in your rag—pages that might actually have been spent better on the post-sophomoric blatherings of Kathleen Kennedy what's-her-other-name—totally avoids mentioning a sentence of Fussell's that would have rendered Fallows' masturbatory ruminations about Fussell's lack of "research" terminally flaccid...
...committed its resources to Vietnam because of our historical role in the region, which continued to divide the people of Vietnam after World War II...
...Because my husband and I both worked hard for 38 years, lived frugally, and had starting wages of $2,500 and $900 a year, but we always tried to save a little...
...I think the part of the article "Hatch 22" [Teresa Riordan], November, that cormpares Social Security and the civil service retirement was a bit unfair...
...Patient, heal thyself My husband and I just finished reading ["Protection from Catastrophe: The Medicare Reform We Really Need," Phillip Keisling, November...
...I have been guided by perception and feel rather than by any method that could be deemed 'scientific,' believing with Arthur Marwick, author of Clasx Image and Reality, that 'class is too serious a subject to leave to the social scientists: " PHIL MAGGITTI Unionville, Pennsylvania De Gaulle's footsteps Throughout his review of Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History Jonathan Alter dances around the fundamental tragedy of America's involvement in Vietnam...
...IRENE B. MELVIN Jensen Beach, Florida...
...Magyar is at work...
...Civil service employees have been paying 7 percent of their entire wages toward retirement for a long time before Social Security got near there...
...Fearful of angering Charles De Gaulle, who wanted to recolonize Vietnam, and having no real Southeast Asian policy to speak of, the Truman administration turned its back on the Vietnamese desire for liberation and allowed the British, who had been given the allied task of removing the Japanese from southern Vietnam, to turn the country back over to the French...
...Talk about mean-spirited...
...As for youngpeople griping about paying some of the elderly's bills, tough...
...have left us no choice:' but he misses the mark entirely when he asks "Could the American commitment to South Vietnam really have been involuntary...
...Our debates possess'd me so fully of the subject, that I wrote and printed an anonymous pamphlet on it, entitled "The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency...
...Federal employees have always had to pay a percent of their health insurance and continue to do so after retirement...
...ALEXANDER REYES Washington, D.C...
...Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the only truly organized Vietnamese resistance to the Japanese during the war, was appealing to the United States and its allies for the return of his country to the Vietnamese people...
...but the rich men dislik'd it, for it increas'd and strength'd the clamor for more money .. . . " The issues remain the same...
...Compulsory education laws, high taxes, and inflationravaged income mean most children are trapped in government schools—their parents cannot afford an alternative...
...ROGER MAGYAR Sacramento, California The editors reply: ,We oppose a voucher system at this time, because we think it would destroy the public schools...
...The Cult of M1" [November, Jonathan Rowe] reminded me of a passage in Ben Franklin's Autobiography...
...So we're delighted that Mr...
...Therefore, if the federal government needs funds for Social Security and Medicare, why doesn't it buy one less MX missile...
...Undisciplined classrooms, lack of student achievement, and low teacher salaries are symptoms of the fundamental problem...
...After the French collapse in 1954 the United States assumed responsibility for the future of Vietnam, regardless of whether the Vietnamese people themselves favored the continued imperial presence of a western power...
...A voucher system will force government educators to change their priorities...
...We had discussd this point in our Junto, where I was on the side of an addition, being persuaded that the first small sum struck in 1723 had done much good by increasing the trade, employment, and number of inhabitants in the province, since I now saw all the old houses inhabited, and many new ones building: whereas I remembered well, that when I first walk'd about the streets of Philadelphia, eating my roll, I saw most of the houses in Walnut Street, between Second and Front streets, with bills on their doors, which" made me think the inhabitants of the city were deserting it one after another...
...De Gaulle later warned the United States of its mistake (which he knew of from firsthand experience), but by then such foreign counsel was unacceptable...
...government and private schools would be authorized to redeem vouchers...
...I should think The Washington Monthly could do better by coming out against double dipping by anyone who has an adequate retirement income and in favor of a fair and decent program for employees in the private sector...
...By the above I do not condone the actions of the federal employee unions which is the main point of the "klatch 22" article...
...The plan was intended to be a retirement program and was thought of as a part of the contract under which we worked and without which many of us would possibly have not worked for the government...
...While we agree with some of your suggestions, we disagree vehemently with your statement that "those of means should help those of need...
...He concludes correctly that the real lesson of the war is to separate "the world responsibilities we assume because we want them from those imposed on us because our actions...
...Their funding does not depend on satisfied customers...
...Each child would receive a voucher worth at least $2,000 per year...
...There was nothing involuntary about it...
...On page 18 of Class, Fussell admits: "In attempting to make sense of [class] indicators...
...It was well receiv'd by the common people in general...
...As Karnow amply demonstrates, by the end of World War II the Japanese were stationed throughout Vietnam...
...for Southeast Asia: contain the spread of communism...
...but in his underwhelming, over-reaching broadside against Paul Fussell's minor and somewhat forgettable book Class Fallows (isn't he the erstwhile draft dodger...
...adds intellectual dishonesty to his multitude of sins...
...The wealthy inhabitants oppose'd any addition, being against all paper currency, from an apprehension that it would depreciate, as it had done in New England, to the prejudice of all creditors...
...We didn't start out with college educations, starting salaries of $20,000-plus, $100,000 homes, two cars, aboat, and expensive vacations...
...Government schools have a captive audience...
...By 1950, after the triumph of Mao Tse-tung in China and the North Korean drive below the 38th parallel into South Korea, the United States had established a policy (or would the better word be reaction...
...R. E. REINERT Topeka, Kansas Ben Franklin on MI...
...The crass reality is that public educators produce revenue with their political activity: they do not need to offer a quality education...
...Why...
...It is important to realize, though, that the monopoly status of public education is the fundamental cause of mediocrity in government schools...
...Some, such as myself who have no Social Security entitlement, are not eligible for Medicare...
...Government schools operate with .legislative appropriations...
...We gave them a lot...
...About this time there was a cry among the people for more paper money, only 15,000 pounds being extant in the province, and that soon to be sunk...
...The United States did not commit its Vietnamese error because it had entered into a war it did not want to win (as the Reagan conservatives would have us believe), nor because we were somehow at the mercy of a weak yet calculating puppet regime, as Alter implies...
...In California, we are now working to qualify a voucher proposal for the 1984 ballot...
...On the other hand, we .think the threat of a voucher system is needed to overcome the strong resistance to reform among both public school administrators and teachers...
...We had a modest home and an old car for many years...
...For example, parents would assign a much higher priority to teacher compensation and quality than government schools do...
...America's honor was at stake, and as our history textbooks tell us, we never make mistakes...
...The U.S...
...In a voucher system, school income will depend on satisfied customers, not political muscle...
...And if the young people want less money taken out of their paycheck, let them change their lifestyles and they'll have more in the bank and less spent...
Vol. 15 • January 1984 • No. 10
