Letters

...They send a nurse out to check up on you after you’ve received emergency care in the hospital...

...I think that is pretty wonderful...

...But this is probably due to their frustration at continually being passed over for reasonable jobs, or enduring inadequate ones...

...The key to the school is not only that it is successful, but that its program is affordable and exportableregardless of who is in charge, who is teaching, or who is attending...

...Conversely, if a poor person does not pay taxes and you give him a $500 tax-credit cash bonus, that is giving...

...I am proud to be a subscriber...

...In any other country, they’d call this bribery and payola...

...As one of the high-paid Clinton henchmen, Summers cannot be expected to sympathize with Chester Thigpen, the Mississippi farmer who may be hindered in passing his tree farm to his relatives because of the estate tax, but obviously Thigpen does not draw any sympathy from the author, who only finds his plight “troubling...

...1997) has a few valid points in his claim that David Zucchino’s book seems to ratify the stereotypes that drive the political debate...

...But I feel compelled to respond in case readers are left with the mistaken impression that the school is just a “lucky aberration” or that my book is just another feel-good “Triumphant Kid” story...

...He claims, for instance, that welfare recipients show little attachment to work...

...Please do not attack all HMOs...

...Additional members of the middle class are being drawn and quartered by the estate tax, killing off the opportunity to pass on to their heirs farms, ranches, small businesses, etc...

...Furthermore, some state secrecy laws impose penalties and even imprisonment on persons who disclose privileged audit information...

...Elliott Abrams, who insulted the grieving parents of the young Americans murdered by the Contra...

...C. EMORY BURTON Dallas, TX A Satisfied Customer May Idefend my HMO (“Tilting at Windmills,” July/Aug...

...Only in America do we call it “political speech protected by the Constitution...

...Kill only the politically unreliable people...

...If the government takes 50 percent of it in taxes (which they do), they are taking my money...

...If I earn $100, it is my money...

...JIM HECKE TRIAL LAWYERS FOR PUBLIC JUSTICE Washington, DC...

...If only one half of one percent of our population suffered from a tragic disease, should we ignore their plight...

...Or simply, “DO unto others...

...In other words, this is a school that offers a great deal of hope for solving many of the problems with inner-city education today...

...ANN L. PORTER Santa Cruz, CA Secret Danger In Alexander Volokh’s June article, “Carrots Over Sticks,” he praises laws that give industrial polluters the right to keep environmental audits secret and to obtain immunity from prosecution...

...The Real Problem In “The Real Class War,” Michelle Cottle does an excellent job of describing the symptom, but overlooks the disease...

...He implied that the dead deserved their fate for contemptible crimes like teaching, building clinics, imprclving water supplies...

...Politicians dole out special tax breaks, subsidies, federal grants, and other government giveaways, all to benefit political contributors at the expense of the average taxpayer...

...In fact, my piece points out that Congress could selectively slash-or even repealthe estate tax burden for such entrepreneurs with little effect on tax revenues, because these individuals represent such a mall percentage of the total estate taxes collected...

...The Elliott Abrams who never heard of a right-wing death squad he didn’t like...

...KAY REIS Marion, MA Hats Off Just got your July/August issue, and I love your article on “The Real Class War...

...He claims these laws are needed to help companies achieve better compliance with environmental requirements by freeing them from the threat of punishment...

...We find it tragic and want to do something about it: wipe out the federal estate tax once and for all...

...Studies in four cities found that only 5 to 10 percent of low-skilled job openings were available to applicants with few skills or work experience...

...This is a truly Orwellian concept of justice...

...He has ethics...

...ROBERT YOUKER Bethesda, MD S I thought we were finally beyond portraying any responsible tax cut as class warfare-the so-called rich attacking the poor and middle class...

...But studies have consistently shown that welfare recipients have about as high a level of aspiration as the nonpoor...

...An ethics tank...

...MICHAEL BROSNAN, AUTHOR Against the Current Mything the Point Jason DeParle (“Why We Needed Welfare Reform,” July/Aug...

...With President Clinton’s latest tax cut proposal, we also see the sad state of liberalism in our country...

...True, as DeParle points out, some welfare recipients have just given up...

...I am the president of that seniors association who wrote the letter to The Washington Times demanding that Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers be fired for his demeaning remark that those who want a repeal or reduction of the death tax are motivated by selfishness...

...As a result, an employee who blows the whistle on his company’s environmental crimes can go to jail for revealing the truth, while the company avoids any prosecution for concealing facts...

...And that, even prior to the welfare reform bill, the assistance provided was insufficient...

...However, well-run companies have no need for these laws, and nothing to fear from disclosure of their audit information...

...As for DeParle’s assertion that, thanks to welfare reform, most states are now “awash in cash” and are likely to use this money to help rehabilitate the most hopeless welfare cases, this is certainly not happening in Texas...

...JACK E. LOHMAN Milwaukee, Wl No One-Hit Wonder I want to thank Michael Mayo for reviewing my book (“One School’s Success,” June 1997), which profiles a successful inner-city school for at-risk teens in Providence, Rhode Island...

...The trouble is the lack of jobs for which they qualify...

...Letters Ode to Elliott To be reading the Monthly and come upon this sentence: “. . . Elliott Abrams, once a key player in the Reagan administration’s Central American policy and now head of an ethics think tank . .I’ (“Redefining Judaism,” June 1997) is one of the most disorienting experiences I have ever had...

...When Congress passes tax cuts that favor the rich because “the rich pay more taxes,” they omit that the rich also make more campaign contributions...

...Elliott Abrams, that bloody-handed liar...

...Instead, we should attack the disease: our corrupt political system...

...Thigpen doesn’t stand alone...

...JAMES L. MARTIN, PRESIDENT THE 60 PLUS ASSOCIATION Arlington, VA Michelle Cottle replies: On the contra?, I am entirely sympathetic to the plight of Chester Thigpen and small-business owners like him...

...We worry too much about who’s paying more taxes than who, and not enough about what’s causing the disparities in the first place...

...And many poor were not being given any assistance at all...

...Secure Horizons’s doctors call you at home and ask how you are...

...Mr...

...New secrecy laws will only exacerbate the public’s distrust of government and industry...

...And I have seen little evidence that it is happening in most other states...

...What I have no sympathy for, however, is estate-tax opponents’ constantly trotting out farmers and familybusiness owners as a rationale for an across-the-board tax cut that would benefit the offspring of Steve Forbes far more than those of Chester Thigpen...

...In Washington, D.C., only 12 percent of the job vacancies in newspapers were jobs the poor might have had a chance to get, and nearly all were filled in a day or two...

...As one of America’s “rich,” I find it sad how little my class cares about giving back to America as much as it has given us...

...The system our nation has set up to help these people has long been inadequate, but to make it even more so is hardly the solution to the problem...

...If they reduce the taxes to 40 percent, they are not giving me money-it is already mine...

...Since 1972 the real value of AEDC and food stamps has been reduced by 40 percent...

...I would love to see a sampling of ethical precepts from the desk of Elliott Abrams: ‘kk me no questions, maybe I’ll tell you no lies...

...1997), Secure Horizons, offered by Pacificare...

...But he falls short of “proving” the welfare myth true, and he seems to miss most of the weaknesses of the welfare reform bill...

...But the article by Michelle Cottle proves that unmitigated envy and distortion are not confined to the fever swamps of the professional income redistributionists...

...CARL GRANADOS via e-mail Up in Arms The liberal logic on your July/August cover is n13t logical (“The Real Class War...

...I am 73, I live alone, and I’ve never had any insurance company take as much of an interest in my well-being as my HMO...

...We do know that General Assistance, funded by the states, is the first program to be cut...

...A fancy manipulation of figures cannot obscure the fact that those of us who deal with people in the real world are coming across an increasing number of these cases...

...Your magazine, however, is one of the lights in the tunnel, pointing out of the dark ages of ideological ignorance...