Social Security fix

Last week I received my annual Social Security statement, giving me my estimated benefits at retirement. I turn 62 this year and am on the leading edge of the baby boom generation.

The statement included a warning about Social Security. Salient points: “The Social Security system is facing serious financial problems, and action is needed soon to make sure the system will be sound when today’s younger workers are ready for retirement.”

Further on, it says, “We need to resolve these issues soon to make sure Social Security continues to provide a foundation of protection for future generations.”

The president is pushing hard for a government health care program with estimated costs of from $1 trillion to $2 trillion. Why add to our deficit problem and make it harder to balance our nation’s balance sheet?

Let’s fix Social Security first and quit trying to do everything for everybody.

Tom Michaelis

McGregor

Lincoln and race

Joe Walker’s June 15 letter criticizes a previous letter writer who claimed that, in contrast to the Democrats, “the Republican Party has a long history of racism.” Indeed, Walker is partly right in his defense of Republicans, but only if one accepts that the Republican Party also has had a history of racism.

“The party of Abraham Lincoln has never been racist,” Walker opines. This is inaccurate in several respects, but I’ll cite only the recent study by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Donald Yacovone, Lincoln on Race and Slavery, which documents through numerous quotations of Lincoln throughout his career that he was racist.

Great Emancipator? Yes, but rather through a mistaken reading of Jefferson’s “all men are created equal,” read the book for more.

In this respect, Walker is on the right course in his closing statement: “There is enough blame to go around without resorting to partisan politics.”

History is another matter and shows that racism has sadly been with us far too long, regardless of party.

Bill Jensen

Waco

EDITOR’S NOTE: In defense of our 16th president, most scholars agree Lincoln’s thinking on race — already advanced far beyond that of many Americans of his era — evolved even further over time, including the four years and one month he was in the White House.

Truancy problem

Harley Johnson is wrong again [Letters, June 10]. I most certainly did address what the penalty should be for parents whose children miss more than three days of school a semester and are not on public assistance: “If you are not receiving assistance and your child misses more than three days without a doctor’s note, the parents are fined the amount of average daily attendance money for that student.”

This letter was not about how to fix all problems with public education, only truancy. It was also not about fixing underlying problems of poverty and crime.

Public education should be free to all who take advantage of it. But if you waste it, rich or poor, it should cost you money. If all students stayed in school, each would take a giant step toward solving the problems of poverty and crime.

David Ritz

Lorena