How are Volkswagen workers treated?
I recently read several articles in your paper about the new Chattanooga Volkswagen plant and how their management has a laissez-faire attitude toward unions.
I wonder if it is because of how they take care of their employees. If they treat the employees as awful as they have treated their applicants and contractors, then I can see why they may need a union to get involved.
Companies may offer good wages and insurance, but these benefits typically come second after good supervision and how employees are handled by their immediate supervisor.
ROBIN HITNER
Rock Spring, Ga.
Local company's aid appreciated
As president of ComEd, the electric utility serving 3.8 million customers in the Chicago metropolitan area, I'm writing to express deep appreciation to the dedicated men and women of Service Electric Co.
On July 11, a storm tore through Northern Illinois, bringing winds up to 80 mph and 18,000 lightning strokes. This storm hit our service territory with devastating force. It created destruction that rivals many hurricanes. It was the largest storm in ComEd's recorded history and knocked out power to nearly 900,000 of our customers.
Restoring power to almost a quarter of our customer base strained our resources and capacity. We reached out for help as we faced a massive and complex restoration process under the most trying conditions. Service Electric Co. stepped up and provided that help.
Service Electric Co. crews were skilled, professional, concerned for our customers. They worked long hours under tough conditions to help us restore power as quickly and safely as possible. For their untiring assistance, we're exceedingly grateful.
Keeping the lights on for customers anywhere in the country is difficult and often unheralded work. We thought it important your readers know their hometown utility provided support to ComEd and its customers through a very difficult time.
ANNE PRAMAGGIORE,
ComEd President
and COO
Slowdown shows tea party wrong
Tea party "economists" suffer from what Robert Samuelson calls "the pretense-of-knowledge syndrome."
They act as if they understand more than they do and presume that their ideologies have benefits more predictable than they actually are.
It's worth remembering that the recovery's present slowdown is occurring despite measures taken to reduce taxes for the super-rich and cutting spending. So these ideologies have been oversold by the no tax apocalypse lunatic far right, and the public is now disbelieving in the no-tax position of Republicans at the federal level.
B.J. PASCHAL
Sevierville, Tenn.
Roosevelt policies grew Depression
A recent letter erroneously stated that President Roosevelt "spent" us out of the Depression.
Simply not true. Henry Morganthau, Roosevelt's secretary of the Treasury, stated, before a congressional committee in 1939, that "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work ... and we have an enormous debt to boot."
Many economists in recent years have determined that Mr. Roosevelt's policies actually extended and deepened the Depression.
Now, two UCLA economists have joined the chorus of other economists. They are Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian, who have concluded that FDR's spending, taxing, borrowing and economic meddling policies prolonged the depression by seven years.
Hoover signed the Smoot/Hawley Trade Law in the spring of 1930, increasing tariffs on some 20,000 imports. Predictably, our trading partners retaliated with tariffs on our exports. World trade collapsed almost overnight.
Mr. Roosevelt actually copied and placed Hoover's policies on steroids, turning a recession into a deep depression.
So much for government meddling.
SUE S. McFARLAND
Hey, heat could have been worse
Whew. It's hot. Imagine how bad it might have been if the Chicken Littles had been right about global warming.
JAMES O.B. WRIGHT
Sequatchie, Tenn.
Stop the tax and spend crazies
Taxing the rich is not the solution.
The more our government takes from the rich or poor will never be enough for them.
Be it the federal FICA, or local property, sewer, sales and on and on. They just keep going up ad up.
The economy started its downhill slide when Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law.
Our companies started closing and opening up in other countries, just as Ross Perot said would happen.
Giving our jobs to other countries is still not enough. They are giving them our money also.
Maybe someone in government can explain why we have to get China to loan America trillions of dollars, and then America turns around and gives China billions back to help them with their human trafficking and STD problems.
Thanks to a successful man and his investment, 800 individuals and myself have jobs.
It's time to stop these tax-and-spend crazies in government who are putting the American people in the unemployment lines.
It's time to vote and put them in the unemployment line.
Let's not forget the one on the top. His name clearly spells it out: OBAMA (One, Big Awful, Mistake, America).
JIM ERVIN