Employers need ability to hire and fire workers
About the ability to fire employees: Recently Time magazine reported that a California court ruled public school teacher tenure was not lawful under the state constitution. In any business, difficulty with the ability of administrators to control the workforce will lead to failure. I once had to spend six months to fire one federal employee at a government shipyard. Moreover, in universities, professor tenure increases student fees, yet many professors do not teach but have their own projects. While some degree of protection is needed to prevent employee terminations for political or personal reasons, tenure and the regulation of firing government employees are onerous.
Gene Rogers
Come together, restore democracy
The left side editorial (Jan. 28) prompts me to write my first letter to the editor. The frequent mantra from the right is “let’s take our country back.” Sorry to say, the right already has it, starting with the the Citizens United decision from five conservative males on the Supreme Court, giving the ultraconservative billionaire Koch Brothers and others free rein to purchase Congress. Fifty percent of the members of Congress are millionaires. Nineteen percent of Congress is female compared to 50.8 percent in the general population. The average age in the Senate is 62, in the House, 57; the average age in the U.S. population in 2010 was 37.2. Do these numbers look like fair representation? How long will moderates remain silent when conservatives continue to erode democracy and push us toward oligarchy, if we aren’t already there? We have an election coming up in 2016. Let’s come together and think about using our votes to bring about congressional balance and restore democracy.
Walt Jenison, Signal Mountain
U.S. should be like ‘sophisticated’ Cuba
Why the extreme criticism of Cuba and sudden concern for its people? Is it a case of the “kettle calling the pot black?” Castro’s revolution overthrew a cruel dictator (Batista) and threw out the gangsters, both of whom had U.S. support. Big corporations had a stranglehold on workers and, when they were nationalized, successfully solicited the U.S. (CIA) to attack Cuba. The U.S., for decades thereafter, worked “hand and glove” with Cuban exiles to undermine the revolution, poison crops, make assassination efforts and put an embargo in place. Cuba’s revolution is an obvious failure, albeit Cuba is a sophisticated society which provides everyone with excellent health care, good educations and access to the arts. So what about the U.S.? What have we done to our early aspirations to be a democracy? We have become an oligarchy of the very rich. Tens of millions live in poverty; health care is not universal; education is unequal; wages are stagnant and low; prison population (percentage wise) is the world’s highest; the vote is undermined and denied; and racism persists. Yes the “kettle” has human rights issues, and both the “kettle” and the pot have dissidents aplenty.
Blake Moore