Thanks offered to YMCA

By: centraljersey.com
As a full-time working mother, it has been a challenge to raise my two children. From their infant years to their toddler years to their school years, I have relied on the support of child-care providers. My children have been enrolled in such programs as day care, kindergarten enrichment, before- and after-school care and summer camp. For many years, I relied on the child-care services of the Hightstown YMCA.
This is the first year that I will not be utilizing the YMCA only because my children are older now and pursuing new endeavors. While I am happy that my children are moving in new and positive directions, I feel a bit sad, for I will miss the YMCA with its warm, nurturing, structured environment that can only be attributed to its staff, who were always so attentive toward my children.
In short, I simply want to say, "Thank you, Hightstown YMCA for all you did to help me as a working mother."
Toni Sullivan Hightstown
Tea Party ignores government good
To the editor:
Lincoln’ s of, by and for the people not perishing was wrong. The people have perished from the earth, replaced by the of, by and for the corporations and the super rich who own the corporations.
We, in our inconceivable stupidity are being manipulated by the super rich to join a Tea Party movement that proposes to eliminate government interference. But the government interference they want to eliminate includes regulation of utilities, banks, financial, food and drug industries, communications, etc., all for our benefit and to the detriment of corporate greed.
So why are we following this path to middle-class oblivion? You can fool all the people all the time if we buy into the elimination of regulations that protect us from this outright greed of the corporation and their owners.
Who polluted our waterways, poisoned our air, made the work place unsafe as a cheap way to do business? The robber barons of the early 20th century are back and even stronger in their efforts to enrich themselves and create a two- class system: they, the super rich, and the rest of us. If we support their goal to stop us from having government regulate them, then we die from bad food, bad water, bad drugs, bad air, bad workplaces and a bad economy.
Why do we buy this sales job of something for nothing. Yes, no government and no taxes, but who will enforce all the laws that protect us from exploitation?
The libertarians are the super rich who feel no responsibility to the very society that made them rich. It is the same old trickle-down nonsense in a new disguise of a trickle of government at the top that will protect you from exploitation at the bottom. Wake up from this mindless dream that the super rich want what you want. They already own our politicians or are our politicians. Now they want to own us as their serfs.
I hope we will take government over enslavement and exploitation by the super rich. Yet this libertarianism is supported by their mindless Tea Party drones, incapable of seeing the cause and effect of greed’s ambition. I surely hope we come back to reality and reject this plan of greed and exploitation proposed as our salvation by the super rich through this herbal Tea Party. They are not the real thing.
Gene Sarafin Hightstown
Time to re-think Obama economics
To the editor:
In the coming elections, the bad state of the U.S. economy is bound to be a major issue.
Barack Obama was given a bad situation which he and his administration made much worse. Despite spending hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars on stimulus packages, the unemployment rate is now 9.6 percent. And this horrible 9.6 percent number does not include the millions of people who have given up hope and stopped looking for a job or senior citizens who have gone on to Social Security at an earlier age than they anticipated. Still others, who want a full-time job, are working only part-time since it is the best they can get.
The Obama promise, made when the giant stimulus package was pushed, was that the unemployment rate would not rise above 8 percent. At this point a re-examination of Keynesian economic models upon which the Obama economic team based its analysis is clearly needed,
There are several causes for the economic failures that can be reversed. Perhaps the largest is the uncertainty of tax increases. The Bush tax cuts increased the incentives for innovation, creativity and hard work. Now, nobody knows how much of those tax cuts will remain. Perhaps, as a result of panic in the White House, various divergent proposals have come forth. For example, some call for raising taxes on the higher-income earners. This would reduce the incentives for the most productive people and further stifle job growth. Another proposal calls for the status quo to remain for a few years, but even this, with uncertainty, prevents employers and individuals from basing their decisions on what is known.
Another problem resulting from Obama’s economic actions is the increase in costs for hiring people. The Obama rhetoric of better employee benefits, such as health care and family leave, has the unintended consequence of costing employers more money. The result is fewer people are being hired.
The third problem is the increasing cost of regulation on industry. New regulations cost money to those industries that are impacted by the regulations. New regulations should be put in place only when justified. The benefit should be more than the cost.
Arthur Horn East Windsor