Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 24, 1995 TAG: 9505250012
SECTION: EDITORIALS PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I'd like to say to those of the eighth-graders who are African-American, please take the chance and enroll in this program. There are far too many of you dropping out of school and letting programs such as these pass you by.
You need to prepare yourselves for the future. Because if you look around, it's not difficult to see that your generation is practically being wiped out. You're killing each other in the streets. If not by shooting one another, you're killing each other with drugs.
So, as a high-school dropout and a former drug dealer, I beg our young brothers and sisters to take advantage of programs such as these, and to further their education. Always remember that you are our leaders of tomorrow. An excellent brother of ours (Malcolm X) once said, ``Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today!''
WILLIAM A. WEST
COEBURN
Federal agents have been overbearing
IT SEEMS George Bush is a little miffed at the National Rifle Association for suggesting that some federal agents are nothing more than ``jack-booted government thugs'' (May 11 article, ``Bush parts with NRA''). He might rather agree with descriptions of government agents offered by others over the years.
The description from those who saw thousands of their relatives and neighbors murdered, maimed and imprisoned by those agents in the 1860s could be more appropriate. Or even the description offered by helpless women and children who watched agents, under the command of William Sherman, burn their homes, steal their personal belongings and take away their food and livestock. Maybe Bush would prefer the description from the Plains Indians as they watched their villages being destroyed and their families massacred.
These descriptions are too old and removed from today, Bush might say. How about World War I veterans who gathered in Washington, D.C., asking that they receive their war pensions so they could support their families during this country's economic crisis? How would he think they might describe agents who rode among them on horseback with sabers drawn? Maybe the opinion of Japanese-Americans rounded up on streets and shipped away to holding camps would be more to his liking. Or the description from families and friends of those killed in Waco by agents who grew tired of talking and being embarrassed on the news due to a botched attempt to serve a warrant.
I think any of these groups would have a much stronger opinion of certain federal agents than to describe them as jack-booted thugs. Most of their opinions probably couldn't be printed in this newspaper. You would have to read their lips to see how our government has touched their lives.
JOHN L. SCOTT
CALLAWAY
Medicaid is giving ample returns
AFTER reading Mae Jones' May 16 letter to the editor (``Wondering where the money goes'') regarding where her money went in the Medicare fund, I was amazed. I hope I can enlighten her a little.
I don't know how old she is, how much money she made or how much she has paid into Social Security. But if she paid in the least amount, started to draw on her Social Security account at age 65 and is now 75, she has drawn for 10 years. If she drew only $300 a month, she will already have drawn out $30,000. Add to that the $40 she says Medicare pays to her doctor. If she went to the doctor four times a year for the 10 years that she has drawn Social Security, that's another $1,600. Add to that any hospital stay she may have had - a stay, say, of three days - and that could be at the least $3,000. Now we're up to $34,600. And if she has an illness requiring an operation, she can count on another $5,000.
I doubt if she and three other ladies her age have paid in $40,000 to Social Security. And she may live another 10 years.
She should be happy with what she's getting because my tax dollars are keeping her happy while my family struggles to make ends meet.
LUANNE C. WEIDNER
BEDFORD
by CNB