The issue of income inequality has become a major one.  Even the Republicans, whose policies are responsible for aggravating this inequality, have paid lip service to it, as if they really plan to do anything meaningful about it.

Beyond simple fairness, it's bad for the economy to have the game so rigged that the bulk of the rewards flow to the fewest possible people at the top.  Eventually the wheels of the economy stop turning and the economy collapses.  These wheels keep turning with a constant infusion of cash downwards.  A top-heavy pyramid cannot stand.

Unfortunately, some people whose interests are adversely affected by this problem have taken the wrong response to it.  Out of fear, they endorse the agenda of the super-wealthy.  They hope that if they support even lower taxes on the wealthy, if they further destroy our regulatory structure that protects workers and consumers and preserves economic fairness, if even more rewards then skew to the wealthy, they might get the crumbs that fall from their table.  This is self-defeating and servile.

What we should be doing is rescinding the pointless Bush tax cuts for the rich.  We had prosperity with the maximum 90% tax rate under Eisenhower, and with the higher rate (than now) under Reagan.   Bush cut them further and the economy collapsed; so it's clear that tax cuts are not synonymous with prosperity.  We need to increase the minimum wage.  Every time we do, we get crocodile tears from the elites that this will destroy the low-wage jobs we should be content with.  But rather than causing unemployment, it creates demand that grows the economy.  And we need to break up the banks that are "too big to fail", or we'll be bailing them out someday.  How about bailing out the workers for a change?

Now while I'm writing, I must address an unrelated topic.  That well-known demagogue and blowhard, Donald Trump, had a curious response to the Paris terrorist attacks:  he used them as a cheap excuse to tout the NRA"s lamebrained "More Guns!" answer to every problem.  More guns would not stop a terrorist wearing a suicide vest with a default trigger, or propane bombs (that they had outside the soccer stadium).  Trump both shamefully grovelled for the gun lobby, and further attempted to base his support from among the Neanderthal Right, who appreciate his lack of thinking.  Trump's campaign will not be around til the end, but he cannot go away fast enough.

Sincerely,

Stephen Van Eck

Rushville, PA

Gross negligence - n. carelessness which is in reckless disregard for the safety or lives of others, and is so great it appears to be a conscious violation of other people's rights to safety. It is more than simple inadvertence, but it is just shy of being intentionally evil. If one has borrowed or contracted to take care of another's property, then gross negligence is the failure to actively take the care one would of his/her own property. If gross negligence is found by the trier of fact (judge or jury), it can result in the award of punitive damages on top of general and special damages.

No amount of money that you would be able to collect is worth the life of your relative or loved one. The damage is already done to you and your family.

These two words are used by judges, juries, lawyers, etc. I lost a grand-daughter back in 2006, and she had just turned 5. Her last words while being held on a bank by my wife (her Grammy) waiting for help to arrive. “Grammy I Can Not Breathe!” Megan perished on her way to a hospital on a helicopter. The drunk driver fled the scene and was not caught till the next morning; he had got out of his vehicle, looked around to see all the mess he made, left them all for dead and sped off into the night.

My brother his wife and one of his sons were coming to New Milford on their way back home from church. They met a drunk driver who hit another car and then hit my brother's car head on. My brother’s head was wedged in between the door posts, with broken bones and a couple of deep lacerations on his arms. He had died three times after they removed him with the jaws of life and revived him each time in the ambulance. His wife had her spleen removed and various pins and screws hold her shattered arm together. We waited through the night because my brother's son might have to have his badly bruised spleen also removed. My brother had to learn to eat, dress himself, and do general housekeeping. Because of severe brain damage, he was in rehabilitation for one and a half years, and I took his wife and son every week to see him in Pennsylvania and New York state. The drunk driver that hit him, not a scratch on him or the woman that he hit before meeting my brother head on. A week or two of community service and within a 6-month time frame he was caught drinking and driving again.

A couple years ago my brother passed away as he went to lie down because he thought he was coming down with the flu. He felt better he told his wife when he got back up and the next morning he could not be awakened, he died in his sleep. An autopsy was performed and it was found his pancreas exploded inside of him. He could not tell people how he was feeling because of the brain damage. The doctor's had certified him to drive a vehicle again, and he did.

You see gross negligence is drunk driving, because everyone understands drunk driving kills, and drunk driving it is taught through many resources. Another kind of gross negligence is letting people drive that can barely see or their reactions have slowed significantly, or like my brother that came out of rehabilitation.

We take another example of Gross Negligence that also killed my brother-in-law and sister-in-law this September. They were riding their motorcycle and a car pulled out putting them in the guardrails in New York State. They were both killed and they left behind 3 grown daughters, 4 grand-children, 3 son-in-laws, 2 brothers, and 1 sister. The woman that pulled out and killed them was over 70 and her claim was sun blindness. David and Rita Jennings lost their lives because of gross negligence on slow reaction time and poor judgement.

Another form of gross negligence was recently in the news when a man swerved his car into a motorcycle. Asked why he did it, he said that they were breaking the law by passing him on a double line. Later on he said a bee flew in his window distracting him. The man and woman riding their motorcycle did not lose their lives, but ended up with a case of severe road rash. And yet we are told by the media to blow our horns at strangers texting on their phones while driving, and point our fingers at them. That is a wonderful idea, that is if you are a registered gun carrier, or have a police officer nearby. There is plenty of blame to go around and Gross Negligence is something we all live with, or die by! But should we?

Sincerely,

Edwin I. Lindsey Jr.

Susquehanna, PA

When I was a boy, there was a popular ditty: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” It did no good to go home crying to Mom. That childhood rhyme reflected a cultural norm.

It was a time when it was everyone's right to be insulted as much as it was everyone's right to insult. It's called free speech, a dated oddity from yesteryear. Yet this ghost of the past lives in the First Amendment to the Constitution. The pertinent part reads: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . . .”

But that didn't stop the Supreme Court from passing numerous rulings “abridging the freedom of speech.” However, the exalted nine are not the primary enemies of free speech---we are.

It's called political correctness or PC. It's a form of self-censorship that excludes words or phrases that might offend the sensibilities of others, particularly regarding race and sex, and it infects all of us.

PC has become enculturated; it is now considered to be appropriate behavior to excise any comment, spoken or written, that might provoke someone. But no matter how carefully one treads, there is ever a group at the ready to shoehorn a comment into an offense or wrangle its meaning into an insult.

Since many believe they have a right not to be verbally offended, does freedom of speech end where offense begins?

The First Amendment right is under siege in colleges across the nation:

• Racial slurs fueled mass protests at the University of Missouri. School administrators advised the student body by e-mail to call the police if they hear any offensive or insulting speech.

Nevertheless, escalating protests forced Mizzen's Chancellor Bowen Lofting to resign. The school's President Tim Wolfe confessed his sins to the inquisitors, groveled and flagellated himself before the students and the press, and then he, too, resigned. A tour de force of spinelessness.

• Yale University Dean Burgwell Howell sent an e-mail to the student body encouraging them to avoid customs that might “alienate or ridicule segments of our population on race, nationality, religious belief or gender expression.” That e-mail was interpreted as evidence of persistent racial bigotry on campus. The missive, in turn, precipitated a mass protest about “racial insensitivity.”

• At Claremont McKenna College, the dean of students resigned under pressure for emailing a Hispanic student that the school would try to serve those “who do not fit our mold.”

• Hundreds of students at Ithaca College demonstrated for the removal of the school's president sparked by a white student's remark that a black student had a “savage apatite.”

• Students held a sympathy demonstration at Smith College alleging “systemic racial oppression.”

The NFL joined the ranks of the thin skinned who want to sanitize speech. Referees were given the right to issue a 15-yard penalty for a player uttering a racial slur. (Fans will love it.)

Author Wendy Examiner found herself at the center of a discussion on free speech at Smith College. Said Examiner, “I was accused of committing an explicit act of racial violence because I question our growing list of words we can only know by their initials.”

PC is not limited to racial or sexual slurs; it encompasses the entire language. Familiar examples of PC scrubbing are: crazy to mental illness; Founding Fathers to the Founders; handicapped replaced by physically challenged; illegal aliens are now called undocumented immigrants; jungle has become rain forest; swamp is swapped for wetland; and trailer parks are upgraded to mobile home communities.

But who says free speech has to be non-offense, or respectful, or even considerate? Free speech is not measured by what is acceptable but by what is unacceptable. It may be crude, intolerant, insulting, rude, vulgar. It can include every racial and sexual innuendo that now can be said only by reference to their initials; it's all part of the vocabulary of free speech.

But it is not part of the vocabulary of civil speech. Society rejects such language as distasteful, embarrassing, vile, and outrageous.

After all, what is any of this but adolescent name calling. The verbal brickbats of the immature are not worthy of a reply let alone a protest. At most, maybe a shrug of the shoulders.

We must accept the fact that speech, however repugnant, cannot---must not---be prohibited by the courts or by PC; free speech cannot be both constrained and free. We cannot have it both ways.

Let freedom ring.

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA