Welfare should provide help just in the short term

Welfare should provide help just in the short term
EDITOR:
It seems more often than not, I have to read about a sad welfare family that is struggling to make ends meet (because of the cutbacks), but they always seem to have more than one child while receiving welfare.
From what I understand, welfare is to help a family in hardship. It's not for a lifetime, and it's not to make families on. If after three or five years you have not yet received a free education or have not found a job, welfare should not feel bad about cutting the strings.
It has given them more of a chance than I will ever receive. For 16 years, I had a high school education. Only the past year, I received a college education. I never had a problem finding work. It might not have been the best job, but I needed it.
Today, it seems to me, some of the ones who are on welfare are getting too picky or lazy about where they work and the time they can work. If they spend as much time looking for a job, as I hear them crying about the cutbacks, they would probably be working like most of us.
Not all jobs pay well, but you have to start somewhere. I would like to read about the ones who have received an education and found a job, thanks to welfare. I think if everyone reads about the positive families who have accomplished that challenge, it would make a much better story.
MICHELE KOCHES
McDonald
Arafat an honest man, U.S. should dump Sharon
EDITOR:
"Bush administration should dump Arafat" proclaims Cal Thomas on Sunday. I don't think so. I think they should dump Sharon. The Israelis have nothing to be proud of in their shabby treatment of their peace partner, Yasser Arafat. They fabricated and forged documents or, in some cases, grossly mistranslated them in order to falsely link him with the suicide bombers.
Unlike Sharon, Arafat has never resorted to this kind of dishonesty. And unlike Sharon he has not launched assaults upon civilians to retaliate for the many thousands of killings of innocent Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces.
I suspect the truth is that Sharon hoped that Arafat would die from the horrendous assault upon his compound in Ramallah. Everyone knows and I am sure that Israeli security is aware that Arafat's health is very frail and the pressure exerted upon him would have killed many stronger men.
Somehow the terrorist assault upon him acted like a spring tonic and he came out ever more determined to achieve his goal of freedom for his people and peace with Israel. He will not fail for that is also the plan of God and no deception or oppression will prevail for long against God.
The Israelis are fond of making proportional comparisons in order to awe us into submission and Thomas comes up with the astounding fact that 519 Israelis killed would be equal to 31,000 Americans. It would also be true that the number of Palestinians killed would equal over 180,000
Americans and the number of those who have died because of American imposed sanctions on Iraq would be equal to 20 million Americans. Another number that should be taken into account is the $3 billion given in aid to Israel every year for the last 30 years or so would be equal to $300 billion per year.
Can you imagine where the American economy would be if some gigantic donor had given us $300 billion a year for over 30 years and all we had to do for it was to maintain hostilities with our neighbors, Canada and Mexico?
ROGER LAFONTAINE
Youngstown