A contract is a contract


A contract is a contract

EDITOR:

For our august Congressional leaders, the AIG bonus uproar is the best thing that could possibly happen. It gives them an easy target at which to direct public outrage while diverting scrutiny of their own complicity in the creation of the ugliest financial mess since the Great Depression.

When millions of citizens (those fortunate enough to have job) are living from reduced paycheck to reduced paycheck, even a freshman elected official has the political guile to search for a scapegoat. Congress couldn’t build a better whipping boy than the bonus babies at AIG.

The people at AIG deserve to be paid according to the terms of their contract, period. Whether or not the amount they are paid is so large as to be morally reprehensible is a very separate matter and not subject to the contract. Ask any union member, contractor, or insurance policy holder why they are entitled to be paid what they are paid, and the answer is the contract. The only difference between honoring the contractual rights a UAW member, and those of a self-proclaimed “master of the universe” is the amount of money the individual receives.

The really frightening aspects revealed by the AIG bonus flap are these:

UWe live in a society that places high value on the ability to create paper investments so complex that they are not understood even by their inventors who create them to cater to mankind’s base instinct for greed. Meanwhile, the same society does little or nothing to provide education, health care, food or shelter to people truly in need. Disgusting.

UOur elected officials who failed to properly regulate financial markets are unable to do anything more than point their fingers at one another as the person or party responsible. Reelection, maintaining the power and privilege of their positions, is their top priority. These are troublesome times. They will quickly become disastrous times when we put aside the rule of law in order to punish a person or group at the whim of a self-serving legislature. This is how a demagogue rises to power.

I urge my fellow citizens to honor contracts, respect the dignity of every human being, and kick the do nothings in Congress to the curb at our earliest opportunity.

JAMES CARTWRIGHT

Canfield

All the ways we’re broke

EDITOR:

Let’s see. GM/UAW has lost $80 billion in the past three years. The predominantly unionized manufacturing base of the Mahoning Valley has all but disappeared in the past 30 years. Government at all levels is broke (AFSCME, SEIU etc.). President Obama has chastised the poor state of our public education system (NEA). The president of the YSU Classified Employees Union is on paid administrative leave (some call that vacation) for alleged misconduct. And the USW has apparently been AWOL when it comes to the AMWELD MIA hospitalization problem. Oh, lets not forget the return of the “rat” attack on Thompson Heating for trying to stay in business and V & M putting the brakes on its expansion.

So lets end the democratic principle of the secret ballot in favor of the good work done by unions these days ... makes perfect sense to me.

TIM RYAN

Newton Falls

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