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Benson

Seeing past politics

Thanks to Barry Saunders (May 23 column, "A vision needn't be lost") for stating what many people know to be true but are afraid to say. The legislative bill requiring children's eye exams is good for the kids, but it was pushed through the legislative process inappropriately.

The fact is, eye screenings are a poor excuse for providing kids with a critical component of their overall health management.

The critics of House Speaker Jim Black, including school administrators and ophthalmologists, have locked on to their position due to politics, concerns about increased paperwork and self-serving professional motivations -- not from a position of what is in the best interest of children.

Routine physicals typically are "well patient" office visits. We do them to ensure that our child is healthy and we occasionally catch something that needs to be addressed. Such is the case with a comprehensive eye exam. You wouldn't entrust your child's health to be evaluated solely by a screener, so why would you take this risk with his or her eyes?

It would be great if the citizens of North Carolina would look past politics and see the merits of what was once called The Governor's Vision Care Program.

Robert Brodney

President

Eye Care Associates

Raleigh

No relief

I kept staring at two headlines from the May 24 paper. One story was about the state's wealthiest residents getting a tax cut in the Senate budget released Tuesday. The other was the heartbreaking story of a mother acquitted in the death of her son. He died from heat exposure in a car while she worked a double shift as nursing assistant in a nursing home.

We have to take a hard look at our priorities as a society. We have to understand how interrelated our lives are and embrace our individual responsibilities to each other and to the common good. I am ashamed of all of us in this richest county in the world.

Do we really need to reduce the tax rate for the North Carolina citizens in the highest tax bracket from a mere 8.25 percent to 8 percent? How many working mothers would this help find safe and affordable child-care? The article says there are 37,000 children on the state's waiting list for child-care subsidies offered to poor families. These are the children of the working poor who make minimum wage and have to work two jobs to try to make ends meet.

Are these family values we can be proud of? I for one, am ashamed.

Carol Teal

Raleigh

Public financing too

Regarding the May 18 news story "House is its own cop in ethics bill":

I could not believe it when I read that state House members approved strict ethics rules on the executive branch but not for themselves, by voting to substantially increase [compared with limits on the executive branch] the amounts of gifts to report. Although all but three members voted for this bill, I hope that the House will change its mind and accept for itself the same rules it wants for the executive, and also will vote for the independent ethics commission Gov. Mike Easley wants to see.

I also hope that the House and Senate will approve the bill for the pilot project for public financing of elections, which will enable more of our elected officials to serve the people full time while in Raleigh instead of having to spend precious time on fundraisers to ask for big money donations to finance their campaigns. I hope that the test proves to be such a success that other House and Senate members want to follow public financing rules.

Rep. Joe Hackney has worked many years to improve ethics, lobbying and campaign finance reform. Now is the right time to follow his lead.

Barbara Nettesheim

Chapel Hill

Gifts? Not really

What state Rep. Drew Saunders ["Even the baby Jesus accepted gifts, and I don't think it corrupted him"] doesn't understand is that those were gifts to Jesus. Nothing expected in return.

What Saunders refers to as gifts to politicians are not gifts but payment for undeserved services in return.

Jerome Feltz

Wake Forest

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