Right to work (for less) is the tool they will use to bring us to our lowest level. That is how they plan to bust unions and destroy any advocate of the common working man. Right now they are chomping at the bit to get Right-to-Work enacted so they can hurry us on our race to the bottom. JOE FERRELL, URBANA
Reich wrong in his comments about the arts
Re “Among the rich, charity rarely helps the poor,” Dec. 17, 2013: Robert Reich was profoundly in error in his column in which he stated that donations by the wealthy to arts institutions should be taxable because they benefit only the wealthy, not the public.
Centuries ago, concerts in palaces were for aristocrats and the elite, but that is an idea whose time has long gone. For a wealthy donor today to endow a performance space is of tremendous benefit to the public at large, and sometimes the only practical way to raise such a large amount of capital at once. Cast your gaze around the Schuster Center. Does the audience look like an exclusive club for the ultra-wealthy? The audience is plain folks, mostly middle-class — but working people who pay their dues in society, not nobles who live off their inherited titles and property. With ticket prices starting at $6 or $10, even the poor who can afford a movie ticket can also afford a concert ticket. But without a concert hall, nobody rich or poor could appreciate the music.
I understand that some zealous leftists in the 1930s espoused the view that beggars, “proletarian” peasants, and street criminals are the only real people and that the working middle class are parasites on society. It is ironic that this long-outmoded dogma should surface just when the arts are under concerted attack from the far-right.
I have to agree with Reich that stats on allegedly "charitable" giving by the ultra-wealthy are skewed by gifts to churches and nominally scholarly or research institutes which are, in fact, highly partisan. But it is not in the fundamental nature of the arts to be partisan, and when they are they are often found to be encouraging dissent, original, creative thinking and a sense of responsibility to the rest of humanity. We need more of this, not less, and making it tax-deductible can only be good. JEFF HUNTINGTON, YELLOW SPRINGS
Speak Up
I can understand closing schools and churches when temperatures are subzero, but Wright-Patterson Air Force Base? And WPAFB employees are paid for snow days? The roads in Dayton and the surrounding cities were clear on Monday, Jan. 6, but the base was closed. What would Congressman Mike Turner have to say about that? What would happen if we really have an emergency?
If you need someone help you throw a friend under the bus, call Robert Gates, Chris Christie, John Boehner, any of the pseudo-compassionate Republicans in the U.S. Congress or any of the Republican governors.
In answer to Thomas Sowell, who doesn't think anyone can name someone on the right that used the line "trickle-down economics," how about President Ronald Reagan? I'm old enough to have heard it first-hand. He not only said it, he championed it. Sowell is just using that old tried and true Republican art form of revisionist history. If the facts don't fit your argument, just change the facts.
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