Monday LTE's 20110718

Good AM, folks! Today's Winston-Salem Journal LTE's are below. Fire away.

Foreign Aid

The U.S. spends about $30 billion per year on foreign aid. Much of this money is wasted by corrupt governments and embezzled by foreign officials. Very little of the money is used for the intended purposes, and we receive almost no credit or appreciation from the people of these countries.

Why not make all foreign aid available only in American-manufactured products delivered by American ships and vehicles? A catalog of American products could be given to the governments, and they could order up to their aid limit. Items could include food, medical supplies and equipment, farming equipment, mining equipment, factory equipment, military equipment, construction equipment and supplies, etc. There is nothing these foreign countries could possibly need that could not be obtained from American manufacturers. Everything supplied would be obviously marked as coming from America.

Implementing this approach would create thousands of American jobs and stimulate our economy with no additional cost to the taxpayer. It would eliminate most of the waste of our aid money and benefit the citizens of the countries receiving the aid. It would benefit our economy rather than that of competing countries. Perhaps this would generate some credit and appreciation from the foreign citizens.

Our problem is to get Congress to implement such an obvious and simple solution to our foreign-aid expenses.

---

DONALD L. GARREN

Lambsburg, Va.

Anonymous method

Thank you for doing away with the essentially completely anonymous method of commenting on your stories online ("To the readers," July 10). I do not fully endorse Facebook as the mechanism for authentication, but I certainly understand the business reasons for using it.

---

NORMAN HILL
Lewisville

Fear and paranoia

The July 13 story "GOP's light bulb idea goes dark" and the same day's letter "The greatness of the U.S." exemplify perfectly the fear and paranoia that prevent me from taking conservatives seriously.

The letter writer says, "… we don't like government telling us what food to eat, what light bulb to use or what air to breath." I could sort of understand that if the government were saying to eat slime, furnish our houses with strobe lights and breath air with a high methane content — but the government hasn't done anything of the sort.

I want my food to be inspected for safety — we've seen, in the news, what happens when it isn't. The aforementioned story points out that new standards for light bulbs mean that we'll pay less and use less energy for the same amount of light. Is that really worth fighting against? As for air — well, I'm just dumbfounded. "We don't like the government telling us what kind of air to breath"? Is there really someone who would prefer breathing polluted air? Really?

I could understand these "freedom fighters" if they were fighting rules that make life worse for Americans. But why are they always objecting to things that make life better for Americans?

---

ROGER L. MACK
Winston-Salem

Both are taught

In the July 10 "Doonesbury" comic strip, cartoonist Garry Trudeau depicted a school where both evolution and creationism are taught. During the discussion of creationism, a student in this school asked the teacher to stop because he wanted "to get into a good college."

Calvary Baptist Day School students examine both evolution and creationism. Members of the Class of 2011 have been accepted to UNC Chapel Hill, Davidson College, Duke University, N.C. State, Wake Forest University, West Point, Wheaton College and Yale University (Mr. Trudeau's alma mater).

---

BILL WALTER
Winston-Salem