Winston-Salem Journal LTE SA 12/15/12

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I think I can speak for most Republicans when I say that we would be fine with the tax rates returning to the level they were during the Clinton administration. That is, providing that the spending returned to the same level as the Clinton administration as well.

TOM RAIF

Lewisville

An opportunity

The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system is on the verge of being able to do something great with the selection of a new superintendent.

After hiring Superintendent Don Martin, our school board had the power and authority to create an inclusive, equitable educational system. Instead, it chose to separate and denigrate a population of children in our county simply because of their economic status and ethnicity, creating fear, anxiety and non-exemplary standards fulfilling the perception of some and not manifesting the full potential of all our children.

Under this superintendent, student populations have intentionally been reduced to close and merge schools, using funds for those schools elsewhere. Subsequently, now busing is OK as long as it is from city to county, while the majority of taxes and students are in the city.

Education is our great investment in the future. Our children have to work and live in a multicultural, multiethnic world. It is time for the school board to understand that fact, come into the 21st century and stop trying to hold onto something that no longer exists.

This can begin with a new superintendent chosen with public support and the input of all the community.

Continuous public forums are needed to question candidates for this very public position. Such community participation will give all the children of our county a better educational system than is now being left to them.

CHENITA JOHNSON

Winston-Salem

Set the example

The guest column “Long-term strategic thinking and the national debt” (Dec. 6) by the former CEOs of Bank of America (Hugh McColl) and Glaxo-SmithKline (Robert Ingram) asked that citizens sign the petition called “FixTheDebt.org.” The idea is that the debt is too large; citizens need to get Congress to fix the problems.

This is a noble ideal. I suggest that the columnists, along with the other CEOs who are pushing this website, set the example and put their money where their mouths are. All these companies have to do is voluntary forego the special-interest tax breaks their companies receive and pay their fair share of federal and state taxes.

Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS in 2010, although it made $4.4 billion in profits. Bank of America did not pay any federal income taxes in 2009.

In 2006, Glaxo-SmithKline agreed to pay the Internal Revenue Service $3.4 billion to settle claims that it underpaid U.S. taxes since 1989 by shifting profits abroad. Glaxo estimated that the matter could have cost as much as $15 billion, so the firm made $11.6 billion in saved taxes.

Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.

Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon paid no federal taxes, and received a $156 million rebate from the IRS.

Set the example, and then ask for others to follow.

TOM LYNGE

Midway

Free-market practices

It was said lower taxes would produce more jobs, higher tax revenue and reduced national debt. Instead, lower tax rates drove prices higher, destroyed jobs, blew up the national debt and made much of our personal and national wealth disappear.

Our “job creators” brought world economies to the brink of extinction by fraud and incompetence. We bailed them out using more money than most of us would believe. The law allowing this bailout required them to use the money to keep lending. Instead, much of the money was used to line their pockets and drive stock and consumer prices even higher.

Laws are written for a handful of very well-heeled people through their lobbyists. Former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair writes, “... those who are most active in lobbying the government are generally those with the weakest business practices, as they have the most to lose from regulation.”

We are told that the “free market” is self-correcting and will fix all. Common sense and decades (if not millennia) should counter that delusion. There is nothing free about a market where all the marbles are hidden in the accounts of a few scoundrels and we are powerless to change it.

At the end of our work lives, after paying up to 50 years of Social Security taxes, politicians tell us they borrowed the money and don't want to pay it back. Why? Because they need to save Social Security and give to the “job creators.”

No wonder we are confused and agitated.

DAVE DANNER SR.

Winston-Salem

Finish the Thought

Briefly complete the sentence below and sent it to us at letters@wsjournal.com. We’ll print some of the results in a few days. Only signed entries, please — no anonymous ones. “America's mass shootings will end when ...”