Oppose physician-assisted suicide
Why is suicide more acceptable to society when the words "physician assisted" are placed before it?
Do you believe that the physician is with the suicidal person at the time of their suicide? They're not, since they only prescribe the pills to be picked up at a pharmacy and the person takes them when and if they choose.
Do you put more trust in the cause since a physician is involved? What if that physician is in favor of suicide? Can that physician actually be trusted? Why would a society try to stop a person from jumping off a bridge but not stop this bill from becoming a law?
Suicidal persons need our support in helping them with their situation, not our support to kill them.
Generally speaking, fear of the unknown paralyzes people. This fear needs to be acknowledged, discussed and then a logical plan of action can be created. This plan can be revised as needed.
Please call and tell your representative to vote no to HB 160!
Kathleen Arnold
Townsend
Public advocate deserves thanks
If you pay an electric bill in Delaware, take a moment to thank Public Advocate Drew Slater, who filed a petition that could save you money on future utility payments.
The taxes that utility companies pay have always been factored into what they argue is a fair price for electricity. Now that the GOP tax plan will lower their federal corporate taxes from 35 percent to 21 percent, it is important that those savings be passed back to consumers.
This is a perfect example of how important and effective a good public watchdog can be. When I sponsored legislation to create the Public Advocate position in 1978, I envisioned a public official who would fight for residential consumers and small businesses and who would negotiate a fair price in areas where the market wasn’t always competitive.
Drew Slater is living up to that vision and more, and thanks to his hard work, we may all be looking at a lower electric bill soon.
Sen. Harris McDowell
D-Wilmington North
State can't afford paid maternity leave
The states in the biggest financial trouble, like New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, are the ones that bought into the fiction that, if state governments did not increase compensation and benefits to public employees, all the qualified workers would go into the private sector, leaving the public sector with the leftovers. The advocates used the wages and benefits of the very largest U.S. corporations as the target.
The argument sounded sensible. It worked. Now the public sector employees receive generous bonuses, high wages with automatic compensation increases and enviable benefits, including health care, and breathtaking pensions.
The problem is that most of the private sector employees work for smaller, not larger, corporations, including small businesses with less than 50 employees. Today, the public sector employees are doing far better than these private sector workers.
Now Delaware is flirting with giving 12 weeks paid maternity leave to public workers. This would be paid for by tax dollars from workers who do not get such benefits.
That is grossly unfair. And it puts Delaware on the path to bankruptcy, and higher taxes, just like New Jersey, California, etc.
No matter how nice you want to be, paying wages to people who are not working is a bad business model. Making private sector workers pay for a generous benefit that they themselves don’t get is rude.
John Ford Evans
Newark
Facts are facts
This is a quote from John Adams that is timeless and should be heeded by Democrats, Republicans, and especially the press: "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
Lex Burkett
Hockessin