toledoblade.com --

The Bush Administration often touts the number of new jobs reported at the end of each month, as support for its dubious claims of economic recovery.

It fails to mention that some 200,000 jobs are needed monthly just to keep up with downsizings, closings, and work force growth. If only 180,000 new jobs are created, for example, some 20,000 additional workers join the ranks of the unemployed. Employment reports fail to reflect an accumulation, because the unemployed are only tracked for the few months they receive benefits, after which they're no longer included.

Additionally, an overwhelming number of new jobs fail to even keep families above the poverty level. Meanwhile, our wounded economy continues hemorrhaging lucrative manufacturing, engineering, and administrative jobs to other countries, unabated by the Bush Administration. New manufacturing facilities, built largely by U.S. corporations and U.S. stock market investments, are continually replacing facilities and jobs here at home.

Furthermore, the U.S. dollar is shrinking due to the ever growing deficit, caused mainly by our contemptible attack on and endless occupation of Iraq. Subsequent record bankruptcies and loss of manufacturing have put our economy in serious, but seemingly unnoticed, peril.

Despite the hype, there's simply not enough viable jobs to go around. Meanwhile the unemployed and underemployed poor are expected to pull themselves up by their boot straps - if only they could afford boots!

If we stay this course, it won't be the relevancy of the United Nations that's in question, but the relevancy of the United States of America!

DAVID A. WARNER
Rowland Road

Reason for lack of funds to battle AIDS

The United Nations' Kofi Annan is crying the blues over the lack of money to fight the AIDS epidemic. If money is such a problem, then why did the U.N., England, Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, and George Soros spend millions of dollars trying to convince the citizens of Brazil that they should ban all guns when this money could have been spent on AIDS?

With these people, talk is cheap, and when it comes to putting their money where their mouth is, disarming the citizens of the world comes first.

RUFUS WALLACE
Millbury

Wonderful teachers enrich our children

We would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to the wonderful teachers of Washington Local Schools. For the past 12 years they have shared their passion for learning with our son, an invitation into the world of literature, language, art, and music. They have applauded the successes big and small and provided encouragement when needed. They supported our values and supported our decision to be a partner in our child's education.

Andy Hire helped create a dream and Sarah Gibson, Whitmer orchestra director, and Reed Anderson, of the Toledo Symphony, helped make the dream a reality. Toledo Junior Youth and Toledo Youth Orchestra provided the opportunity to be a part of something special.

Hopefully other area communities will recognize the need to prioritize a child's education and pass the much needed levies, following the leadership of Washington Local.

Hats off to all teachers who enrich the lives of children and are dedicated to making dreams come true.

LISA and SCOTT ZIEGLER
Lark Avenue

Clowns on the left don't have a clue

Another day dawns, and The Blade runs more "opinions" by uneducated, morally bankrupt leftists opposed to everything that doesn't suit their viewpoints. What viable alternatives have ever been put forth by the clueless clowns who betray their total absence of morals, facts, and intelligence every time they open their mouths or put hands to computer keyboards?

Let's invite these airheads who pollute the media with their wacko whining to use only verifiable facts, correct interpretations of law, science, economics, logic, and absolutely no hypocrisy, and lay out viable alternatives to every situation they yak about, most especially how every social pork-barrel "government" solution to their perceived injustices will be funded.

Let's hear their validated arguments about why we'd all be better off if we were gay instead of straight, abortion is the answer to every natural conception between unmarried men and women, it's "illegal" to use the word "God" in public, it's "illegal" to have a Republican win any election or not to allow a Democrat to hijack an election, we can stop global terrorism by having liberal Democrats filibuster the terrorists into submission instead of through military intervention, the official language of the U.S.A. should be Spanish, we need to have a flat income tax of 90 percent to fund government "pork," etc.

Let's start with know-it-all Marilou Johanek.

JIM ADAMS
Carleton, Mich.

Firearm safety is adult responsibility

A recent letter to the Readers' Forum stated that 55 children aged 3-14 died from firearm injuries from 1999-2003. While I will concede that it is not easy to determine these statistics, when I looked at the same Web site that this writer cited (the Centers for Disease Control), I found that 1,965 children aged 3-14 died from 1999-2003 and if you include children younger than 3, the number goes up to 2,138. Of those deaths, 362 were unintentional. Three hundred and sixty-two children aged 14 and under are dead because they or someone near them was irresponsible with a lethal weapon.

I am aware that children die from causes other than firearms, but these unintentional deaths are totally preventable. Far fewer children die from dog bites than firearms, but we still protect our children from vicious dogs. Why don't we do a better job of protecting them from guns?

All that is needed is a responsible adult to remove the guns from households where children live and play or lock guns up securely. Children should not be expected to bear the responsibility of firearm safety.

I am pleased that the writer has attempted to teach his children gun safety. However, on the weekend that his letter was published, the 10-year old son of a police officer in New York died when he discovered and handled a loaded gun his father thought he had well hidden. I suspect that child had also been told not to play with a gun.

STEPHANIE J. BECKMAN
Collingwood Boulevard

Finding a solution to juvenile crime

After reading the June 13 editorial, "An unenforceable solution," some thoughts came to mind. If you mean that "making parents responsible" for the actions of their children by punishing them will not solve the problem because it is simplistic, unenforceable, and probably unconstitutional, then you might as well say that about all of our laws. Criminal laws generally do not solve problems, they provide consequences for criminal activity. You break the law, you get punished. Pretty simple, fairly enforceable, and usually constitutional.

I applaud the effort being put forth by the chief of police and others to address a problem with a "proposed" solution. My real beef is with those who complain about this proposal and can only offer a vague, though I am sure, well intended, cliche such as "meaningful intervention for at-risk kids."

I do not have a solution either, but I am not going to complain about the effort being made by offering worn-out phrases that are just as simplistic, just as unenforceable, and probably just as unconstitutional, and more often than not just empty words.

JIM MARSH
Southview Drive

Editor's note: Mayor Finkbeiner has withdrawn the proposal, citing lack of support on City Council.

Steering clear

Wow. I just read the June 12 letter regarding a bike path on Beechway Boulevard, and I'm utterly amazed by it. I don't know if it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek or if she's serious in her contempt for "fat" people, but wow. That she actually put it in to words just blows me away. I have a bit of news for her. After reading her letter, I'm sure a lot of people, not just the fat ones, won't be wanting to take a ride in her neighborhood.

JENNIFER PASZTOR
Oregon

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