ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 20, 1996 TAG: 9608200013
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: LETTERS
REGARDING retaining our young people:
At a recent Chamber of Commerce-sponsored round-table discussion, one topic was ``How to Keep our Young People from Moving Away in Search of Jobs.'' Better education of our young people was discussed, and one participant commented somewhat like the following:
``As an employer, I would rather have a skilled `C' student than an unskilled `A' student. I can train someone who is skilled. We need to improve the image of the vocational schools.''
I couldn't agree more, and I wanted to applaud him at the time. As I later reviewed that part of the discussion, it occurred to me that the most common complaint of employers is that they can't get decent help these days. Employees call in sick when they are not, are late to work, want to leave early, and do not work worth a hoot when they are at work.
We all realize that the education budget is tight, but we somehow need to squeeze into our teaching system ``job integrity, job morality, job pride and job responsibility.''
At one time, these virtues were passed from parent to child. They were learned in church, and learned from each other. We can no longer count on that to happen. We must rely on the only source for this teaching that touches all our youth - the educational system. If our youth were better employees, we would attract better employers - and our young people wouldn't have to go elsewhere to seek jobs.
DAN OWEN
BLACKSBURG
Law will lead to hungry babies
I READ recently where two newborn babies would not be given food or medical assistance (welfare) because a new state law requires the fathers to be named before this help is provided to mothers. The same lawmakers who passed this law were the ones, with the encouragement of so-called pro-life organizations, who have made it almost impossible for women to get an abortion.
Perhaps these new mothers should apply to these groups for assistance over the next 18 years so their innocent children can have some kind of ``pro-life'' instead of becoming a product of the streets and, trying to survive, maybe hijacking a ``pro-lifer's'' car someday.
WALTER BIBB
VINTON
Blame Congress, not Reagan
I AM BOTH amazed and amused by the opposite viewpoints printed on your Aug. 7 Opinion page in the editorial titled ``Dole's tax-cut switcheroo'' and William Butterfield's letter to the editor, ``Social Security has been robbed.''
Butterfield succinctly sums up subjects of a number of my published letters and letters to our elected employees in Congress. I agree with him and congratulate him.
The editorial is the basic liberal viewpoint - more taxes, economic stagnation and inadequacy of investments in human capital and others. Writers of such never refer to the 3 percent to 3.5 percent annual growth following Jack Kennedy's tax cut. The Congress of that time, of the same political party, voted conservative spending increases.
Compare those results with 1983. Leaders in Congress met with Reagan asking for a tax increase to go along with his proposed spending cuts. He reluctantly agreed. The tax increase promptly passed; spending cuts never did.
The 1983 Congress cried that Social Security was going broke. We need to build a surplus for the baby boomers' retirement. Congress spends the surplus on current items, reducing the true deficit.
Reagan is blamed for shutting down the government in an effort to cut spending. The 1996 Congress is blamed for shutting it down while trying to cut spending.
The $5 trillion deficit was caused by Congress passing $1.50 to $1.85 in new spending, over Reagan's veto, for each $1 of anticipated new taxes. That on top of its habitual deficit spending.
Right on, Butterfield. The list goes on and on.
GEORGE F. SNYDER
VINTON
Taking a stand, not God's throne
I WOULD like to make several remarks regarding Keith Martin's Aug. 10 letter to the editor, ``Baptists don't sit on God's throne.'' How very true!
Why is it that when Baptists stand on the authority of God's word they are called bigots? Being a Baptist all my life - serving my Lord, working with brothers and sisters in Christ - and now reading that we're bigots! That simply is not true.
No one can sit on God's throne - not a Baptist, not me, not Martin - but we can certainly be alarmed at the drift of our society away from God. All of us need to stand against evil and sin in our midst.
Martin used the phrase ``if homosexuality is a sin.'' Is he ignorant of the Bible? There is no ``if'' about this being a sin! When God says that some act is an abomination to him that makes it very clear to me that it is a sin.
God is in the forgiveness business, and we as his followers are also. God loves all sinners, and showed the depth of his love on the cross.
Martin says that he stands for what is right in God's eyes. Amen. However, standing against what is sin and evil doesn't make one a bigot. Furthermore, believing that some act or acts are totally wrong is not judging.
C. GLEN STINNETTE JR.
HUDDLESTON
LENGTH: Medium: 100 linesby CNB