Views from readers: labor standards + the national debt
Road to recovery
The tragic Miami Beach condo collapse and last winter’s failure of the power grid in Texas demonstrate the catastrophes that crumbling and inadequate infrastructure or blatant disregard for code enforcement can unleash.
That’s why today more than ever we need a comprehensive plan of action to rebuild America. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, an essential piece of the American Jobs Plan, is both bold and necessary. It will upgrade critical equipment that we depend on every day, including bridges, water systems, the broadband network, mass transportation and electricity systems.
This moment provides us an opportunity to rebuild not only our rundown infrastructure but the middle class, with the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs. For this to become a reality, the IBEW is working to ensure that all infrastructure bills include robust labor standards safeguarding workers’ rights to organize, bargain collectively and join a union.
As a skilled professional who works fort the electrical industry, I am a member of IBEW Local 903. I call on Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) and Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS-04) to support a meaningful investment in our future that includes high road labor standards and prevailing wages.
Before another disaster strikes, let’s get America’s infrastructure on the road to recovery. Members of the IBEW stand ready to deliver the manpower needed to make this proposal a reality. Let’s get to work.
Jeremy Sundeen
Kiln
Money issues
Here is a quote from founding father Benjamin Franklin: “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic.”
My thoughts: Perhaps Franklin was right. We are voting ourselves money.
Americans are forgetting, however, that they own 78% of the public debt. A default will harm Social Security, mutual fund returns, private and government pension fund payments, owners of government bonds, banks, and the purchases of the Federal Reserve.
And yes, the politicians who gave us the money will be on the beach having a drink on taxpayer-funded pensions. At present, facts show each household share of the national debt in the United States of America is $218,614.00.
I don’t have that kind of money.
William Byrd
Long Beach
Falling apart
I appreciate the fact that because of your political party you assume that you’re superior to me.
That you consider yourself above me. You’re education supersedes mine. That you’re well traveled and been around the world, not once, but twice. Third world countries are something you read about and again think it could never happen to you.
The people that rule your life have no idea either, and you put them in charge. The majority of of these elites are Harvard or Yale educated and never held a employment role on any level other than mail boy or receptionist.
Yet you hold their word as gospel.
If we don’t rethink the America that you imagine as a place to coddle and protect the guilty, things are all but over. And soon. When it all falls apart, and it will, the media you praise will stand in the soup line just like us.
Malcolm McBee
Gulfport