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Brooklyn Daily
To the editor,
Like any career politician, Anthony Weiner just can’t kick the habit of running for public office. Perhaps this is why he rejoined the race for mayor.
Weiner was a former aide to then-Rep. Charles Schumer (1985–1991), a councilman (1992–1998), and a congressman representing the Ninth Congressional District (1999–2011).
As councilman, he watched the city budget on a yearly basis grow by billions at a rate greater than inflation. Municipal debt went up by billions. During his time in Congress, the annual federal budget grew by more than $1 trillion, and the national debt grew by $9 trillion, from $5 trillion to $14 trillion.
Weiner’s accomplishments include legislation increasing the number of visas for foreign models, and immature screaming shouting matches with Rep. Peter King (R–Long Island) on 9-11 emergency medical care.
His $4-million campaign fund is supplemented by another million in taxpayer-financed matching funds. This will never be enough to paper over his past scandals and lack of expertise to run the greatest city in the world.
Weiner has never built a business, created jobs, met a payroll, balanced a multi-billion-dollar budget, or managed any significant agencies with a large number of employees.
The city will have a $70-billion budget in fiscal year 2014, with more than 200,000 employees. This is greater than most states and some nations.
Weiner should do what he is best qualified to do. Model male underwear and stay home as Mr. Mom, while his wife remains the family breadwinner.Larry Penner
Great Neck, N.Y.
Dubya’s war crimes
To the editor,
Shavana Abruzzo says Obama should be impeached because of Benghazi, where four people died (“Impeach Bam for Bengazi,” A Britisher’s View, May 17).
On George W. Bush’s watch, we had 9-11 and thousands died. He lied us into the Iraq War and many thousands of American soldiers died. Others came home, but some parts of them did not. Some came home with post-traumatic stress disorder, which is unbearable.
Thousands of civilian men, women, children, and babies were killed in Iraq. Bush should have been impeached. He should be tried as a war criminal.Jerome Frank
Coney Island
Sidewalk sidestep
To the editor,
I have made numerous attempts since February to ascertain what the Department of Education and the city is doing to correct the unsafe and deplorable condition of the sidewalk adjacent to PS 216 in Gravesend.
I have taken every possible step to obtain a clear-cut answer to this dangerous condition, and to date have received no response.John Alfke
Gravesend
Pedal-gogues
To the editor,
A new means of unlicensed and unregulated mode of transportation has now created yet another hazard for pedestrians and motorists.
Bicycles equipped with electric motors — capable of going at speeds far in excess of models of years past — are now zooming through our streets and sometimes our sidewalks.
Their riders do not observe lights or stop signs. Many of the riders are teens. Must it take a fatality to regulate them?
Martin E. Boxer
Sheepshead Bay
Failing grade
To the editor,
Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott will have us spending more money for teacher training. For what? What a waste of money.
Why can’t the Department of Education put that money towards lowering class sizes and setting up schools for disruptive children?
No matter how much money you throw into the city’s school system, it is destined to fail, until teachers are given the authority to deal with unruly pupils. Far too many of our schools are completely out of control. Children roam the halls, fighting, cursing, screaming, throwing objects and acting like they’re in prison.
I’d like to know how you can retrain a Leadership Academy principal? Such people never taught to begin with, and are now rating teachers. This is ridiculous. Could we evaluate the work of a brain surgeon?
With the current teacher evaluation controversy, the public is made to think that teachers have a free ride. Not so fast. Teachers are observed by principals, and those without tenure more frequently. With evaluations being tied to test scores, we have many principals out there who will go out of their way to make sure that teachers they don’t like get the most difficult classes.
They will know what the results will be, and it will just make it easier to dismiss a so-called ineffective teacher. How the union can allow this without discipline in the schools being discussed is outrageous.Ed Greenspan
Sheepshead Bay
Rehab felons
To the editor,
The Board of Elections is not prepared for the primary in September and the general elections in November.
It doesn’t respond to requests for petition forms which would permit new candidates with new ideas to run for City Council.
In the 48th Council District, there are several candidates, but not one has spoken about their ideas regarding the criminal justice system or establishing community crisis intervention teams. Currently, mentally ill, and young people 16-19, are placed in solitary for 23 out of 24 hours a day.
Psychiatrists have made public officials aware of the damage done by such incarcerations.
At a recent board meeting, the Department of Corrections admitted that some people entering solitary will come out with a previously-undiagnosed mental illness.
Also, 95 percent of all prisoners are eventually released and because they don’t receive adequate mental care, return to prison within a few years.
We urge councilmembers and the mayor to encourage the board to finally face the damage that solitary confinement does to human beings, and to institute proper programs to aid in their recovery upon their release.Allan Feinblum
Midwood
Going postal
To the editor,
Why is it when you send junk mail back to the post office, it comes right back, even if you mark it “return to sender?”
We should send the United States Postal Service a copy of Elvis Presley’s 1962 hit song, named “Return to Sender.”
The post office is a joke.
Dennis Olsen
Sheepshead Bay
Quinn’s candor
To the editor,
Council Speaker Christine Quinn is to be commended for being forthright in revealing her problems with obesity, bulimia, and alcoholism as a teenager during the time she watched her ailing mother die of cancer.
Hopefully this will not hurt her chances to become mayor, even if she may not be my first choice at this time.
President Warren Harding, our 29th commander in chief, was a patient at Marion County State Hospital — five times for three to six months from 1895 to 1910 — for alcoholism, according to his biography “The Available Man.”
Let us also not forget that Ann Richards, the governor of Texas from 1991 until 1995, was an alcoholic who attended Alcoholics Anonymous while occupying the executive mansion in Austin. She was also the keynote speaker at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.
Also, former Sen. Tom Eagleton (D– Mo), the Democratic vice presidential nominee under George McGovern in 1972, was deposed from the ticket, after the press revealed that he received electric shock treatment five times.
Perhaps there would have been more public sympathy, if this had been brought up earlier.Elliott Abosh
Brighton Beach