I am the wife of a career Army member. My husband was in the service of the United States from the age of 17. He served a tour in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970. Each time he re-enlisted, he was promised a retirement if he stayed 20 years or more and health care for life.
When we married, he had already been in the Army for many years. I had been working since I was 18.
I was promised by our government that I would have Social Security and Medicare, and they deducted it from my paycheck every time I got paid.
While my husband was in the service, we were moved at least every three years, from one base to another, but I was in limbo until the Army cut orders for me to join my husband.
I was a bookkeeper, so it was fairly easy to get a job wherever we were, but I never was able to get paid much because I was never there long enough. Whoever hired me knew that I wouldn’t be around long.
I want the politicians to stop saying I am getting entitlements. We worked all our lives to get what we are drawing every month.
We paid into Social Security and Medicare, and we are just getting what our government promised us. We gave up the normal life that others take for granted by staying in the military so we could draw the retirement we draw now.
Every dime we get now was hard-earned. It’s not a handout. I am sick of some people thinking we are moochers.
Elizabeth McCulley
Stow
Obama’s steering toward the precipice
George Will’s Dec. 6 column, “Bewitched by the ‘cliff’ ,” summarizing the incomprehensible thinking portending the U.S. hitting the “bottom” after falling off the “fiscal cliff,” points to one undeniable conclusion: An arrogant President Obama is at the helm of the ship of state, steering at an ever-increasing speed toward certain wreckage against the rocky coastline of complete bankruptcy, from which this nation will never recover.
Worse yet, there are many who say that prospect is in fact his ghoulish goal. He wants to bring this nation down to Greece-like financial ruin. Then, he truly will be a kingly tyrant.
The evidence is all around. Most notable is his deception. He talks a good game plan, but it’;s the very opposite he always does. His hypocrisy is even now legendary.
Whom to blame, notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence garnered from the past four years? A mentally incompetent electorate who voted for Obama, spurred on by the liberal press, also mentally incompetent in endorsing Obama, knowing full well the facts as Will wrote them in his column.
Joseph McLeland
Munroe Falls
New label for liberal
As a proud liberal, I have been called many things by those from the right, for example, “mental defective,” “worthless” and “leftist kook.”
And these names are from a relative. Now I have a new name.
In a Dec. 7 letter to the editor (“Obama’s record of failure”), I, and others who believe as I do, were called the “tree-hugger vote.”
If that means I care about the air we breathe, the water we drink and even the survival of the planet, well, I kind of like it.
I have no name for the writer, as I tend to stay above name-calling.
Leo Johnson
Cuyahoga Falls
Questionable raise
About one month ago, Mayor Don Plusquellic stumped for an issue that will limit City Council raises.
Then he turned around and gave City Council President Marco Summerville a 189 percent increase by making him planning director. Is Plusquellic serious?
R.M. Buck
Akron
