Living off the dole
The city’s FreshStartPHL gives three months rental and moving expenses paid. Not a bad deal. What happens in the fourth month? We begin eviction. Which will probably take over a year. Even a better deal! Or do we let these people live off the dole for the rest of their life. And have City Council protect them. Bad program that will lead to landlords making it harder to rent or take their properties off the market. I always appreciated what I worked hardest for and most people don’t appreciate what was given to them after the initial excitement.
Richard Donofry
East Torresdale
Reversing our decline
Hard to tell what the next media hysteria will be about – cutting the federal budget? Putting tariffs on foreign trade? Deporting those kindly drug dealers?
You’d think the sky was falling.
Our national government is $37 trillion in debt. Yearly interest on the debt is now a trillion dollars, roughly the same as the total cost of Social Security payments.
Congress has not balanced its budget in 24 years. Our deficit in trade means we import $1.2 trillion a year more than we export. The sky fell long ago. You said nothing.
Our manufacturing industry and blue-collar workers have been devastated. Families are broken; birthrates have collapsed. Add the indignity of losing jobs to cheap, illegal labor.
Our most critical drugs are now made in China; our hi-tech chips are made in China-threatened Taiwan. You let all this slip away without complaint.
I ask one question. You, Congress, lobbyists, corporate media — where were you for the last 25 years? What did you do to stop it?
So, you scream now, when we finally have a president who is determined to do the hard things, and try to reverse our decline.
I know the “undoing” is going to be messy — but you spent a quarter-century at the D.C. party while the rest of America suffered the mess you created.
Now, at least have the grace to shut up.
Richard Iaconelli
Rhawnhurst
Crack down on ghost guns
On March 3, state Rep. Craig Williams reintroduced a bill creating a task force to prosecute prior convicted felons illegally in possession of guns in Philadelphia.
From the Philadelphia District Attorney Office website phillyda.org: The Gun Violence Task Force helps local, state and federal law enforcement agencies arrest and prosecute individuals who commit murders, shootings and robberies involving illegal firearms. This includes long-term investigations into the violence that ensues when two neighborhood groups engage in retaliatory shootings in targeted city hotspots.
The overview summary also includes firearms trafficking, straw purchases and illegal transfers of guns.
Gun Violence Task Force is to the point but it seems that it still does not get to the root of the problem, which are ghost guns. GVTF mainly is used to charge felons who committed a gun crime.
Removing violent felons from the streets is one approach. But the first problem is the illegal ghost guns that are on the streets in the first place.
Having these firearms from the city to the counties is the real issue. If the government can be more aggressively involved with removing all illegal weapons from the country then fewer gun violence heinous crimes would be committed.
Alim Howell
Upper Darby
Someday her mail will come
Since it’s a requirement to qualify for aging, I have to complain about the unreliability of the postal service, since it has become a huge problem. Can someone please explain why we seldom receive mail, why it’s never delivered to the correct address, constantly lost, leading us to pay late fees along with canceling checks that never arrive at their destination? I live in South Philly, part of a large city, with fast-moving cars, not on a mountain top where they ride horse-drawn wagons to the main town to collect the mail, which arrives once a month. I’m actually sick of it. It’s unfair that neighbors have to constantly ask each other, “Did you get mail,” since it should be an unquestionable normal everyday occurrence. The constant frustration only leads me to make a disgusting Snow White singing debut blurting out my off-key rendition of, “Someday my mail will come.” Then what’s up with a mailman roaming around lost, in the dark outside our houses like some creep shining a cell phone flashlight on our addresses? He’s obviously a fill-un unfamiliar with the neighborhood, how are we supposed to know who he is? I feel like it’s a visit from offseason Santa, since all day we anticipate the bills finally arriving on time for once, and lo and behold come morning, they magically appear in the mail slot like an anticipated Christmas present. The problem is, it’s not funny, the system needs a severe overhaul that cannot wait. Look, it’s easy, get your act together because if we the people have to constantly do your job sorting out, delivering the mail that is not delivered correctly, we might just begin negotiating a salary with paid vacation, for doing the job you are meant to do. I’m sure we can do better than this and the community will thank us for it.
Maria D’aponte
South Philadelphia
