Putting Refunds to Use

Lately, I’ve been asking myself what one individual can do in the face of the right-wing juggernaut, and I’ve come up with a modest plan. When I get my $400 child tax credit check (I should get one, I make more than $30,000 a year), I will put it back into the economy in the ways I think are most important -- donations to the ACLU, various peace organizations, Planned Parenthood, the local library, anyone who’s fighting the good fight.

Regarding the USA Patriot Act: I’m going to the local library and bookstore to find and rent or purchase the most subversive titles in the catalog. (Don’t worry, I won’t do anything; I probably won’t even read them. I’m not into that kind of thing.) But if there is a book out there called “Become a Terrorist in 10 Easy Steps,” I will soon own it.

I am a 52-year-old wife and mother and a 30-year member of the Republican Party. But I no longer recognize what that party has become. It’s time to change my affiliation. Maybe I’ll skip right past Democrat to Green or Libertarian. Anyway, you’ll have to excuse me. I need to start the search on Amazon.

Jan Schneider

South Pasadena

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Instead of a tax credit for having children, there should be an extra tax for having children. Each additional person uses schools, roads and public transportation. Each additional person pollutes and creates more trash for landfills. Each additional person creates a heavier burden on libraries, fire departments and the police.

Logically, then, a family with more children should pay more taxes than a smaller family because the larger family consumes more public (i.e., tax-funded) goods than a smaller family.

Aaron Friedland

Los Angeles

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Re “Share the Benefits and the Burdens,” Commentary, June 2: What a refreshing piece from former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo! It’s so good to hear from him again. He has a brilliant and common-sense approach to the economy (tax cuts, unemployment, deficit and budget), health care, Social Security and Medicare, environmental protection, education and economic help to states.

And Cuomo says it like it is -- the present administration has broken one campaign promise after another. He says, “We made this country great by coming together and sharing benefits and burdens for the good of the whole nation.” Mario Cuomo for president!

Shirlee Browne

Redondo Beach