Letters to the Editor

What You Say

LOSERS ALL AROUND

DROP is probably, on balance, a loser, but on balance, so is your article [Cover Story, "The Billion Dollar Boondoggle," Ralph Cipriano, April 22]. The city doesn't lose the money that is paid to people who stay at work while their pension accumulates because if they left, someone would replace them at a similar salary. Indeed, if they leave early, we save their higher salary in exchange for the lower salary paid by someone with less experience. The person you vilify the most, Council President Anna Verna, would, if she retired, most definitely be replaced by another council president earning the same salary. One way or another, a salary will be paid.

And you only note in passing that everyone in DROP has their ultimate pension payment frozen at the level it's at when they enter DROP. So four years of work credit is canceled, along with four years of salary increases that would normally go into the pension calculation. These folks get DROP, but they also get lower pensions for the rest of their lives.

Yes, the value of the pension fund has gone down, but that's mainly due to the robber barons on Wall Street, not DROP and those greedy city workers. Many of these workers may have saved a little only to see those savings get pillaged at the other end. So almost everyone has been screwed, including the taxpayers, but you've got the wrong villain.

I am a Tea Party sympathizer from the Philly suburbs. I grew up in San Francisco reading alternative weeklies, so I fully expected what I read to reflect the urban and liberal viewpoint on the whole Tea Party movement [Soapboxer, "Liberty Herself," Jeffrey C. Billman, April 15]. However, I was very pleased to read your intelligent thoughts on what the Tea Party movement is all about. You dispelled the caricatures in favor of an honest analysis and I appreciate that.

I would tell you, though, that it isn't cultural change (or President Obama's black heritage) I fear. What concerns me and prompted my involvement in politics is that both Republicans and Democratic spend way beyond our means. One other thought: The Tea Party isn't really about creating a viable third party. From my perspective, we want to pressure our elected representatives to rein in spending. Republicans at least nominally claim to represent this perspective, which is why I support them.