The Democrats are saying the Build Back Better bill and child tax credits "would substantially end child poverty." But, it isn't the children who are in poverty. It's their parent(s).There are far too many people who got and wasted taxpayer money last year. Giving people more money (making believe it's for their kids) is not going to improve matters. Government assistance should be a temporary service, people go through rough times and need help. Able bodied adults should work.

We are in the point in our society where you can find generations of families who have never been off the government handouts. This is what government wants, a shift from freedom and independence to a cradle-to-grave entitlement society.

Joe Manchin has it right. Prove that you are working first before you get some relief.

Child care credit needs to be based on earnings and not another welfare payment. Encouraging able-bodied Americans to stay home and receive government welfare is wrong. Such credits should be regarded as a reward to those who get out of bed in the morning, get the kids ready for school or daycare and go to work. We now have 11 million job openings in the U.S. and would increase exponentially because some parents would choose to stay home instead of working.

Our country was built on a strong work ethic. Families, including the children, contributed to their own well-being, as well as the country's.

I totally admire and agree with the hope expressed in the recent letter “Peace through communication.”

Unfortunately, communication only has a chance if both parties speak the same language. And until the delusional MAGA crowd accepts the standard definition of words like evidence, proof, truth and fact, any attempt at communicating with them is a waste of time. You have a better chance of having a meaningful conversation with an aardvark.

Jay Light, Fort Myers Beach

Why must we continue having letters from people who say "the election was stolen"? Where time after time there has been proof that this is not true. Didn't their parents ever teach them some win, some lose? As a mother of nine children in all sports, football, basketball, baseball, softball, band, cheerleading, they had to know that some people cheat, lie and believe they won when actually they didn't. Now these are supposedly grown men acting like little children believing they won when they know they didn't.

Ex-president Jimmy Carter has to be the happiest person in Georgia. President Biden broke his record for incompetency in one year whereas it took Carter four years including giving away the Panama zone to accomplish the same. 

I am a Cold War veteran. We veterans stood up to defend the United States against world communist domination. During that time there was the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis (which brought us within 18 minutes of nuclear war with the USSR), the Kennedy assassination and the Johnson Vietnam blunder.

This was a waste of my time as I could have been spending my time in the corporate world making my life easier.

As it is now I have a president who is a wimpy China communist sympathizer who does not have the guts to stand up for the USA on the world stage.

Inflation is running at levels that younger people in this country have never seen, The Federal Reserve has decided to stop pouring more money into the monetary system. There seems to be agreement, and historical facts, that raising interest rates will help to slow inflation. Can anyone explain to me why the Federal Reserve is just "slowing" its purchases of bonds and mortgages? They plan to stop by March. That is a quarter of the year. Why didn't they just stop doing this at the December meeting? What would have happened? Interest rates would have gone up a little. Isn't that the whole objective? While they diddle along, inflation will continue and possibly get even worse.

In response to the editorial “America needs a better plan than NATO expansion,” Michael O’Hanlon has completely bought into not stirring the Russian bear. He totally ignored the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, which the United States, along with Great Britain and Russia, signed. Ukraine at the time was the world’s third largest nuclear power. In return for giving up its nuclear arsenal, Ukraine was guaranteed protection against any border attack. Where is that guarantee today? Of course no one wants a war in Europe but by not standing up to Putin and his dream of returning to a Soviet power, the U.S. will allow Putin to bite off more of Ukraine piece by piece. We must stand for democracy and the will of the Ukrainian people to be a fully independent democratic country. Perhaps the only way for Ukraine to be supported would be to rebuild a strong defensive nuclear arsenal once more.

I was very pleased to see this paper print in its Dec. 19 issue, an alternative to the usual climate change doomsday stories. While the usual suspects (those who see the end nearing from climate issues) will pick and choose the data that fits their fatalistic narrative, Ms. Tubb presented data and facts that we rarely see. For instance, she references the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) article which is chock full of data. It’s worth reading the full report.

Have any catastrophic climate change prediction come true? I can’t think of any.  Politicians and the media are arm in arm in predicting the end of the world if we don’t act immediately. They reference tornadoes, hurricanes, the intensity of thunderstorms and flooding as though they are actually related to climate change. No facts, just stories. 

Ms. Tubb rightly asks some serious questions: “What is the pace of future warming, and do we have trustworthy tools to make educated guesses? Why is the climate pre-1850 so preferred such that policies by global warming catastrophists point to it as a target for policy? What is the “ideal” temperature?” I would also ask, how do we maintain the ideal temperature?

If climate change catastrophe is really in our future, will the trillions of dollars that some politicians and others are willing to throw at it actually work? It’s another question to ask.

A recent letter wrote about Paid Family Leave which is a fine idea but she also wrote that the government should pay for the Family Leave. The government does not earn money, the money they distribute is taxpayers' money so in reality it is the taxpayers who would be responsible for Paid Family Leave. Why is it that not one politician or political party be it Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal is putting the burden of soft infrastructure on corporations. Our politicians have allowed corporate American to get away with cutting out pensions, health care, sick leave, even in some cases vacation. These same politicians are on the news circuit complaining about corporate greed. Do something about it. Do not expect the U.S. taxpayer to foot the bills.