Give it up for Stephen Ross
Kudos to the Palm Beach Post and USA Today for reporting in its Dec. 18 edition the recent and generous $8 million gift by local real estate developer Stephen Ross to a newly formed nonprofit, Related Together, which will help West Palm Beach children prepare for and attend college. He previously contributed nearly $400 million to the University of Michigan and $100 million to a Detroit nonprofit.
All too often we read about millionaires and billionaires supposedly “not paying their fair share” of taxes. Wealthy individuals like Mr. Ross don’t store their wealth under a mattress or bury it in their backyard – instead, they contribute heavily to charities and reinvest investment profits in other business activities which provide jobs and opportunities that benefit everyone. We are very fortunate to have investors like Mr. Ross in our community and country.
Gerald Farmer, Ocean Ridge
Don’t kill credit card points
Why is Congress trying to pass a law, the Durbin-Marshall credit card bill, that would eliminate travel rewards, cash back and other credit card rewards?
Being on a fixed income for many years, these points have enabled me to visit my family without incurring cash expenses. Without these rewards, as the article points out, there would be less tourism in Florida and elsewhere.
What would be the advantage of eliminating a program that benefit so many people?
Ilean Guthartz, West Palm Beach
Israel’s albatross
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has done enough damage: Hamas’s Palestinian people as well as the Israeli people are suffering the scars of war. No one can erase an ideology which will live in the minds of Palestinians and is passed along from generation to generation.
The ideology left by Hamas will be long remembered, while its henchmen bide their time in the safety of Jordan, Lebanon and Iran, their stomachs filled with expensive dinners. This constant destruction of Gaza will be Israel’s albatross.
Robert Langer, Palm Beach Gardens
Who’s intrusive?
A writer wrote that the GOP was for less intrusion into the lives of people, in Saturdays column. That is the furthest from the truth. Most of the GOP support intrusion into the lives of women and their doctors’ decisions on how near death a woman has to be to have an abortion, whether or not she has to carry a dying baby to term.
More on abortion rights:Delray Beach mother: I’m living proof why abortion rights are essential | Opinion
The GOP is unwilling to help take care of children born with extreme life-altering birth defects but they want to force others to do so who can neither afford to or are physically able to do so. These are all personal decisions. The same is true for transgender children and their care. The GOP are not medical people, to make decisions for parents, doctors and their children. They want to end rights for gays and others who do not meet their criteria. They want to remove books they don’t like from the library because parents might be incapable of deciding what their kids can read or not read.
Vote, if you don’t want the government deciding on when and whether to have a baby, who you or your family members will marry or what books we can read and more.
Janet Zimmerman, Boynton Beach
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