Letters to the Editor

Jobless benefits shrinkage

In a Dec. 17 Commentary column titled “Jobless benefits shrinkage,” Bruce Bartlett complained about my suggestion that allowing the extended unemployment benefits program to expire “borders on being immoral.” Is giving every multimillionaire a $100,000 tax break while giving the unemployed the cold shoulder over the Christmas holiday immoral? You bet it is.

Mr. Bartlett’s column also suggested that current economic conditions do not warrant another extension of unemployment benefits. However, the facts say otherwise. Unemployment is higher today than when the extended-benefits program was established in March 2002. The percentage of jobless workers exhausting their regular unemployment benefits without finding work has reached its highest level on record. Finally, our economy has 2.35 millionfewer jobs today than 2 years ago, leaving three unemployed workers looking for every available job.

Mr. Bartlett concludes by saying that ending jobless benefits may slightly reduce the unemployment rate and therefore “defuse it as a political issue next year.” I am not sure how to describe purposely hurting struggling families now in order to advance political goals next year, but it certainly is not what I would call “moral.”

REP. CHARLES RANGEL

New York Democrat

Washington

PETA’s anti-fur campaign

Please allow me to respond to your Inside the Beltway item about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ new anti-fur flier (“Animal Cracker,” Nation, Wednesday). Because our flier exposes the extreme violence of the fur industry, we are not distributing it to young children — we’re handing it out only to people at least 13 years old or directly to their mothers. However, the message of compassion is one that children of all ages need to hear.

As a mother myself, I do everything I can to teach my daughter that cruelty and violence are wrong. That’s why I cannot understand why any parent would ever choose to wear fur.

Perhaps the fur wearers don’t know that animals caught in the wild for their fur face days of agony in traps, tearing flesh and breaking bones in a struggle to get free. On fur farms, animals spend their entire lives confined to cramped, filthy cages, constantly pacing back and forth from stress and boredom. They are poisoned, gassed, strangled or electrocuted.

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