Payroll lag is like pay cut
for underpaid teachers

I have spent a lifetime - 37 years - joyfully teaching the children of this island. Every year, I spend at least $1,000-2,000 out of my own pocket to buy things for my classroom.

I used to just buy the extras that I thought would enhance the children's educational experience. But now, because of funding cutbacks, I have to buy the basics: paper, pencils, paint, books, etc. All teachers do this if they possibly can. My own children complain because I buy things for the kids at school and not for them.

Now the government is cutting my salary by instituting the famous "payroll lag." That means that one of my paychecks will not come to me in February. However, I am still responsible for the deductions for taxes and health benefits for myself and my family that come out of that paycheck. That amounts to over $600 in my case.

What message does this send to public school teachers? It tells me that we are less important than a new convention center, highways, prisons, football teams and almost anything else that uses state money.

Annetta Kinnicutt

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Clinton’s re-election
speeds decline in virtue

With the re-election of Bill Clinton the subversion of classical virtues and traditional American values is complete. The results of this election clearly indicate that Americans, as a whole, no longer value such virtues as fidelity, honesty and integrity, ethics and morals.

How much more quickly will we justify and excuse vices in ourselves that we ignore and permit in our elected leaders? With this kind of ethos, Americans will certainly lose respect for life and the law, and our culture will become ever more coarse.

Bill Clinton may be building a bridge, but the monster that is waiting on the other side is terrifying, indeed.

Steven Lee Austin

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Congratulations to pols who
kept races clean

To all of those who ran for office, took the "high road" on the issues and won, I say congratulations! To those who elected to take the "low road" of mudslinging and lost, hopefully there's a lesson learned.

Martin Schiller

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And God created evolution, too

While I have always read Cal Thomas with pleasure, his Oct. 30 column absolutely astonished me. The case for the existence of evolution is so overwhelming that any thinking person must accept it as the pope has.

Saying that scientists and evolutionists deny the concept of God and Genesis and other Bible basics is not true. The work of paleontologists in the holy land frequently turns up evidence corroborating parts of the Old Testament.

Thomas quotes columnist Joseph Sobran, but fails to recognize a better choice, namely a church which holds firmly to its beliefs but is not locked into beliefs that are 5,000 years old. Has Thomas read about the life of Galileo and his problems with the church, which have only been finally resolved in our time? Does he still believe that the sun, moon and stars revolve around the earth?

God created us all and evolution is one of his creations, too. Does Thomas believe that all the massive evidence of evolution was created by God just to lead us astray? Would that not make our God duplicitous?

Clifford B. Terry

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Cal looks like a monkey
in criticism of evolution

Cal Thomas' column on the pope's endorsement of evolution shows his poor understanding of science.

For instance, Thomas questions the validity of the evolution theory by asking, "Was there a scientist present at the beginning?" It would be interesting to ask him, "Were you or anybody from the church present at the beginning" when God was busy laying the Earth's foundation?

Thomas found it repulsive that evolutionary scientists claim that we are related to monkeys. He also expressed the common fear that once the evolution theory replaces the Bible's account, there will be no purpose and no hope for human beings.

Whether we like being related to monkeys or not, it is not the job of scientists to assure us that their findings will bring good feelings. Nor is it their duty to assign meaning, value or purpose to natural processes.

We sometimes read that the eruption of our volcano means Madam Pele is angry and that the spreading of AIDS in our society is God's punishment for sinners. No scientist worth his salt would say things like that.

Yip-wang Law