To the editor:

Thursday’s paper carried the news that Bush and the Pentagon desire an additional $190 billion to continue their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That would be over $600 per U.S. citizen (man, woman and child). Those amounts, when added to the previous allocations, total $760 billion (more than $2,500 per person). On TV Wednesday night, I saw Defense Secretary Robert Gates imploring passage of the funding bill without the normal debate. How audacious!

Of course, most children, having no income, will pay nothing, and many adults, having too little income to pay taxes, likewise will pay nothing or at least far less than a significant amount. That leaves the rest of us with a whopping bill.

These are the same government people who refuse to recognize that today’s minimum wage is far inadequate. Any employee paid at that level makes less than $12,000 per year. Their share of the above would be approximately 40 percent of their wages when one considers that more than half of the population (the children, the aged and the infirm) do not work at all.

Something is really, really wrong. Can you guess what that might be?

Lawrence Bodle,

Lawrence