Letter: How we are failing our future generations

Friday, Dec. 14, 2007 | 7:25 a.m.

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, in his commentary in Saturday's Las Vegas Sun ("Iraq's real price in the trillions"), wrote: Priorities don't get much more twisted. A country that can't find the money to provide health coverage for its children, or to rebuild the city of New Orleans, or to create a first-class public school system, is flushing whole generations worth of cash into the bottomless pit of a failed and endless war."

What a powerful indictment of our current administration, aided and abetted by its puppets in Congress whose priorities seem to have ignored the health and education of our children and the subsequent long-lasting effects.

How can the majority of these children, our greatest treasure and bereft of those two vital necessities in their early lives, become our future wage earners with careers as industrial and business giants, scientists, mathematicians, educators, professors, military members and other future leaders to help regain our great status among nations? Our current politicians can't seem to realize their folly in failing to provide properly for our future generations; I am ashamed for them.

I am not an alarmist, but it seems to me that we are no longer a great industrial nation - our dollar has sunk to record lows and we are drowning in a quagmire of debts from which it appears we will never recover. Are there any politicians left who will stand up and be counted to take appropriate action?

Leopold A Potsiadlo, Las Vegas