Ride for missing children worthy of coverage

Thank you so much for the wonderful coverage of the Ride for Missing Children. ("Biking 100 miles for missing kids," June 4)

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and NYSUT share a most important interest — the safety of our children.

I, along with everyone involved with the Ride and NCMEC, are thankful for this coverage, which will help to raise the awareness of NYSUT members, their families and students about child safety and exploitation. Thank you, NYSUT, for "Helping to make our children safer ... one child at a time." Please consider joining us next May as either a rider or volunteer.

Robert Welch Jr.
Labor Relations Specialist
NYSUT Utica Regional Office

No to the taxing of health benefits

Congress is seeking a way to fund universal health coverage and is having a supposedly hard time in finding revenue sources. Thus, many are looking for a revenue source in the taxing of health benefits. This would be a great financial burden on the middle class and in violation of President Obama's pledge to decrease taxes for the middle class.

What is not said about taxing of employer-provided health benefits is the fact that in contract negotiations with employers, employees chose tax-free health benefits over other benefits. It would be unjust and unfair to tax health benefits since employees gave up benefits to secure the tax-free benefit.

Working people are feeling the brunt of the economic meltdown as well as the burden of taxation. We need to let Congress know, in no uncertain terms, that we are absolutely opposed to the taxing of health benefits.

Abe Levine
New York City

Torture is immoral, irrational ... and illegal

There are many times in our lives when we are faced with a decision that will test the very fabric of our morality as a human being. One such case is the recent expose of the waterboarding torturing of prisoners in the American prison in Cuba.

In essence, the argument was and still is that the torturing was done to extract "priceless" information that would protect, defend and guard innocent American civilians in homeland America from terrorist attacks.

The facts speak for themselves: Almost every military spokesperson has referred to waterboarding as torture; almost every professional and expert interrogator has stated that waterboarding does not extract useful information and destroys the victim mentally, physically and emotionally. Then why use it?

The idea that we must torture to protect our nation and its innocent civilians is immoral, irrational and illegal. Torture is used to destroy another human being, and the person who orders or condones torture is destroyed in a different way.

Those who are tortured are destroyed mentally, physically and emotionally. Those who use torture are destroyed morally, ethically, legally and spiritually. Once the decision to torture another human being is made, those who condone and direct it move farther away from their humanity, morals, ethics and spirituality.

Francis Gentile
Dobbs Ferry