The government does not allow the pyramid system because the person on top received most of the money and benefits.

In the 1970s, as a vendor working at various government sites, I found that the pyramid system was working in the employment system. The system was very simple: The more people working under you, the higher the pay for the managers and supervisors.

Today the system is working in our local, state and federal governments. This is why our government is bloated with too many employees.

It is time to stop the pyramid system in our government. We need to …

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Is our government too big? You might think so when you listen to some political speeches. But In fact, we need big government despite its cost, for all those situations where the job is just too big, too messy or unlikely to produce profits.

One prominent example is the current East Coast flooding disaster which is all three of the above. Is Wall Street or a bank going to rush in to help those people whose homes and lives have been destroyed?

Private enterprise has its merits, but so does government. We must not forget that, especially when we’re preparing …

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In this election, we are hearing a lot of debate about the role of the federal government in our lives. Five months ago I was diagnosed with cancer. My treatment has given me a new perspective on this issue.

Taxol, one of my chemotherapy drugs, originally came from the Pacific yew, a tree found in our Northwest forests. For its discovery, we can thank two government employees in particular – a U.S. Department of Agriculture botanist who collected bark from a yew near Packwood, and a National Cancer Institute researcher who found that extracts from the yew’s bark could kill …

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Leonard Pitts, Jr., writes (column, 5-13) that he is surprised that in this year 0f 2012, conservative Republicans are still debating issues such as women’s contraception, the Civil Rights Act, and voting rights, to mention a few. Why is he so surprised? The “United” States has an overblown government of Democrats and Republicans who can’t get their acts together on behalf of and for the benefit of the American people. We are being played like a ping pong ball, but let not your heart be troubled. The Obama re-election team’s new slogan is “Forward.” That’s right, more of the …

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I wanted to thank The News Tribune for placing the viewpoint of John Kass of the Chicago Tribune directly under the weekly piece from Katie Baird.

As Baird makes her arguments, week after week for more and bigger government, it was great to see the description by Kass of just what happens when unbridled and unfunded government goes unchecked.

I hope fans of the Baird viewpoint continued reading Wednesday to see just what happens when government growth continues to surge both in good times and bad. I can only hope Washingtonians will see the light.

Re: “Government spending is the problem” (letter, 10-30).

The author seems to have a cogent point. Using those numbers, it is easy to conclude that spending is the problem because both spending and revenues are higher after President George W. Bush.

What he left out of the picture were the enormous expenditures caused by the two wars that Bush put us in and any money used to bail out the big banks at the end of the Bush administration. Bush saddled us with enormous debt without a way to pay for it. He disingenuously separated it from the national …

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I’m sitting here sorrowful – and angry. Seems like our government of the people, by the people, and for the people is a USTABE – that is, it used to be something different.

Never before in my 80-some years have I witnessed the bickering, partisan ugliness over vital issues that the current bunch in our nation’s capital have been displaying. I’m a proud ex-federal employee with more than 30 years in honest service to the Air Force and Veteran’s Administration. As such, my service was often defined by what the politicians would allow, but I seldom, if ever, doubted that …

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Our dysfunctional government and the people we’ve elected – both Democrat and Republican – can’t lead or work together. This country is in big trouble.

But wait, there’s some good news: The billionaire and millionaire playboys of the NFL have come to an agreement on how to split up their loot, and there will be football this year. Don’t mention that most of us can only afford to watch it on TV, if then.

What’s wrong with this picture? There’s a pervasive greed at the top that’s bringing this once great nation down. Where are the human values that were …

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