While the average citizen of Deerfield is struggling to make ends meet, with reduced salaries, increased costs of all goods and ridiculous taxes and insurance to live in our houses, you guys have the nerve to try to drain the well again?

Your latest proposal of the Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) should follow its acronym and be DROPPED from any further discussion before the citizens of Deerfield lose any respect we have left for you guys. We are not going to give you a chance at a million dollar retirement bonus!

You make more than any of us, you have pensions that have matches only on Wall Street, and now you come up with your own plan for a Golden Parachute, which will help make Deerfield one of the most expensive places to live in Florida.

It’s not enough that we have to foot the bill for your health insurance for years after your early retirement while you go on to other careers and other pensions. Now, you want us to let you work after you retire, collect your pension, while we continue to pay you to keep working.

You guys must have a lot of spare time on your hands while you sit in the firehouse, work out, study for pay increasing certifications and get ready for your real day job, like all of you have on the side during your days off.

Keep it up guys, eventually we will have new and responsible politicians in this city and your ride to riches will be over.

This city cannot continue to make fire fighters the highest paid employees in the entire city. Quite simply, the job does not deserve the kind of pensions, pay and continued extras that you and your very well run union keep getting out of this city.

I hope the people of this city wake up and demand a stop to this continued ridiculous compensation that keeps climbing and climbing to the sky!

Ron Coddington

Deerfield Beach

Vote for Sarah instead of Hillary?

Dear Editor:

It is incomprehensible to me that intelligent Americans who were strong supporters of Hillary Clinton (Democrat) will now switch their support to the Republican Party because John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate.

It is so obvious that she, another woman, would never have been chosen as our President in the event that anything untoward happens to John McCain. Even she and Obama’s running mate commented on the fact that Palin was chosen and said that Mr. Obama must be having regrets that he did not select Hillary Clinton as his running mate.

Palin was so obviously politically selected in order to appeal to all the disgruntled women voters. That is putting one’s political party ahead of the good of the country, and I cannot believe that Democratic women voters will switch parties on such inexperienced grounds.

Have they noted that Mr. Obama’s lack of experience in the “hallowed” machinations of Washington – once endlessly touted by Mr. McCain and the Republican party — is no longer an issue now that Sarah Palin, governor and devoted mother in Alaska, is a novice in that department?

As a resident, I can’t vote.

Eugenia Nascimento

Lighthouse Point

Thoughts on the economic downturn

Dear Editor:

The collapse of credit and the coming recession are tied more to anticipation of one event than to the sub-prime mortgage situation. That event is the coming election of Obama.

No successful businessman, businesswoman or investor is going to expand, hire people or invest in an economy, when we have been told in unequivocal terms that we are targeted for a discriminatory tax increase by the Democrats, and Obama, in particular. As soon as it became clear that Obama is likely to occupy the White House, we, who make $250K per household began to sell shares and pull in the reins. We have cancelled capital orders, curtailed discretionary spending and are seeking safe places to put our money. Our incentive to make more than $250k per year has been savaged by Obama. The drop in the stock market came immediately after the polls swung heavily to Obama.

The only hope of avoiding a recession is to restore conservative thinking and respect for the Capitalist system to Washington.

Why is this message not read in bold print in the news media?

Jerome Hartman, CPA

Deerfield Beach

10-23-08