The real nightmare senior citizens face

We have been reading both sides of the teacher/school administrator raise and salary issues ad nauseum.

I'd like to point out the financial nightmare we senior citizens are going through.

I am on Social Security to which I paid into the system for 50 years.

This, by the way is not tax-free income. I pay regular income tax on 85 percent of the gross amount I receive.

The tax on this income plus expenses for Medicare Part B, Medicare Supplement, Medicare Rx insurance and the amount we have to save each month just to be able to pay our property taxes, accounts for 75 percent of the total spendable income.

With the remaining 25 percent, we have to pay for the car, car insurance, gasoline, maintenance; food, clothes, gas, electric, phone, non-covered medical expenses, home insurance and maintenance, etc.

Social Security will increase 2.3 percent for 2009. However, the additional costs for property taxes and medical insurance will wipe that out and leave us to deal with higher costs for all other necessary expenses to maintain some decent standard of life.

I can't strike. I can send a letter of protest to my state representatives that I'm sure they will consider after they vote themselves another raise and make sure their "pork" expenditures are passed.

No matter what they say, it is hard for me to believe some big change has occurred and our plight has suddenly become as important as their personal agendas.

Unfortunately, by the time they actually do something about it (if they ever do) increasing property taxes will force many of us to sell our homes; and the antiquated and unrealistic method used by the government to calculate real cost-of-living increases that directly affect seniors will eventually create a much larger group of poor seniors.

A group of which I may become a part.

We seniors are in a giant financial trap. A nightmare in which a basic quality of life for which we have worked all these years is dependent upon a bunch of politicians on the one hand and a bunch of people with insatiable appetites for the monies we are paying in taxes.

Len Brauer

Palatine

A challenge for Rob Sherman

If Rob Sherman is bent to remove crosses from government properties, let him try all the National cemeteries and then answer to servicemen's mothers and wives.

Ben Nejdl

Rolling Meadows

Nobel Committee doesn't honor 'fads'

Yes, my fellow reader from Prospect Heights found several more items to be thankful for as citizens of the U.S.

But he feels global warming is just a fad, a media hype.

Most of us are aware of the Nobel prizes that are awarded to people who have made valuable contributions to the "good of humanity." As I recall, one of those was given to an American very recently, in recognition of his work re: global warming.

Do you really think the Nobel committee would honor a promoter of a "fad?"

This reader continues to wonder what is happening to the icebergs, the homes of the polar bears and why we all carry water bottles with us because we fear dehydration.

Please support "the greening of America," not the continued destruction of our beautiful country.

Patricia D. Hermann

Arlington Heights