I thoroughly enjoyed Wendy Lemus’s “Snapshots of the Past.” As a resident of Carpenter Village, I would add that Cary residents in the Carpenter area, still today, enjoy a tremendous luxury in being able to see cattle grazing and fields of small grains and soybeans growing, as we drive by them on a daily basis. City dwellers rarely have this quality of life opportunity. Naive city planners often think farms belong out in the country well beyond the daily routes of city residents. Therefore, cities don’t encourage nor provide incentives for existing family farms to stay closer for the benefit of all. Those of us in this part of Cary owe a debt of gratitude to those local farm families who have chosen to keep some or all of their land in farming because they love their land and they love what they do!

Milton Ganyard, Cary

Response to ‘Who pays taxes?’

In a recent guest column, Meg Gray Wiehe offered up perhaps the oldest and most stale page from the Marxist playbook: advocating for a more “progressive” tax system (“Who Really Pays Taxes in North Carolina?” April 29).

Ms. Wiehe attempts to exploit class envy veiled behind the mantra of “fairness.” Her article includes several numeric data points to support her argument, but failed to include some that readers may find interesting. According to the 2007 North Carolina Comprehensive Annual Report, the top 17.5 percent of income earners in the state contributed 69.5 percent of all income taxes paid in 2005. Further, the top 1.6 percent of taxpayers paid more than $2.5 billion in state income taxes alone, equivalent to roughly one-sixth of all General Fund tax revenue for that year.

Also missing from Ms. Wiehe’s calculations are the billions of dollars worth of public assistance received by the low-income households included in her comparison. Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, child care subsidies and a litany of other social programs significantly reduce the actual tax burden for low income households, but are not included in Wiehe’s estimates. Further, Wiehe leaves out the fact that people are highly mobile in terms of income. Today’s low-paid intern is tomorrow’s upper-middle class manager. Wiehe’s data merely represents a snapshot in time, and distorts the lifetime tax burden of today’s upwardly mobile society. Her recommendations would serve to expand government programs at the expense of economic growth, disproportionately harming the very same low income households she claims will be helped.

Brian Balfour, Civitas Institute, Raleigh

Green hypocrisy

[Re: “Shades of Green,” April 23 edition], I found this article absolutely appalling.

To say that this builder is recycling items from the house she is “greening” is hipocracy.

The windows and toilets and other “old” items are being recycled via donations to Habitat for Humanity. So the article is saying that it is OK, or even commendable, that these items will be reused rather than end up in the landfill.

For this person to give away old technology in the form of high water use toilets and poorly made windows to be used in some needy person’s new home makes me cringe.

Priscilla Bernstein, Cary

Postal Service food drive

Hello! It is that time of year again — Saturday, May 10 is the 16th annual “Stamp Out Hunger” food drive. It continues to be the largest, single-day food drive in the community and across the nation. This is the day we can all join together, each doing a small part towards the larger good.

To take part in this worthy cause, please place any nonperishable, nonbreakable food items in a bag at your mailbox on Saturday for your letter carrier to pick up. These food items will be gathered together and brought to the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina in Raleigh.

Your donations now and throughout the year help serve 400,000 people in this 34-county area. Soup kitchens, homeless shelters, emergency food pantries, day care centers and elderly care programs benefit through the distributions via the food bank.

Each year we try to surpass the previous year’s total volume of food collected. Please help in this important, needed service to our community.

Thank you very much for your generosity again this year!

Cary letter carriers

Shedding light on boys baseball

After having read the recent article in The Cary News [April 23, “Imps’ rally for Kiec comes up short,” 1B], I felt a burning need to shed some light.

The Cary High baseball coach was most definitely out for personal reasons but certainly not what was insinuated by that article. Anyone in close contact with the CHS baseball program knows the true reason the coach wasn’t there and had a head-shaking moment upon reading the article.

The team and its players are involved in a current battle of wills between staff, parents and outside influences. Players are being told that they should choose to play this summer on a school-sponsored league team as opposed to choosing between that team and playing on an American Legion team. By choosing other than what is run by their present high school coach is being trumpeted as disloyalty, risking your future with the high school team, being “anti-team.” It’s come to the point that some parents are joining up along with coaches to intimidate young, impressionable teenage men into either playing with the school-sponsored team or risking their future on a Cary High team.

Adults, take a look in the mirror and ask yourselves. Are you helping these teens to improve and admire themselves and their skills for what they are and what they could become or are you trying to instill your personal will to get what you want? Let’s not forget that teens often grow up with personality traits of those that surround them. These kids are being taught to be bullies and not the best baseball players they can be. Webster defines bullying as “to affect by means of force or coercion” and defines coaching as “instructing players in the fundamentals of a sport.” Which is the face in the mirror doing right now?

Mike Putnam, Cary