Newspaper carriers; Senate deals; tarmac wait times; college tuition.

Carriers’ personal touch

Re “Dad delivered for L.A.,” Opinion, Dec. 22

Each morning when I walk down 22 stone steps to street level, where my copy of The Times is delivered, I am aware that my link to the newspaper isn’t found on a list of editors or familiar bylines, but in the person who brings the paper to me.

It’s always there by 5 a.m. Sometimes I am too. Wearing my bathrobe, I move back into the house, spread the paper on the breakfast nook table and start reading. My day has begun. My mind wanders the globe. My spirit is awakened by stories that awaken my otherwise isolated self to encroaching realities.

I love that this link is human.

Let me say to the newspaper carrier who has become a daily figure in my life: Thank you.

Malcolm Boyd
Los Angeles

Thanks so very much for this dear essay. We think it is a wonderful mystery that over the years of having our paper delivered every single day without fail, we have never caught a glimpse of our carrier! We joke that The Times is delivered from above.

At the end of each year we appreciate a card from our carrier, so that we can send a tip to someone who works to bring us The Times, an absolute necessity to our day.

Suzanne Ferrell and Tim Waddell
Thousand Oaks

Thanks for bringing back many warm memories of our days as a Times carrier family.

My father-in-law took on a contract to deliver the Times in 1969. My first husband and I were newlyweds; he took up a route, and I would go with him.

When carriers called in sick, the whole family pitched in. One night every carrier called in sick. My former husband threw two routes; my father-in-law took one; my sister-in-law took another, and my mother-in-law and I took the last.

These are now treasured memories for me. I learned many useful things helping the family deliver papers, but the best thing was that fresh, warm doughnuts are calorie-free after you have spent three hours running up and down apartment steps delivering papers.

Sharon Wells
Huntington Beach

Please make this piece required reading for your delivery force. I have asked many times to have my paper placed on my porch, 20 feet from the sidewalk. But never do these people do it. Rain or shine, the paper is at the end of the driveway, sometimes on the sidewalk. Puddles seem to be targets. I don’t even bother calling anymore if the paper is missing or sodden.

I delivered papers for the Brooklyn Eagle when I was a young teenager. No trucks, just 130 papers in a bag over the shoulder -- two bags on Sundays. You walked your route. People insisted on deliveries inside storm doors, up steps, through mail slots. Leaving a paper out on the street would have gotten you fired immediately.

In the middle of a recession, one would have thought The Times would have sharpened its service and price. It is not Otis Chandler’s Times anymore.

James P. Kelly
Santa Ana

Let the majority rule

Re “What’s the deal?,” Editorial, Dec. 22

Your editorial rightly finds fault with the legislative process and implicitly with senators who extracted special deals as the price of their vote for healthcare reform.

But who is really at fault? Republicans, who offer no real alternative but insist on filibustering ad nauseam to make their political points. Without their filibuster, none of the Democratic senators would have had the power to extract those special deals.

With the Republicans’ united front of “No,” Congress has become as unwieldy as the California Legislature. The filibuster has outlived its purpose. It should be discarded in the simple name of “majority rules.”

Ken Goldman
Beverly Hills

If Sens. McCain et. al are really upset about the special deals needed to get the 60th vote, and not just trying to score political points, all they have to do is to pledge to end the filibuster and let the majority rule.

Then the special deals will crumble like sand.

Jack Wimberley
Malibu

Watching Tuesday’s televised Senate debate over healthcare reform, listening to Republican after Republican express outrage over the pre-Christmas-sale quality of the deals the Democrats cut to get their 60 votes, I am reminded of Captain Renault’s famous line from Casablanca:

“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”

Bart Braverman
Los Angeles

Flying the unfriendly skies

Re “U.S. caps tarmac waits at 3 hours,” Dec. 22

Once again, the Obama administration shows its utter disdain for corporate rights by capping waiting time on the tarmac to three hours. Is there no end to big government’s intrusion into the rights of individuals to contract?

When you buy a ticket to fly, it is not unreasonable to expect delays. A few hours parked in a sweltering plane with overflowing toilets, no ventilation and no food or water is more than offset by the anticipated exhilaration of flight. What’s next? Will big government mandate that airlines have to provide you with an individual seat? That each seat be equipped with a flotation device?

These onerous regulations simply increase the cost to us, the consumer. Airlines know best how to run an airline. If we just let big business alone, they will surely do the right thing. After all, spirited competition in the free market keeps costs down and efficiency up.

Howard S. Blum
Thousand Oaks

Veteran airline passengers have known for decades that the rules of air travel have almost always favored the airlines over the traveler.

A savvy traveler once quipped that the sign at the entrance of Hell from Dante’s Inferno, “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter,” should be posted above jetways. Once the door of the plane has closed, paying passengers have no rights. They are merely cattle, to be fed tiny bags of salted cat treats, with urine-sample-sized cups of liquid, as they hurtle through the skies in a metal tube.

And what air traveler couldn’t appreciate the sincere, service-oriented response from the airlines to the new regulations, as The Times reports: “The airline industry has opposed the rules, saying they will . . . cancel flights to avoid fines -- creating further hardships for travelers.” Same as it ever was!

Jon Leonoudakis
Northridge

Hard choices for college tuition

Re “Higher education tests family finances,” Dec. 21

Stories like those in this article are both powerful and unfortunate. Most often, students are simply not aware that financial aid offices can revise their eligibility based on sudden changes in family income.

California State University campuses are among the most affordable universities in the nation, and they offer some of the best financial aid options. In 2009-10, more than half of all CSU undergraduates received grants or fee waivers that covered their entire university fee. The federal stimulus bill also included major improvements in federal financial aid. On average, the university fee is offset dollar-for-dollar with grants for financially needy families with incomes less than $75,000. For those families with $75,000 to $180,000 in annual income, available grants and tax credits exceed this latest increase.

I urge all students to apply for financial aid; and if your family’s financial circumstances have changed, let us help.

Allison G. Jones
Los Angeles
The writer is the CSU assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs.

So Emma Hernandez feels like the university and state leaders have “let us down.”

She is a former migrant worker who is now living on retirement and disability funding from her job as program coordinator with the Los Angeles Housing Authority, with two kids in college. She is “not sure” they can afford tuition for their third child to attend UC Berkeley.

She feels she and other parents in the same predicament should be “role models for the younger generation.” Yes, lest those kids forget that the state owes all of them a higher education, a government job and a juicy retirement.

How about modeling a little gratitude and some individual responsibility?

Kristy McTaggart
Costa Mesa

I thought people had learned hard lessons from the recession: Don’t spend money you don’t have, and if you can’t afford it, don’t buy it. Why does all that go out the door when the subject is college?

Instead of missing house payments, parents should be telling their kids that they can’t afford to pay for full-time college. If students decide to go deeply into debt, they are deciding to live beyond their means.

When are they going to learn that most people can’t get everything they want (especially when the state is broke)?

Matthew Okada
Pasadena