Letters: The poor’s new ally -- the GOP

Re “The GOP discovers inequality,” Opinion, Jan. 22

The usually insightful Doyle McManus describes how Republicans have begun to shift their message, if not their actual practices, toward acknowledgment of the bitter harvest of inequality. At the same time, he writes, the GOP is hardly ready to become the party of “big government.”

Excuse me, but in the states and in Congress, the GOP has advocated for sticking government’s fingers into women’s bodies and into everybody’s bedroom. Republicans have passed or attempted to pass dozens of laws mandating drug testing for welfare recipients and government employees — but not legislators or officials, of course.

The GOP is for big government, as it long as it encompasses its social agenda.

Marvin J. Wolf

Mar Vista Heights

We have been fighting poverty through government programs since the mid-1960s. We have little progress to show for it, just huge numbers of government workers accomplishing little for the tax money it costs us.

Remember the definition of insanity? We clearly need a new approach.

Let’s cut the government middlemen out and just give direct subsidies to the poor, with a cap. If some spend it all on a big-screen TV, cable and beer instead of healthy food and educational supplies, too bad; they can go to their friends and neighbors and churches for help — the people who are paying for their subsidies in the first place.

It might actually change some behavior, in both givers and receivers. Good intentions certainly have not, at least not in a good way.

Jeffrey C. Briggs

Hollywood

Now that the GOP has discovered inequality, what will it do to remedy it? I have an age-old suggestion: Without rationalization, hypocrisy or phony excuses, simply take from the rich and give to the poor. Try it; you may even like it.

Ronald Rubin

Topanga

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