You advocate taking away certain

rights that we as Americans enjoy just because of the amount of one's

salary. Read your own article again. You don't address even one item of

contention that the pilots have addressed in their ongoing efforts to

negotiate with management. You, sir, sound like a jealous little kid.

You want to dictate what you deem to be a reasonable salary for these

workers, based on what? Your opinion? Then what? On your salary?

Years ago when I first started

teaching Sunday school in the Single Men's Class at First Baptist (none

of us were single but all of our wives worked somewhere else in the church

during this time and we preferred to call ourselves the "Abandoned

Men's Class), which was more of a therapy group at times, I started the

habit of keeping a prayer list. Extremely useful as a tool for caring

about other people.

In one case it helped me to

completely turn my attitude around toward another worker, from an attitude

of wanting to fight with the gentleman to an attitude of caring how he

was getting along in life. I even contributed money for him to help pay

the hospital bills on his then ailing, now deceased wife.

On one Sunday morning, as we

shared about updates on people that we had on our prayer list, a pilot

among us asked that we keep him in our prayers. It seems that the company

he was working for was having troubles and had made the decision to cut

everyone's salary by 40 percent! Forty percent?

I started to compute what that

would do to my budget at home and quickly came to the realization that

I would have to sell my house and move somewhere else. Forty percent!

Wow, we all sympathized with him over his dilemma, tried to console him

and even asked if he was going to need any help in raising funds to keep

things afloat.

And that's when the hard news

hit us, he stated that with the 40 percent cut, it would knock him down

to $140,000 a year. We're talking 10 years ago, 140,000 dollars. With

a huge grin on my face and putting my arms together in front of me to

form a big "T" for "time-out," I said, "Whoa,

bubba, wait a minute here, you want me to put you on my prayer list because

you're going to get knocked down to making only twice as much as me?!

Give me a break!"

So you see the immediate problem

I had with feeling any empathy for this guy, right? And that's when one

of the other members of the class, a high school coach, added that it's

all relative, Buzz. No matter what the salary, people find themselves

in situations that create hardships in their lives. Some of these hardships

we have no control over. Others, we fight and work through with the legal

tools available to us all, because that's what this country is all about,

my friend. The equal opportunity for us all to pursue what we believe

is right and just.

And in the end? Because we

are a system of supply and demand and we do have to take more into account

than just our own opinions, life will go on and one way or another, business

will continue.

Two things: 1. If you don't

have the intestinal fortitude to give your name, stop your whiney little

crybaby bellyaching and shut up! 2. Who died and made you king? Democratic

republic! Look it up and read. We all have the same rights to pursue justice

through the laws provided by our representatives. The pilots have done

nothing illegal, so where's the beef?

Buzz Clarke

Peachtree City

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