Public school taxes make private schools unaffordable

When our kidswere growing up, wewould have loved to have sent them to a private school. Butwe couldn’t afford it. And every year, whether Iwasworking or not, we had to come up with our property taxes, which inWilmette are not cheap. Turns out most of them go to pay for our public schools.

Years ago, I proposed that people get a tax credit for private school expenses up to the amount that they would be paying on their property taxes for public schools. Nowthey want to give people vouchers, so that even poor people can send their kids to private schools. I can livewith that, but I do have a problem with a system where I have to contribute to public schools to the point that I can’t afford to sendmy kids to a private school.

I think of all the Catholic schools that have been closing over the years, and I amsure this is the primary reason. This has to change. Larry Craig, Wilmette

Trump and Kim’s ‘ foolhardiness’

North Korea’s Kim JungUn and Donald Trump seem in a foolhardiness contest. Kim saber- rattles, threatening to rain missiles, nucleartipped or not, on our Guam air base. Trump counters by promising not that our anti- missile missileswould foil that, but either retaliation or preemptive strikes including nuclearweapon readiness. The stakes are daunting.

WhileNorth Korea’s nuclear threat must be neutralized, going all- out nuclearwould makemuch of the Korean peninsula and surrounding sea into another radioactive, uninhabitable Chernobyl. Our nuclear bombs are 300 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. They could affect China and Japan. If it should come to that, on prevailing winds, radioactivity into the stratosphere could drift at least halfway around the planet, poisoning indiscriminately for thousands of years, unless Trump switches to conventional weapons. Though that would be the lesser tragedy, even a non- nuclearwarwould obliterate civilization as both countries knowit, with conventional artillery, missiles and air power already zeroed in on each other. A virtual mutual suicide pact.

The onus is on crisis- prone Kim, who thrives on threats that can no longer be dismissed. His brinkmanship and Trump’s volatility are a recipe for Armageddon. A nuclear holocaust is the ultimate threat but whose collateral damage unavoidably harms both receiver and sender, with no victory in the conventional sense. Pray the issue can be finessed without monumental tragedy and the ruination of our mother ship called planet Earth. Ted Z. Manuel, HydePark

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