Budget cuts are hurting the working man but not the prison inmates

This is in response to the Nov. 6 press release by the New York Department of Correctional Services.

Does it really seem fair that the only cuts are those that protect public safety. Shouldn’t the department be forced to pool resources, like administrators and legal services, as other agencies are being forced to do?

If the state work force is being scaled down, then why not the administrators that work for the department?

If the population of the inmates is down so dramatically, then why do we no see reductions to the population management positions, superintendents, deputy superintendents, inspector general positions and volunteer services.

How about the inmate benefits to free health care, flat screen TVs, cable and DirecTV and conjugal visits?

We should see equal cuts to all the above, but yet we do not. Now does that seem fair?

Vincent Blasio

Albany

Strock needs to show more respect to the elderly; his time is coming

Every once in awhile Carl Strock does something commendable — not often, but now and then. I refer to his vigorous defense of Jack Carroll who he believes was falsely accused and sent to prison as an innocent man.

However, Mr. Strock then turned around and did something “uncommendable” in his Nov. 6 column. He not only denigrated John McCain, who will forever be a war hero, as he should be, but he then referred to the “. . . saliva-sputtering crowd to which McCain so pathetically played.” He claimed this crowd would not want the president-elect to succeed. How stupid is that? Any of us elderly folk who love this country and witnessed the 1930s want Sen. Obama to perform with great success, but his recent appointment of [former Secretary of State] Madeline Albright as an adviser is not a good start.

As for continuously calling Alaska’s governor “Little Miss Mooseslayer” — enough already.

Someday, Mr. Strock, too, will be an elderly senior citizen. If by then he will have learned to keep his mouth shut, his “spittle” will be contained.

Elizabeth Fabian

Rotterdam