Your editorial on employee ownership of companies, “Employee Ownership Can Help Build Better Firms,” was right on the mark, right up until I choked on the last sentence, “It sounds kind of Marxist, but it works” (ENR 8/18 p. 60). Employee ownership obviously violates the most basic concepts of communist doctrine. Employee ownership of the “means of production” is not even remotely comparable to “state ownership of the means of production,” and I guarantee you that “production for profit” is the motive of those employee owners, not “production for consumption.”

Denis Fletcher
Boise, Idaho

Know Your Enemy

The last sentence in the editorial on “Deadlock Over Transportation Funding Has Familiar Look” totally missed the mark (ENR 9/15 p. 64). You need to do some very serious thinking about the sentence, “There seems to be billions available for adventures overseas, but little for the people at home.”

The citizens of the U.S. on Sept. 11 observed the second anniversary of the beginning of World War IV. (World War III was the Cold War which began after World War II and ended during President Reagan’s term in office.) The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, were not isolated, one-time, uncoordinated attacks on the U.S. Rather, they were deliberate, well-planned, coordinated attacks by an adversary that must now be hunted down and destroyed. A peaceful settlement of the war is out of the question; this is a fight to the death.

The armed forces of our government are not on “an adventure” in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are locked in mortal combat with a determined, deadly adversary who wants to kill every “infidel” they can find and destroy our way of life.

If we receive another blow such as the one on Sept. 11, 2001, you won’t have to worry about funding of any type because our economy could very easily drop into a deep recession, if we are fortunate, or depression, if we aren’t.

Robert W. Lyons
Norfolk, Va.