MAILBAG:

We’ve been rather bewildered by all the negative letters and blogs about the Costa Mesa Senior Center that have appeared in the Daily Pilot in recent months.

Although we’re not involved in the operations or the management of the center, we do want to say that our experiences here have been rewarding and positive.

Our play-reading group has been meeting at the center since it opened in 1992.

The accommodations have been excellent, and extra effort is made to copy our plays for us.

We’re grateful to have this lovely place to come to for friendship, for fun, for companionship and for learning something new.

The many volunteers help to provide a welcoming and helpful atmosphere.

We see the many seniors who gather for good, nutritious lunches, who can take a loaf or two of bread home from the day-old bread that is made available, who take part in the varied exercise classes, computer classes, card-playing groups, arts and crafts groups, support groups and more.

If there are management issues that have fueled the recent criticism, we aren’t aware of them. Perhaps those critics should actually come up with specific complaints so that we members could address them. Thank you.

JEANNE FOBES

Costa Mesa 

We need jobs more than reduced taxes

Are the Republicans still nattering on about trickle-down economics?

It sounds like it.

Maybe I’m just slow-witted, but I cannot see how reducing payroll taxes will solve the current economic calamity.

Reducing payroll taxes isn’t much help for the unemployed.

What we need in the country are jobs, and President Obama’s economic recovery plan addresses that need.

The plan provides for jobs to repair our infrastructure. We need those kinds of jobs.

The plan will also stimulate a new and certainly needed green job market. The plan will prevent hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs.

When Americans are put back to work in record numbers, I believe that money will start to trickle up.

People will want to buy products and services, and they will have the money to do so.

So enough of trickle-down economics, I say. We tried that for years, and it doesn’t work. Let’s try something sensible and follow the lead of the president we just elected to fix our sinking economy.

NOEL LEHR

San Juan Capistrano