So the Miami-Dade School Board has decided it's time for another round of ethics training for employees. This happens periodically.

Usually after a particularly bad outbreak of corruption at the top of the food chain, all the minnows at the bottom get ethics training.

Don't they understand it's power that corrupts? Hopefully once we're all trained, the paper clips in the school office will be safe, but who is going to educate our leaders?

PHIL HARTLEY, Cutler Bay

Money and politics

Re the Nov. 16 story Money affects Cuba policy: It shouldn't surprise anyone that interest groups link campaign contributions to the recipients' policy positions. As Maurice Claver-Carone argued, this is the bread and butter of American democracy.

Arizona's Rep. Jeff Flake sounds hypocritical when he implies that there is something nefarious in this.

If The Miami Herald were to look into the campaign contributions to anti-embargo lawmakers such as Flake, I am sure that it would find a similar relationship between campaign contributions and policy positions. The only difference we'd see is that the anti-embargo connections are mostly about money and profits -- and rarely about the intrinsic merits of U.S. policy.

SEBASTIAN ARCOS, Miami

Homeless awareness

Today is Homeless Awareness Day in Miami-Dade County. We're asking you to join us on that day in our effort to end homelessness.

Business, spiritual and political leaders, we're calling on you to help us find sponsors for our Britto-designed meters. All of the money we collect in these meters will go to fund shelters and indoor meal programs and provide the additional beds that are needed.

Schools, companies and organizations, we want you to take to the streets and hold up cardboard signs calling on passersby to end homelessness and to support the work of The Homeless Trust.

RONALD L. BOOK, chairman, Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, Aventura

Disrespectful satire

I am neither Democrat, nor Republican, and try to keep independent from echoing either party's foibles.

However, Glenn Garvin's Nov. 17 column, High-level musings from China, is childish and highly disrespectful of the commander-in-chief of our nation and his wife.

Spreading negative thoughts in an attempt at being funny only begets more negativity and is not building bridges of understanding.

MARGE LYLES, Miami Springs

Where is help?

My 25-year-old son is agoraphobic and dyslexic. He cannot get a job, is too old to be on my insurance and cannot get Social Security benefits because he was not seen by a specialist whom Social Security should have made available to him.

What is he to do? Go to the emergency room when he is so sick that it is too late to see a doctor? Maybe if he had a regular doctor it would be easier, but without insurance no one wants to see you.

I live paycheck to paycheck. My daughter who is in college was just dropped from my insurance because she is now 23.

What can she do?

VIVIAN CRITTENDEN, Homestead

Trial a smokescreen

When the alleged terrorists are tried in federal court rather than by military tribunal, the defense is entitled to know everything the prosecution knows.

This not only endangers the security of classified information, but also opens the back door for Attorney General Eric Holder to drag out the torture allegations he wanted to investigate without getting explicit permission from the president.