Why do our Pennsylvania lawmakers and the Butler School Board dislike senior citizens? Don’t they realize we are their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and neighbors? Why do they constantly pass laws that punish us?

Most lawmakers are college educated or well read and spoken. Surely these educated lawmakers have to know that their parents, neighbors and relatives no longer work, not because they got lazy but because old age has taken away their physical vitality?

I write these things because I retired in 1993 and watch in dismay as my property taxes keep going up and up and more and more of my savings are going for old age-related medical expenses. I see every part of the business world; the political world and the professional caretakers of the aged financially gouging us as a group. They gouge our drug prescriptions, manipulate our medical billing receipts, and excessively tax the elderly’s home and property. They even tax seniors’ savings and investments, and I can imagine they do it with glee.

We senior citizens are being penalized for having played by the rules. We worked our entire lifetime so we can be self-sufficient in our declining years. I worked turns for 40 years at Armco. Yet there are some citizens who watch us, as does a tree sitting black vulture, ready to prey on our coming infirmities.

How do lawmakers do this preying?

- By never giving a senior discount of 25 percent or more on property taxes for those over 70 and even more discounts as they age into their 80s and their savings dwindle and their medical expenses climb.

n By allowing the poor to have free assisted living or nursing home care, while homeowners have to forfeit their homes to the rest homeowners. Lawmakers quit putting liens on welfare recipients’ homes decades ago. So why are they still stealing old people’s homes for payment of medical bills? Why are we denying our children their rightful inheritance of our homes? These are your parents and neighbors — and it will soon be you, when you too get old.

- By allowing drug companies in the United States to gouge the poor, the feeble and senior citizens by marking up prescriptions 200 to 300 percent or more in cost than the countries that surround us.

- By insisting on higher and higher co-pays for health programs that are free to citizens of other countries. In France, all health care programs have to be nonprofit because they feel it is wrong and immoral to make a profit from the sick and old citizens of France. In America, health care is the biggest profit maker of the vulture corporations.

- By allowing corporations to cut or eliminate pensions and health benefits when their lifetime workers are ready to retire.

Is there no longer compassion and shame within our lawmakers’ and School Boards’ hearts? Why do we treat our senior citizens, who are also our parents, our relatives and our neighbors, so awfully in America?