Letters to the Editor for Sunday, July 20, 2008
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Published: July 19, 2008
Time for nation-building right at home
The choices aren’t good, but whoever gets elected in November has his work cut out for him.
We need a president who will look out for Americans first, period. Nation-building overseas? We need to think about nation-building here in the good old U.S. of A.
Click to sendHere are some ideas about Bush’s war and the price of oil: (1) Get out of Iraq and Afghanistan now! Quit wasting trillions of our dollars fighting meaningless wars for oil or otherwise. (2) This “war” is in Europe’s “backyard” and they can fight it if they want to. (3) Pull out of South Korea and all other countries we prop up with our military. Why are we bankrupting our country to defend countries that are perfectly capable of doing it themselves? (4) Use our military to round up the 12 million illegals in our country and secure our southern borders. I can’t break one law without the Feds looking for me, so why do 12 million people get away with it? (5) Tell Israel to quiet down about bombing Iran. This isn’t helping oil prices. Also cut our ties with Israel and quit sending them money. They have enough money, nuclear weapons, and can defend themselves. If they can’t, sorry, we can’t save the world. (6) Stop Wall Street speculation in the oil markets.
Ideas for lowering the middle-class tax burden: (1) If the U.S. isn’t going to have national healthcare then at least give dollar-for-dollar tax credits for the cost of our medical premiums. This will reward people who pay their own way and help stimulate the economy by putting money back in their hands. (2) Give tax deductions for people who pay child support. Why should they pay after-tax dollars for their children who they can’t deduct and get no tax “credit” for these payments? (3) Give the smokers and drinkers a break by cutting the taxes on these items by 90 percent. Where does all that tax money go? (4) Allow people to deduct interest paid to credit card companies. (5) Give major tax credits for the purchase of vehicles made in America that get 30 or more miles per gallon. The higher the MPG the greater the tax credit. This saves gas and can help our American automakers sell vehicles. Again, we are talking about America First, not some other country; we don’t care about them.
Finally, stand up for our privacy rights. I don’t know how much Verizon, AT&T and other phone companies paid our congressmen to grant them retroactive immunity for turning over our private records to George Bush’s government, but it probably didn’t take much.
These are probably the same mentally challenged men who voted to give Bush $167 billion to nation-build in Iraq for a few more months.
These aren’t radical ideas. I’m just looking for a few good men to bring some sanity back to our government. Are there any out there?
JOSEPH TURK
Bedford
No sense at all
Does expanded rail make sense?
The recent editorial promoting the “new” rail service to Washington, D.C., exposed some serious business and financial issues.
As stated it would serve 33,000 passengers the first year at a cost to state taxpayers of $1.9 million.
Let’s analyze the numbers:
w It would carry an average of 90 passengers per day. Is that 45 up and 45 back?
w It would cost $58 per passenger not including the fare paid by the passenger that currently is $74 each way.
Doesn’t make sense to me when adding a couple of cars (as necessary to meet demand) to the existing train service could solve the issue of “are typically booked solid” as quoted in the editorial. Easy to do since trains are expandable (unlike buses or airplanes) and most people book a day or more ahead.
DAN LYNCH
Lynchburg
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Posted by ( m.paul.valois ) on July 20, 2008 at 8:49 am
Expanded rail service is another darling boondoggle of the News & Advance.
Amtrak reports that it delivers 39 miles per gallon of diesel per passenger.
A single 55 passenger bus could transport 33,000 people per year and even more. (55 seats * 365 days * 2 trips per day = 40150 passengers)
An MCI 102DL3 55-pasenger bus gets 6 miles per gallon (or 270 mpg per passenger assuming 45 passengers on board) so using bus service instead of train service would use nearly than 7 times less fuel than train service.
The Commonwealth could purchase two brand new buses for a third of the 1.9 million dollar annual subsidy provide FREE service moving more than TWICE the passengers and still come out ahead!
I can’t understand why this newspaper insists upon ignoring the arithmetic with regard to this proposal.
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Posted by ( Cosmo Wafflefoot ) on July 20, 2008 at 4:32 am
I don’t know about all of Joe Turk’s ideas, but when he posts…“whoever gets elected in November has his work cut out for him”, BOY do I agree! Why do I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach that Osama bin Laden’s plans are working out perfectly? 9/11 was about wrecking our economy. He accomplished that with a van full of guys with box-cutters. As predicted, off we go to Iraq where, on borrowed money, we destroy a country (to save it?), waste our military resources and fighting men & women AND recruit thousands more Muslims to fight against us. And where is Osama? Well he is in Pakistan, a nuclear power we throw money at while all the while they hide and protect him while forbidding American military action within their borders. SWEET! While we are exhausting our military, where they never should have been, Osama is kicking back and watching our economy go belly up. No doubt laughing his head off, I might add. And now, the final chess pieces begin to fall into place and we are, oh so predictably, lured into Afghanistan. You remember Afghanistan, “The Graveyard of Empires”. Our money is gone, our fighting forces are exhausted and the will of the American people to sacrifice is at an all time low. “Come in”, said the spider to the fly. If you remember, the “former” Soviet Union could DRIVE to Afghanistan and they went home with their tails between their legs. Pakistan on one side and Iran on the other. You remember Iran, they had a democratically elected government that nationalized the oil fields in 1953. That’s when the CIA overthrew it and installed the Shah for 25 years of torture and cheap oil. They think the world of America. Just can’t thank us enough. Now I don’t have a Crystal Ball, but I’m betting Osama thanks Allah or what ever lucky stars he prays to for George Bush. It’s not always easy to find a historically ignorant, alcoholic frat boy with more bluster than brains when you need one. How does this story end? America bashes it’s own brains out, as so many empires before us have done, in Afghanistan. (Remember, Osama has done this before.) Mr. bin Laden goes on to be remembered in the history books as “The George Washington of the Muslim World” and we are left to tell our grand children stories about what life “used to” be like here in what was America. As voters, we only have one more thing to do to seal the deal. Elect a president who graduated last in his class. Laughter will echo through the mountains and valleys of Pakistan like yodeling does in Switzerland. “DO COME IN”, said the spider to the fly.
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