Letters to the Editor for Tuesday, September 2, 2008
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Published: September 2, 2008
Writer: It’s the signs, not their content
The News & Advance’s Sept. 1 editorial about the University of Virginia’s decision to ban signs and banners at football games missed the point.
Click to sendThe university is not banning free speech; it’s banning signs and banners that can and do obstruct the view of the fans who are unlucky enough to have to sit behind folks holding up the signs and banners.
Imagine having to sit behind a group of fans who feel it necessary to display a sign, and it causes you to miss the action on the field. Very annoying, to say the least.
Stadium event managers have the right and the duty to set certain rules and regulations to ensure that everyone enjoys the event. If it were all about “free speech,” then everyone and anyone should be able to shout obscenities at the top of their lungs, but event managers have the right to stop that also when it ruins the experience for those fans who find such behavior rude and obnoxious.
Without certain guidelines at public events, it can turn into chaos and who wants to experience that when you’ve paid big bucks to enjoy a ballgame?
I applaud UVa officials for making this wise decision.
RONNIE ROBERTS
Lynchburg Hillcats
Assistant General Manager
Lost heritage
Don’t trust the United States Postal Service to deliver a package! On July 9, I mailed a package at 3:53 p.m. from the Madison Heights Post Office to my son who is a Senior Airman, and his wife, at Beal Air Force Base in California.
To this date, it has not arrived. I sent the package Priority Mail, with the track and confirm option, and was told by the clerk who accepted the package that it would arrive in California in two days. My son’s wife is pregnant with twins and the contents of the package were items that I had kept since his birth to pass on to his children.
Sadly, and regretfully, I did not insure the package. How do you put a price on quilts made by my grandmother for my son, which I wanted to pass on to my grandchildren? There were other items in the package other than the quilts, but the handmade quilts were my main concern. I have learned my lesson and will never use the USPS to mail packages ever again.
The big question is this: Is the package lost and they can’t find it, or did someone within the USPS steal the package because it wasn’t insured? Either way, my grandchildren will not know the warmth and comfort of those handmade quilts.
JOAN CARWILE
Madison Heights
Sludge awareness
The News & Advance’s Aug. 24 editorial on questions that remain about sludge’s long-term effects was thought-provoking, especially the last sentence: “But for now, those who questioned the wisdom of allowing the sludge to be spread must depend on the county monitors to detect any potential problems before they become hazardous to the health of those living nearby.”
In the “Beyond the Tap” article, Amherst County Service Authority utilities director Dan French was trying to sort out data provided by the state Department of Environmental Quality on projected availability of water. French was quoted as saying, “It became obvious that you have to do your own calculations (rather) than depend on state agencies.”
On the one hand, a citizen’s only option is to depend on government agencies for protection of health and safety. On the other hand, those agencies have proven time and again that they are undependable.
Where does that leave us? It seems the first step is to realize that we cannot depend on someone else, certainly not our government, to provide and protect our well-being. The second step would involve educating ourselves on what’s being done, who’s doing it and how well-trained they are, how effective is the action and what else needs to be addressed. Perhaps a third step could be concerned citizens getting together to help each other address this daunting challenge.
MARY GRAF
Concord
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Posted by ( luv2bliberal ) on September 04, 2008 at 9:51 am
Cosmo,
Do you have any proof that the 37% in Amherst are voting Republican? Or are they voting for the ones who promise them more money?
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Posted by ( bigjimm ) on September 04, 2008 at 9:39 am
Luv2rant is there a brain in there somewhere to connect to your mouth?
I just don’t think there is anything there.
I’ll bet you’ve taken your share of government handouts and I’ll also bet you haven’t turned down the first one.
You are on the record here of telling people to get rid of their SUV’s if they’re so interested in the environment or to move to France.
Let’s hear about the sacrifices you have made for your self professed conservative principles.
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Posted by ( Cosmo Wafflefoot ) on September 04, 2008 at 9:37 am
Don’t bather (bigjimm) these people who “call” themselves Conservative are TOTAL fakes. How many starving orphans have they adopted? It makes me laugh. The biggest power any society could ever surrender to their government is the power over life and death. Who wants the government to have that power? If you or I have a horrible terminal illness and we make the choice to end our lives NOW, who wants the “gubment” to have the power to tell us no? If we decide we don’t want to produce life, who wants the government to have the power to tell us NO, we must? These people are total fakes who don’t even understand the philosophy behind what they erroneously profess to be. As an example: Amherst County is overwhelmingly “Conservative” Republican. Would it surprise you to know that a full 37% of the households in Amherst County get their paychecks from…. guess where…. The Gubment! And who is there new poster girl? A woman who gives birth to a Downs Syndrome child and 72 hours later is back to work full time. If my wife did that I would divorce her. If my daughter pulled a stunt like that I would disown her. It’s disgusting! Hopefully, since she is totally against equal pay for equal work, she only gets 70 cents on the dollar as Governor. Or, are her deep convictions just meant for other people. What incredible jokers.
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Posted by ( luv2bliberal ) on September 04, 2008 at 7:59 am
Cosmo / bigjimm,
I must admit you two have me this morning. I agree with you that it is time for the gubment to take over EVERYTHING!!!!!No responsiblity from anyone for anything. We can drive our rick-shaws around talking on our cell phones.
One thing that will be great with gubment healthcare is that there won’t be anymore frivilous lawsuits. YOU CAN’T SUE THE GOVERNMENT! Maybe we can learn to do without all of the buzzards and ambulance chasers on society that call themselves “lawyers”. Wait a minute. Isn’t Obama and his wife lawyers? Here we go dog!
A good example of a “shame” - Busload of lawyers going over a cliff with one empty seat.
Life will be so much better than it is now if we bow down and worship the gubment!!!!!!!!!!
Please Obama! I ask that you save me and the whole world! Come quickly Lord Obama!!!Change! Change! Joy, Joy, Change, KKK of the US of A!!
For the first time in my adult life I am actually proud of my country.
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Posted by ( Cosmo Wafflefoot ) on September 04, 2008 at 7:21 am
(Bigjimm) Do you ever wonder if any of these…. “Get Government out of Everything” [except: My bedroom, who I can marry, what religion should be taught in public schools, women’s reproduction organs and who God wants us to war against]... ever pictured what America would look like if Social Security, Medicaid, Workman’s Compensation, Unemployment Insurance and Medicare DIDN’T EXIST? I wish, just once, one of them would tell us how they would take care of sick children, old people, disabled people, children with profound birth defects, the 40 million UNWANTED children who would have been born, if abortion were illegal, to people who flat out stated that they DIDN’T WANT THEM. Will they or their Church pay for the $100,000 cancer treatment or the $50,000 By-Pass surgery of someone who works full time for $7.50 an hour? Is TRBC willing to pick up the tab for a brain injured Iraq vet (there are 10,000 of them) not to mention the millions of citizens who are brain injured every year? How do they think people who can’t work, like the old, sick or just plain dumb are going to feed themselves if everybody is just left to take care of themselves with no safety net? How many of THEM will refuse to cash their Social Security checks and rip up their Medicare cards on principal? If life is such a “gift from God” how can they let one child starve to death every 2 seconds? Why aren’t plane loads of starving African orphans landing at Lynchburg airport and the anti-abortion members of TRBC lining up to adopt them? Is the Falwell Cartel going to pay your Centra Health bill for your broken hip? Will the Republican Party? After you have worked a lifetime and doctors and hospitals have totally exhausted your savings, put a lean on all your assets and are pestering your kids about your bills…. are any of these so called “Conservatives” going to pay your nursing home bills? Will THEY feed you… Or are they just incapable of reading history and learning what happened to old, poor and unlucky people when winter came on in America BEFORE these programs existed? EVERYBODY wants people to take responsibility for themselves. Unfortunately, rarely, if ever, can people or families go through an entire life on what THEY have saved, accomplished or done entirely on their own. NONE of these people who wish to erase social safety net programs would want to live in an America of begging children, old people and sick people. What young couple could afford $1,000,000 a year to keep a profoundly genetically damaged child alive that they were forced to give birth to against their will? Will the Republican Party pick up the tab?
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Posted by ( bigjimm ) on September 04, 2008 at 7:13 am
As is usual Lub2? your arguments just don’t make sense. When you are forced to shop at Wal-Mart if you have to buy something and you risk bankruptcy and infectious death if you do, then perhaps it’s time for federal intervention.
As much as all of you self-reliant wingers want to claim your grandness and independence I don’t see all that many of you sending your kids to private schools. As much as you want to complain, the public schools still compete well against the private ones and in most cases better.
As to my age, friend, I have a 10 year old in middle school and his teachers and school are both first rate.
If it weren’t so then perhaps it would be time for federal intervention.
Work on your arguments and your reasoning and we can talk again but until then, there’s just not much to talk about.
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Posted by ( luv2bliberal ) on September 04, 2008 at 6:26 am
bigjimm,
Using your argument for a government run healthcare system, then wouldn’t the schools be better if all of the teachers were federalized? Wouldn’t Wal-mart have a better product at a lower price if the government would simply take over the helm?
Our healthcare is over-regulated as it is. I know that I will never be able to convince a man your age of that. You keep trusting in “big-government” to provide all of your wishes and desires.
If we can’t control the 31% fraud in medicare, how are we going to control fraud when they take over the whole thing?
By the way, I worked for the post office when they were going through degregulation in the early 80’s. They gave up the parcel monopoly, because in the wisdom of our government, the parcel business would never amount to much.
They didn’t know about OwlGore and the internet business!
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Posted by ( bigjimm ) on September 03, 2008 at 7:48 am
Sorry luv2 but Centra is an excellent argument for national healthcare as is the entire healthcare industry.
This is what you get when lobbyists working with the party in power get together to make big bucks.
The healthcare industry in this country is a big joke on all of us especially when you see the so-called non-profits putting up $50 million buildings on a regular basis all the while colluding with their so-called competitors in neighboring communities on what to charge for services.
This runs from big pharma right through the entire industry and competition is not possible under the present system or any system that anyone with the power would enact.
As to competition for USPS, well that’s there as the the parcel companies have cherry picked the profitable areas and left the post office the job of delivering millions upon millions of letters anywhere in the country for $.42. That is an unbelievable price. When you think about what they do, deliver to every address in this country 6 days a week you can’t help but be impressed.
It’s funny when you see right-wingers with their hatred of all things governmental then work so hard to undermine the government and validate their position.
FEMA under the Bush Regime is an excellent example of this. FEMA went from the best governmental agency capable of helping thousands people in need after disasters to a joke run by political hacks and incompetents under Bush and his rubber stamp congress.
Usually you get the government you deserve and the healthcare industry deserves a lot of it.
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Posted by ( luv2bliberal ) on September 03, 2008 at 6:00 am
bigjimm,
I agree with you on Centra Health. Another great example of what goes wrong when competition is restrained. As we have seen with lack of competition with Centra Health and USPS, we need to relax some of the regulations that allows Centra Health and the Post Office a monopoly status. Another excellant example against gubment healthcare! Thank you very much! As a side note, what should we do about Medicare and its 31% fraud rate during the past 4 administrations?
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Posted by ( Cosmo Wafflefoot ) on September 02, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Good one (bigjimm)! They both stink, but I think that is more a function of a poorly motivated workforce. I have found much more satisfaction with UPS over the years than the USPS though. I have honestly observed a degree of “hustle” at times with UPS. Then again they don’t deal with phone books, LL Bean catalogues and enough junk mail to fill the grand canyon every day. Most of my mail I give to Jehovah’s Witnesses. Sooner or later it always gets where it needs to be and they really don’t seem to mind.
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