April 11's Letters to the Editor

Dear Edi­tor,

Jan­u­ary 3, 2007, democ­rats took over the United States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate. It is a day WE THE PEOPLE gave the United States its first female Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. The democ­rats not only selected Ms. Pelosi as their Speaker but they selected Bar­ney Frank to head the House Finan­cial Ser­vices Com­mit­tee (Fan­nie Mae/Freddie Mac) and Christo­pher Dodd to head the Sen­ate Bank­ing Com­mit­tee (Lehman Brothers/Wall Street).

It took them some time, but after a few years of their give-away pro­grams, reg­u­la­tions and ‘over­sight’ the Amer­i­can econ­omy had a melt­down. What part of the econ­omy had the melt­down? Who in Con­gress and the Sen­ate had over­sight? Remem­ber when you hear the coined phrase “I inher­ited this mess,” that from Jan­u­ary 3, 2007, the mess would have been a self-made mess. Also remem­ber Con­gress con­trols the money, they pro­pose bud­gets, the sen­ate votes on the bud­get, sends it to the Pres­i­dent who either approves or vetoes it.

In 2007 the democ­rats held the major­ity in Con­gress and the Sen­ate but instead of send­ing a bud­get to the Pres­i­dent they con­tin­ued to pass con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tions until they got to a time­line where they could pass a mas­sive spend­ing bill (that they called a bud­get) that they sent to the Sen­ate (which included Barak Obama and Sher­rod Brown), then it was sent to the White­house. How­ever, Pres­i­dent Bush wasn’t in the White­house, Barak Obama had been sworn in by that time. Barak Obama signed that mas­sive spend­ing bill. So when you read or hear “I inher­ited this mess” from ANY demo­c­rat, it is an out­right lie.

Before Jan­u­ary 2007, the GDP (how fast the econ­omy was grow­ing) for the 4th quar­ter 2006 was 3.5%; (for 2011 4th quar­ter 2.8%). The Unem­ploy­ment rate for Jan­u­ary 3, 2007 was 4.6% (March 2012–8.2%), the num­ber of unem­ployed per­sons was 7 mil­lion (March 2012 12.7 mil­lion). The unem­ploy­ment rate for adult men (4.1%) (March 2012–7.6%), adult women (4.0%) (March 2012–7.4%), teenagers (15%) (March 2012–25%), whites (4.1%) (March 2012–7.3%), blacks (8.0%) (March 2012–14%), and His­pan­ics (5.7%) (March 2012-10.3%). The long term unem­ployed (job­less 27-weeks or over) was 1.3 mil­lion (now 5.3 million).

We are told we have been dri­ven into a deep ditch, the ditch was deeper than Sgt. ‘they’ thought. Appar­ently ‘they’ did not revere our great coun­try the way God intended for them to, nor did they fear God the way they should have since ‘they’ have taken Him out of our schools, out of our gov­ern­ment, and are now try­ing to take Him out of our churches.

It is time we take ‘they’ out of our gov­ern­ment and replace them with God fear­ing men, if we can find any the likes of who wrote our found­ing doc­u­ments. It would be a good start; if it isn’t already too late.

Cindy Fricke, Mt. Gilead

To the Editor,

I was appalled by Com­mis­sioner Tom Whiston’s reac­tion and com­ments to Sher­iff Steve Bren­ne­man dur­ing the monthly Elected Offi­cials meet­ing. Accord­ing to the county bud­get arti­cle, printed in last week’s Mor­row County Sen­tinel, the meet­ing was called to give the elected offi­cials an oppor­tu­nity to express their thoughts on the final gen­eral fund bud­get. Sher­iff Bren­ne­man expressed his con­cerns that there will be a cut of 11% in enforce­ment, and the jail by 30%, while other agen­cies received insignif­i­cant reduc­tions. I ques­tion Com­mis­sioner Whiston’s com­ment that, “If you have con­cerns you need more money, we’ll sim­ply ask you to explain what depart­ment we need to take it from to move it, because it’s all spent”.

The sheriff’s con­cerns seem to be legit­i­mate, and the com­mis­sioner really needs to work with all the elected offi­cials to deter­mine the effects the cuts will have to the Mor­row County cit­i­zens. Sher­iff Bren­ne­man is express­ing his con­cerns the cuts will have on the ser­vice his depart­ment per­forms. The com­mis­sioner should pro­vide a proper expla­na­tion as to why the sher­iff department’s bud­get was dras­ti­cally cut. The sher­iff should not solely be respon­si­ble to deter­mine what cuts should be made to other departments.

I believe it is the respon­si­bil­ity of the County Com­mis­sion­ers to allo­cate funds to each of the county depart­ments. The com­mis­sion­ers asked for com­ments, and should research any con­cerns the elected offi­cials have in order to min­i­mize the risks to the county cit­i­zens. Safety should be con­sid­ered for the county cit­i­zens out­side the vil­lage, as well in the city. The drug prob­lems have increased within the county, and proper police pro­tec­tion is required to pro­tect those that could be affected by crime. This is a con­cern I have, and would like to hear the commissioner’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion as to why the Sheriff’s depart­ment is being cut so drastically.

Jan­ice Hut­ton, Cardington

Editor’s Note: After that arti­cle was printed, Sher­iff Bren­ne­man remarked, “I wanted to clar­ify my remarks from the elected offi­cials meet­ing regard­ing bud­gets. I guess I inferred that no one else received a sig­nif­i­cant cut in their bud­get. [A cer­tain offi­cial] has writ­ten me a let­ter express­ing his “sur­prise” at my com­ments and found them “dis­turb­ing and unfair”. He is right, they were unfair to some agen­cies. The Treasurer’s Office received a 17% cut. [That office] is going to have a hard time this year. My remarks were for those that received next to no cuts or got addi­tional money. The Sheriff’s Office and Cor­rec­tional Facil­ity get about 20% of the Gen­eral Fund Bud­get. Our cuts this year total $287,109 which makes up 71% of the total $403,032 that was cut this year.”

Dear Edi­tor,

I am writ­ing in response to Nel­son Hack’s recent let­ter ask­ing “where is the out­rage?” I am out­raged! Out­raged with the entire cur­rent polit­i­cal scene. Out­raged by the fin­ger point­ing and the name call­ing. Out­raged by the cries of “the sky is falling” in order to advance a polit­i­cal view. Out­raged by the lack of unity within the polit­i­cal par­ties and between them. Out­raged that those elected to rep­re­sent us are more inter­ested in get­ting rich and re-elected than com­ing up with solu­tions to this country’s prob­lems. Out­raged by the lack of respect for the office of our presidency.

Mr. Hack states that pro­gres­sives have teamed up with big unions, Mus­lim extrem­ists and the United Nations Agenda 21. How does one team up with a United Nations Agenda? This kind of state­ment is a per­fect exam­ple of what out­rages me.

If Mr. Hack and his fel­low TEA party mem­bers would like us to join them, here are my suggestions:

1. Come up with a clear polit­i­cal agenda. The Tea party appears to be for change. Change for what? From what I’ve seen, it looks like more of the same name call­ing and fin­ger point­ing. Give us your top 5 polit­i­cal issues (the econ­omy, war in Afghanistan, edu­ca­tion, national secu­rity etc.) and tell us in a pre­cise, cohe­sive and non-inflammatory way how the TEA party would fix those issues.

2. Explain, again in a pre­cise, cohe­sive and non-inflammatory way, what you see as the great­est threats to our free­dom. I want to see facts. And I want to see solu­tions. It is so easy to yell that the sky is falling, and much harder to fig­ure out how to keep it in place.

3. Show us how you are dif­fer­ent. The great­est changes in our coun­try have come from grass­root polit­i­cal move­ments. (Think women’s vot­ing and civil rights.) They spoke as one voice to edu­cate the pub­lic and asked them to join in to make a change. If you want to effect change in Amer­ica, show us how you would do it.

4. Don’t insult those of us you want to join you. Our polit­i­cal views may not be the same, but we all love our coun­try, our con­sti­tu­tion and our freedom.

Mean­while, I will be exer­cis­ing my right to stay home, drink Star­bucks and watch real­ity TV.

Lisa Townsend, Cardington

Dear Edi­tor,

I am writ­ing regard­ing the let­ters writ­ten in response to my let­ter on the Rush Lim­baugh con­tro­versy con­cern­ing the debate on women‘s repro­duc­tive health­care and con­tra­cep­tives. First I would like to applaud Mr. Mills for hav­ing the courage to state that he did not take into con­sid­er­a­tion the health ben­e­fits of con­tra­cep­tives. While we dis­agree on the religious/government issue, it took courage to state this and I thank him for that.

As for the let­ter by Ms. Fricke, it was filled with inac­cu­ra­cies and a per­sonal attack in regards to my Chris­tian­ity. I will address that issue first. I am offended that she edited my com­ment and skewed it to appear that after using the con­junc­tion “but” I negated my Chris­tian­ity. Per­haps I should have used the con­junc­tion AND how­ever, NOTHING I stated after “but” negated the fact that I am a Chris­t­ian. To imply oth­er­wise, when she and I have never even met, is not only dis­cour­te­ous but a com­mon bul­ly­ing tac­tic often used when one doesn’t have facts to back a claim in an effort to silence another.

I will not list all of the inac­cu­ra­cies in Ms. Fricke’s let­ter. She makes sev­eral assump­tions, one being that I have not done my “research“. What I will say is that it is appar­ent that UNLIKE me, she did not watch the hear­ings chaired by Con­gress­man Issa and aired on CSpan, UNLIKE me she did not lis­ten to the tes­ti­mony pro­vided by Ms. Fluke. Here are the links to those hear­ings for your read­ers to inves­ti­gate for them­selves: The House Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Reform Com­mit­tee hear­ing: http://oversight.house.gov/hearing/lines-crossed– separation-of-church-and-state-has-the-obama-administration-trampled-on-freedom-of-religion-and-freedom-of-conscience

Ms. Fluke’s tes­ti­mony as pre­sented to the House Demo­c­ra­tic Steer­ing and Pol­icy Committee:

http://www.c-span.org/Events/Democrats-Hold-Hearing-on-Contraceptives-amp-Women39s-Health/10737428508/

As for “the Democ­rats” not giv­ing Chair­man Issa the required 72 hours notice, I find this disin­gen­u­ous con­sid­er­ing the Repub­li­cans added 2 panel mem­bers them­selves the morn­ing of the hear­ing. As an aside, I am famil­iar with the com­mit­tee rules as my good friend’s father; ® Con­gress­man Dan Bur­ton of Indi­ana was chair­man of that com­mit­tee for many years. I attended numer­ous hear­ings in DC from 1999 to 2003 dur­ing his tenure as chair­man. I wit­nessed the change of speaker’s last minute as that is left to the dis­cre­tion of the Chair­man. The 72 hour rule used by Chair­man Issa seems to only be played when it is the oppos­ing party. I under­stand that the Chairman’s hear­ing was on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the man­date, how­ever, to NOT con­sider the affects on women’s health and access to health­care is irresponsible.

She states, “It amazes me that an unmar­ried young woman… would go to the United State Con­gress to dis­cuss her need for con­tra­cep­tion, tell them she is unwill­ing to work to pay for it…” What amazes me is how pre­sum­ably edu­cated peo­ple can’t com­pre­hend that Ms. Fluke was not speak­ing on behalf of her­self but a group of woman, some of which ARE mar­ried, to explain the need for con­tra­cep­tives to be cov­ered espe­cially for med­ical rea­sons. Also Ms. Fluke never said she was unwill­ing to work (Rush claimed she said that)

I can not com­pre­hend that any­one would be fine with the same insur­ance cov­er­ing the need for Via­gra (again for men mar­ried or not) but have an issue with a young woman need­ing con­tra­cep­tives for treat­ment of ovar­ian cysts or endometrio­sis. I do not under­stand how pro­vid­ing Via­gra to unmar­ried men is not against their reli­gious beliefs but pro­vid­ing med­ica­tion for the treat­ment of ovar­ian cysts or endometrio­sis etc. IS. An addi­tional dis­agree­ment I have to the reli­gious belief’s points are that IF reli­gious insti­tu­tions want to dic­tate their beliefs on health insur­ance, then they must sep­a­rate them­selves by not accept­ing Fed­eral funds in the form of stu­dent loans etc. They need to be con­sis­tent in their stand. They also need to apply their beliefs equally between men and women. As for “the morn­ing after pill” this is used mainly for rape vic­tims. To put them through the trauma of pos­si­ble preg­nancy fol­low­ing a rape is cal­lous. As a vic­tim of rape, I was grate­ful for the morn­ing after pill’s avail­abil­ity. As a nurse, I believe that impos­ing ones own reli­gious beliefs into health­care and insur­ance cov­er­age are dan­ger­ous medically.

In regards to her claims of Rush Limbaugh’s accu­racy, again Ms. Fricke assumes I did not research his show. For the past few years I have lis­tened to as much of his show as I can tol­er­ate. Each time I research his “doc­u­men­ta­tion” I have found it to be mis­lead­ing or com­pletely fab­ri­cated. Again, research for your­self. The Pulitzer prize win­ning news­pa­per The Tampa Bay Times has a divi­sion that researches claims made by Gov­ern­ment offi­cials, Orga­ni­za­tions, polit­i­cal pun­dits etc. It is called Poli­ti­fact and can be found online at: http://www.politifact.com A pub­lished report by them on ALL of the polit­i­cal pun­dits from both the left and the right found Rush Lim­baugh to be the least accu­rate at 37% accu­racy. Over the past few years I have heard Mr. Lim­baugh mock the dis­abled, spe­cial needs chil­dren, the Japan­ese earth­quake vic­tims and a mul­ti­tude of eth­nic pop­u­la­tions. I have heard him defend Ugan­dan guerilla leader Joseph Kony, who is respon­si­ble for over 30,000 kid­nap­pings and mur­ders of chil­dren, and I heard him request of Ms. Fluke videos of her engag­ing in sex­ual acts for his enjoy­ment after he called her vul­gar names. While I do not con­done any­one using vul­gar­i­ties towards any­one, Ms. Fluke is a pri­vate cit­i­zen who was sub­jected to Mr. Lim­baugh spew­ing slan­der­ous putrid­ity over a 4 day period. To refer to his com­ments as “inart­ful” is a prodi­gious under­state­ment. Also com­par­ing his com­ments to one time state­ments by oth­ers, one of which a come­di­enne, is absurd. Rush’s show is offen­sive, dis­gust­ing, hate filled rhetoric and is far removed from any level of respectabil­ity. It is, in my opin­ion, cer­tainly not a show that any decent per­son should take pride in supporting.

Donna Carver, Mt. Gilead

Editor’s Note: I was neg­li­gent in our Let­ter to the Edi­tor pol­icy of not run­ning “let­ters that deal with pri­vate dis­putes or con­tain crit­i­cism of pri­vate indi­vid­u­als” when I allowed Ms. Fricke’s state­ment “regard­ing Ms. Carver’s Let­ter to the Edi­tor, it always has trou­bled me when I read, “I am a Chris­t­ian myself but…“ You either are or you are not, there should be no “buts” about it” was a per­sonal crit­i­cism and should have been edited. Ms. Carver has my apol­ogy for the oversight.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Apr 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.