August 8's Letters to the Editor

Dear Edi­tor,

It may be true my pants are on fire but I am not the one that is get­ting burned. Any one who is think­ing every thing in Wash­ing­ton is fine is the one who is get­ting burned.

It is true the bank tax has been put to bed for the time being but there is still some in con­gress that would like to see it put in place and would be happy to try and push it through when they feel the time is right. The new ver­sion of the bill called “Debit Free Amer­i­can Act” is sit­ting in the Ways and Means Com­mit­tee with no action sched­uled at this time. We can only hope it dies there.

I am so happy to find out we have the same judges on the U.S. Supreme Court that we had four years ago. With the U.N. Arms Treaty once again under dis­cus­sion it is nice to know the Supreme Court has our back cov­ered. I guess we would only have to worry about it if Pres­i­dent Obama had appointed new judges to the bench but because he did not need to the court make up did not change, nice dream. Now for the night­mare, Obama did appoint new judges so now we have a court that is will­ing to do Obama’s bid­ding. For proof of that we only need look at how they ruled on the Obama health care issue. Not con­sti­tu­tional, not a prob­lem, just change the word­ing and pass it. Obama would like noth­ing bet­ter than put more con­trol over own­er­ship of firearms. With judges not will­ing to sup­port the con­sti­tu­tion with one mak­ing the state­ment that she feels the con­sti­tu­tion is out of date and should no longer be use as a model for other nations to fol­low in mak­ing there con­sti­tu­tion for their coun­try. The Supreme Court we now have if the treaty does get rat­i­fied by the sen­ate there is no rea­son to believe this court would ever over turn it.

Duane Rasey, Con­gress Township

Dear Edi­tor,

In your July 25 edi­tion, one let­ter writer makes two incor­rect claims about the health care bill. Viral emails, repeat­edly debunked, claim a bill intro­duced in 2004 and never taken up in Con­gress is part of the Afford­able Care Act. Of course Con­gress would not approve a bill requir­ing us to pay a 1% fee on every bank transaction.

Only indi­vid­u­als who make more than $250,000 ($500,000 for mar­ried cou­ples) would be sub­ject to a 3.8% sales tax on any net profit above the first $250,000 profit on the sale of their homes. This is not a tax on the mid­dle class.

Go to factcheck.org. They will give the claims and then the actual facts, show­ing what is true, what is mis­lead­ing, and what is totally false. They are even handed, fact check­ing across the polit­i­cal spectrum.

As to the myth­i­cal UN treaty to take away guns, it is just that, mythical.

Jill Grubb, Ben­ning­ton Township

To the Editor,

In a recent let­ter regard­ing killings in the Aurora, Col­orado the­ater the let­ter writer pro­posed that the shooter not be iden­ti­fied as it only encour­aged fur­ther crimes. In his world the media would be the cul­prits and be fined or pun­ished in some way for report­ing the news. In light of the fact that the gun lobby con­trols so much in Wash­ing­ton and is in no way open to com­pro­mise it seems more likely that we should get used to mass killing much like a car wreck or a house fire. As awful as it sounds it will hap­pen again because we can all buy a 100 round mag­a­zine even if we are unsta­ble and violent.

Jim Clark, Marengo

Dear Edi­tor:

This is a fol­lowup let­ter (Sen­tinel 7/18) regard­ing the bill­board on RT 42 north of Card­ing­ton. I am con­cerned that the loca­tion of this bill­board is a haz­ard to those who are dri­ving either north or south on RT 42. There will be a meet­ing of the Card­ing­ton Town­ship trustees on Aug 13 @ 7:00pm at 4064 County Rd. 132 in Card­ing­ton. I hope any con­cerned cit­i­zens will take the time to come to this meet­ing. For fur­ther info­ma­tion please check out the web­site @ www.billboardsafety.org.

Linda Har­vey, Cardington

To the Editor:

On Thurs­day, August 2, Linda Har­vey and I filed a com­plaint with Card­ing­ton Town­ship cit­ing the ille­gal­ity of the bill­boards recently erected along US 42, within the Township’s juris­dic­tion. These bill­boards are located on the “tri­an­gle” where US 42 makes a sharp, near-90 degree turn as it inter­sects TR 143 and CR 128 and then pro­ceeds south to the Vil­lage of Cardington .

These bill­boards are ille­gal because they vio­late Sec­tion VIII of the Township’s zon­ing require­ments for out­door adver­tis­ing. There is no spot on this par­cel where any bill­board can be erected and be in com­pli­ance with code with­out a vari­ance. Some­how a per­mit was issued by the Town­ship with­out such a vari­ance. As a result, accord­ing to Town­ship zon­ing code, they must be torn down within 30 days.

The ques­tion arises as to whether a vari­ance should be issued for these billboards.

The answer is “no.”

These bill­boards present a sig­nif­i­cant safety haz­ard for motorists trav­el­ing on that sec­tion of US 42. This curve is a dan­ger­ous one. No fewer than two fatal­i­ties have occurred there over the last six years, and as recently as two months ago, there was a seri­ous acci­dent involv­ing a motorcycle.

Bill­boards are dis­tract­ing. That’s their pur­pose, namely to dis­tract motorists’ eyes. To place these on a tight curve com­pounds the safety haz­ard of an already dan­ger­ous curve. This dan­ger is made even worse by the steel columns on which the bill­boards are affixed. With­out the columns, when (not if) a motorist loses con­trol while round­ing that cor­ner, the vehi­cle merely ends up in a grassy area with minor dam­age. With the bill­boards, how­ever, there is a sig­nif­i­cant risk of the vehi­cle run­ning into one of the three columns, caus­ing severe injuries if not fatalities.

That sec­tion of road is highly-traveled not just by Town­ship res­i­dents, but by motorists from nearby com­mu­ni­ties as well as from out­ly­ing cities and towns. The Town­ship, there­fore, has a seri­ous respon­si­bil­ity to make deci­sions which insure the safety of motorists nego­ti­at­ing this curve.

To sell out the safety of dri­vers and pas­sen­gers in order to pro­vide finan­cial gain for a com­pany (a non-local one at that) is ques­tion­able at best. There is sim­ply no rea­son why motorists’ safety should be placed in such jeop­ardy, and why the Township’s finan­cial sta­tus should be com­pro­mised when (not if) it faces lit­i­ga­tion after a dri­ver and/or pas­sen­ger suf­fers or dies as a result of hav­ing run into one of these steel beams.

“Con­cerned Cit­i­zens for Your Safety,” a local group of res­i­dents of which Mrs. Har­vey and I are mem­bers, has been formed to address this issue. We have been asked by the Township’s Zon­ing Offi­cer to present at the Trustee’s monthly pub­lic meet­ing on Mon­day, August 13 at 7 PM in the Town­ship Build­ing . The pub­lic is wel­come to attend this meet­ing. We encour­age any­one who is inter­ested in this issue to come and learn more about why these bill­boards are ille­gal, why a vari­ance should not be issued, and why they should be removed.

In the mean­while, you can visit the CCFYS web­site, www.billboardsafety.org, to learn more.

Vicki Ker­man, Cardington

Posted by Randa Wagner on Aug 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.