Letters, 8/16: Tide turning for Nelson?

 43 comment(s)  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

I predict that if there are substantial losses for the Republicans in the Senate next year, Ben Nelson just may become a Democrat.

Roger Welsch, Dannebrog

24-hour left-turn signals

A suggestion for our traffic engineers on improving the efficiency of traffic signals, especially left-turn signals in Lincoln: Pack up your lawn chairs and take a field trip to the corner of North 84th Street and U.S. 6. Park in the lot next to the gas station, buy a bag of popcorn and a cold drink and sit and watch that traffic light work. It’s perfect. It works the same way, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The turn signal even works on weekends!

Lincoln is a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week city. There’s traffic all the time. Drivers make left-hand turns on weekends. Please adjust the lights to keep pace.

Bob Servedio, Lincoln

Taking from the poor …

I’m really concerned about the perverse flow of money from the poor to rich that I see happening with tax cuts to millionaires at the expense of much-needed public services for the public, including police and fire as well as public teachers, libraries and care for veterans coming back from Iraq with mental illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Morally, it’s no better than gambling, where you see many dollar-ante losses going to fund a multimillion dollar treasure trove for some lucky bastard who has nothing more than an uncanny ability to guess numbers. Like sales taxes in general, it’s a despicable soak-the-poor technique that heartlessly exploits the fact that already disadvantaged people further hurt their own cause by not voting at all, much less for candidate who could stop this hemorrhage from people who don’t have much “blood” in the first place.

What I favor is a complete replacement of the city sales tax by a local income tax, or an earnings-based system instead of a spending-based system, that would put a halt to this reverse-Robin Hood approach to raising public revenues.

Also, revoke the state statute that caved in to the evil Las Vegas gambling interests who profit immensely from out own selfish desire to get very many somethings for almost nothing — it doesn’t normally happen that way unless somebody’s well-paid to force it to!

Brian L. Linderholm, Lincoln

On medicinal marijuana

One concern heard about approval of medicinal cannabis/marijuana (MCM) is it will cause a spread of the plant’s recreational use by youth and adults. A recent study from the Texas A&M Health Science Center analyzed data from four states that have approved use of MCM. The researchers wrote, “the results indicate that medical cannabis laws do not increase use of the drug.”

A report on continued cannabis use compared the United States and the Netherlands, where you can buy cannabis in some 700 coffee shops. It found a lesser percentage of the Dutch population who were users in their early adult years but not using in their later years than was found in the same group in the United States.

A February UNICEF report evaluated the well-being of children in affluent nations, in the world, in six different dimensions. UNICEF found the Netherlands to be at the top of the list. Notably, it rated well in the dimensions of “health and safety” and “behaviors and risks.” The prohibitionist United States rated the worst and second worst of all countries, respectively, in the same categories. The White House drug czar’s office, which regularly claims that the Dutch system is bad for kids, did not comment on the report.

The Hinchey Amendment that would prevent the U.S. Department of Justice (including the Drug Enforcement Administration) from persecuting and prosecuting patients registered in the states that have an MCM law was defeated, 165 to 262, in the House.

Twelve states have MCM laws. Five more are in the process.

Wayne Whitmarsh, Lincoln