Letters, 6/16: Jail alternatives ignored

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The good news is that the jail issue is finally being questioned — or at least the flawed process, which is rushing us headlong into building an unneeded facility and increasing our taxes.

The June 4 Lincoln Journal Star editorial, “Jail ballot issue looks worse in hindsight,” begins to question the undemocratic process. According to the editorial, voters were given the option of voting on a financing scheme but were denied a vote to oppose the jail. The ballot wording may have been confusing, but the voters aren’t confused in not wanting a costly jail. Too bad they didn’t get to vote.

Everyone admits that the county jail is overcrowded — 100 or more inmates over capacity — but alternatives to a $64 million jail — with an additional $4.5 million a year to operate it — have been ignored.   

Some of us have suggested increasing community correction alternatives: work release, electronic monitoring, house arrest, quicker bonding out and alternative sentencing. The present program is actually working quite well. It has been expanding each year and is actually alleviating overcrowding. I say give it a chance.

In the meantime, to satisfy our commissioners, who have already spent $2 million for land and contracted for over $4 million to design, we might let them save face by building a small, minimum custody facility on their West O land that would house several hundred nonviolent inmates. The cost could be less than $10 million and the overcrowding problem would be solved, while community corrections lessened the need for future expansion.

It is not too late to back off, take a cleansing breath and rethink the whole issue.

John Krejci, Lincoln

Through with Nelson

Sen. Ben Nelson until now has had my vote, but not anymore.  For a long time he has postured himself as a friend of the farmer.  Now we know just what his “friendship” means. It means fuel prices so high that many Nebraskans, including farmers, are now wondering what to do, fill the gas tank or buy food.

For years the Democratic party, Nelson’s party, has successfully stymied all efforts by American oil companies to drill for oil in the very, very large new, untapped deposits in Alaska.

If utilized, these deposits and those elsewhere in the United States can let us set our own price for oil and therefore gas and diesel fuel. And for the past few years I have tried, in vain, to enlist Nelson’s help in ending this insane blockage. Instead,6 his cadence has become surer as he marches, lock step with his party colleagues.

I am through waiting for Nelson to help this country and this state in its fight to become energy independent. Today I am scraping his sticker off my car and throwing his yard sign in the trash. Next time his name is on the ballot, my selection will be for the other party — whoever that might be.

Vince Murphy, Lincoln

Cabinet post for HagelAs Sen. Chuck Hagel winds down his Senate career, he deserves praise for his courage, for his frankness and, most importantly, for standing up to the Bush administration over the war in Iraq.

Those on the far right in Nebraska and elsewhere have viewed Sen. Hagel with scorn.

Well, it’s the neoconservatives and the war’s hardliners who have been proved wrong by this disastrous foreign policy blunder that is now more than five years old, with more than 4,000 dead Americans.

As a Democrat I did not vote for Hagel when he first ran for the Senate 12 years ago.

I did not know much about Hagel then — believing he would be another right-wing mouthpiece in the Senate.

Yes, Hagel is conservative. He has supported President Bush a lot during his presidency. But he has not been a rubber stamp.

I have come to admire him over the years. And when he ran for re-election in 2002 I crossed over and voted for him. And I have not regretted it.

Hagel has proved to be a statesman of the highest honor. He still has not endorsed presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain because he believes he is as wrong on the Iraq War as President Bush has been.

I doubt if he will be on Barack Obama’s ticket this November. But if Obama somehow reached over and asked Hagel and he accepted, that would be fine with me.

Better yet, if Obama wins in November, he ought to consider giving Hagel a Cabinet post on foreign affairs. It would be a fine pick.

Herb Vermaas, Omaha

Media ignore liberal lies

In the letter “Bush Lied? Not So Fast” by Wayne Simpson (LJS, June 8), he failed to fully show it’s the liberal press that perpetuates the myth of Bush lying about Iraq but does little when liberals obviously lie, as the majority of the news media ignore, or downplay, their lying.

Examples: Hillary’s “running for cover under fire,” her husband Bill “I did not have sex with that woman,” and several others; Barack Obama’s explanation of his “20-year association with the Rev. Wright and other radical people.”

Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait a few years ago, which was the major push for terrorists to take over the world, like Hitler tried. It took U.S. forces to stop him, and at that time liberal intervention forced our leaders to not complete the job, and Saddam stayed in power, and our nation became divided.

If liberalism had stayed out of the way, Iraq would not have been a problem today. Not finishing the job then only emboldened the terrorist Muslims to rebuild and change directions, to where about 3,000 lives were lost on 9/11/01, and the killing goes on today.

If President Abraham Lincoln were around today and saw the divisiveness and immorality liberals have wrought on our country, would he include them when he said: “Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged!” Which brings to mind an old saying: “United we stand. Divided we fall.”

Merlyn D. Braunsroth, Pleasant Dale

Neighborhood trapped

It is sad to read about the accidents at 84th Street and Leighton, but the city and the public need to be aware of another problem area near 84th and Vine. 

The residents of Sunrise Hills are trapped in our neighborhood with no safe entrance onto 84th Street. All three of the roads (Blue Sky, Sunridge, Larson) have limited sight visibility because of the hills on 84th Street.

Even from Larson Boulevard there is limited visibility at night if you are driving a car. There is enough of a dip in the roadway that a person driving a car from Larson Boulevard cannot see the headlights of the oncoming northbound 84th Street car.

It’s not that we want to pull out in front of you, it’s just that we can’t see you coming and we have no other safe way out of our neighborhood. We are appreciative of the police’s heavy enforcement of the 40 mph speed limit on 84th Street.

In our case, it is unfortunate that Vine Street was not continued east of 84th street. It would have made a logical entrance to our neighborhood, and it has a traffic signal.

Decades ago the city was bent on stopping the eastward expansion into Stevens Creek, and to limit the volume of traffic on east Vine because of the two schools there. The result was a dead-ended neighborhood that today has accessibility problems.

The city designers need to be firm and future looking when it comes to road design. In 2006, 84th Street had 25,000 cars per day, which is nearly what the interstate is carrying! And that is for a road with its eastern Stevens Creek population base still undeveloped, and pre Wal-Mart.

The reality is that there is usually only one way to do it right. Have 98th or 112th street been done right?

Gary Sloniker, Lincoln