It’s all one county

It’s all one county

EDITOR:

The Aug. 10 letter to the editor concerning the WRTA bus levy by Mayor John W. Smith of Sebring (population 4,912 as of the 2000 census) was just terrible. Shame on him.

Is he going to take me to see my dying father? (Because he helped take away that bus.) He can’t even begin to realize the hardship put on the families of this county who desperately needed those buses that have been cut. Why doesn’t he come, “sit on the other side” and see for himself? He’s hurting people all over this county by taking away safe commutes to a job or store or doctor or family for those who really need it. What kind of public servant does such a thing?

He says in his letter that this is an unfair tax to the county residents. The rest of this county pays to fix his roads and bridges that we never see and never ride on. Millions of dollars of road repair and sanitation work through the years for what, under 5,000 people? (That seems kind of unfair for the whole county to shoulder.) How about the rest of the county deciding that Sebring is not worth the money spent out there for so few people, and the majority of this county never uses that town, so it should be dissolved to save money? We have more riders per day on WRTA than he has citizens in Sebring

Is Mr. Sebring Mayor trying to single-handedly defeat this whole county’s efforts at revitalization?? Before locating in any area industry looks at the mass transit system. By asking his county to defeat the buses, he is asking them to defeat outside industry ever locating here. They can go 50 miles several ways to other counties with transportation in place that can provide them a better start-up for their business than we can. That’s called, “an incentive.” This county is dying and he is handing out coffin nails.

Every tax that is passed in this county whether it is for the bus, or to run the county government, or to pave a road in Sebring, etc., is to help this country as a whole. We are all monetarily dependent on each other for county taxes. We all give into the county tax jar from paychecks to purchases and the county uses it as needed in each community. Not all of us have the luxury of driving or living in Sebring.

LISA BETH MOORE

Youngstown

Sick days won’t kill Ohio

EDITOR:

Give me a break. The Vindicator’s claim that paid sick days would “cripple Ohio’s ability to compete for jobs” (”Sick leave law would kill Ohio” Aug. 10) flies in the face of the facts, and is more than a little self-serving. Every other industrialized country in the world, except this one, has mandated paid sick days. That includes every democracy, the 20 most economically competitive nations, and even countries like China. If everybody else can mandate this fair and basic standard for their workers and not hurt their competitiveness, why can’t we?

In Ohio 2.2 million people do not have paid sick days, and another million can’t use one to care for a sick child. Every day in every part of the state workers are forced to choose between their paychecks and taking care of themselves or their families. Thanks to federal and state leadership, America, Ohio and this Valley have lost thousands of jobs, and we’ve managed to do it without paid sick days.

I guess paid sick days are OK for politicians and corporate big shots, just not for regular people.

Clearly, it’s not paid sick days that make us unable to compete, it’s unfair trade laws. It’s time to try something that will benefit us all.

MIKE SULLIVAN

Lordstown

Times change, Mr. Mayor

EDITOR:

Keep it up, Mayor Williams, and the whole Liberty-Youngstown area will look like a scene out of a Cormac McCarthy novel — a barren wasteland. But the important thing is that through it all, you will have complied with a 20-year old agreement insisting that Wal-Mart hire 25 percent of its employees from the city of Youngstown. (Never mind that the city has lost almost 15,000 in population in 20 years). But wait, there is no Wal-Mart. There are no jobs. Only blight. But you stuck by your guns. It was the others — Wal-Mart and Liberty Township officials — they were the “incompetent” ones. (And hey, by the way, nice way of winning friends and influencing people by calling them “incompetent”).

The bottom line: Liberty Township is a gateway to Youngstown. Belmont Avenue is probably the most important corridor into the city. People exiting Interstate 80 at Belmont Avenue form an opinion of Youngstown as they look for a place to eat or get gas, or maybe to locate a business or company. What’s good for Liberty is good for Youngstown.

Mayor Williams, fix this situation. Be a visionary not an obstructionist. This is not 1988. We live in different times. Everyone knows that Liberty is not the vibrant business community it once was. Without Wal-Mart Liberty remains the place to come to get a pay-day loan or to rent-to-own a TV. We can be better than that. Believe in your community, Mayor Williams. Be a part of the solution.

TOM ARENS

Liberty

Why court Wal-Mart, GM?

EDITOR:

Recently there has been a lot of talk in the local news about how the citizens and politicians in our Valley must kiss up to GM and Wal-Mart to provide jobs here. GM management held a big rally out at Lordstown about how there will be a major expansion there and we should be so grateful about the bread crumbs they are giving us of the table. First Lordstown once employed about 15,000 people. Now the number is about 5,000, with many of the recent jobs going to employees from other GM plants that are either closing or cutting back. How does this really benefit our local citizens as far as hiring? Also any new people who are hired at Lordstown locally might just be temporary positions out there and they will only be making about half the pay that other GM employees with more seniority are currently making.

Granted I don’t want to see GM close down because they are the largest employer in this area. But this area needs to diversify more. We made the same mistakes with the steel mills and now we are making the same mistakes with GM.

Wal-Mart is another company that everybody praises all the time. They want to open a new store in Liberty. We already have several Wal-Mart locations in the Youngstown-Warren area. Why do we need more? Why give a tax break to a company that is worth billions and one of the largest multinational corporations in the whole world? Many of their jobs, especially on the retail level, are very low paying and many Wal-Mart employees have to pay for their own health insurance. Many prices at Wal-Mart are now lower than other retail store chains.

Wake up, Mahoning Valley. Stop taking the crumbs off the table.

GARY GERGEL

Youngstown

Obama’s plan for taxes and health care won’t work

EDITOR:

Senator Barack Obama is promising the American people two mutually exclusive policies if he is elected president. Those two strategies are a tax reduction for the middle class and the institution of a national healthcare system (aka socialized medicine) that guarantees free healthcare to every citizen and illegal alien within our borders.

The second ultimately eliminates the first. While he may be able to afford to reduce the taxes of the middle class initially, the General Accounting Office will not be able to sustain such tax cuts for very long. Here is the reason why. When the Medicare program was inaugurated in 1965, the bureaucrats in the federal government optimistically projected that Part A — the segment of Medicare that pays for hospitalization — would cost $9 billion by the year 1990. The program’s actual cost that year was $66 billion. After accounting for inflation, the cost of Medicare was in reality 165 percent higher than the government had predicted. In 2007 the cost of Medicare reached 3.2 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (the 2007 GDP was $13.84 trillion), or $443 billion. In 2007, 44 million U.S. citizens were covered under Medicare. That represents 14.4 percent of the 305 million people now residing in the US. At $90 per month, the senior citizen’s premium for Medicare in 2008, we pay $1,080 a year to supplement $47.5 billion of the total cost. If it took $443 billion to satisfy the medical needs of 14.4 percent of our citizens in 2007 how much do you suppose will it take to meet the needs of the other 85.6 percent? I did the math and it amounts to $2.66 trillion. The excess will of necessity have to come from the largest block of U.S. citizens, middle America.

For a reasonable perspective on what we can expect in taxation under a national healthcare systems as proposed by Sen. Obama, we need look only look 150 miles north. Canadian healthcare is allegedly “free,” but it is paid for with confiscatory levels of taxation on income and sales.

The middle class tax cut Obama has promised will go the way of all political vows. If you doubt that, simply vote Sen. Obama into the White House in November and watch what happens to your payroll taxes.

CHARLES H. McGOWEN, MD

Howland

McCain’s the one out of step

EDITOR:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, and apparently the majority of the American people, thinks that McCain is wiser on issues of foreign policy and national security. On closer examination, however, it is easy to see that is a myth.

Here’s a case in point. When Russia invaded the Georgia, the former Soviet satellite, McCain, in lockstep with President George Bush, said that in the 21st century countries do not invade other countries. Duh. Sure, the United States did not invade Iraq, it “liberated” it. Fortunately, that only jells with the few hardcore people still supporting Bush, not the rest of the world.

The United States is clearly in a pickle on the issue of Russia’s invading Georgia, and to a great extent it is because it is bogged down in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. John McCain has remained in lockstep with George Bush on his foolish mission in Iraq.

On one occasion, I heard John McCain, while touting his so-called “wisdom” on the increase in troops in Iraq, say a half dozen times that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barrack Obama “does not understand.” Sen. Obama not only understands the foolishness of the United States Iraq policy, he had opposed it from the beginning. We are bogged down there and our options for military involvement in situations around the world that might threaten our national interests are severely limited because our troops are overburdened. And world opinion is not on our side, largely because of our folly in Iraq.

Clearly, it is McCain and George Bush who “do not understand.” Sen. Obama gets it.

LEON STENNIS

Youngstown