Spread out the slot machines

Spread out the slot machines

EDITOR:

As a resident, voter and taxpayer in Ohio, I and many other Ohioians truly believe that it is long past time that the state of Ohio move into the 21st century as it relates to gambling, a $1 trillion business. Many progressive states all around Ohio are engaged in gambling and billions of dollars leave Ohio each year to gamble in other states.

We who support gambling in Ohio believe Gov. Strickland, the Ohio Legislature and ballot petitioners for gambling in Ohio should not have gambling half-hearted in Ohio — just at Ohio’s seven race tracks and only in the cities of Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Toledo. Have gambling and slot machines at all Ohio hotels, motels, malls and amusement parks, all across Ohio’s 88 counties.

That way, the state would get the maximum financial benefits and tax relief from gambling and slot machines in Ohio, and not politics as usual in Ohio.

WILLIE JAMES RICHARDS

Youngstown

Pop tax a bad idea

EDITOR:

Our industry supports improving health care in America. We also support effective initiatives that will have a lasting and meaningful impact on the health of our country, rather than discriminatory taxes (“Tax soda to pay for health care, prevention,” July 9).

We all want to improve health care, but taxes don’t make anyone healthy. Education, exercise and balanced diets do that.

We are proud to be doing our part to reduce childhood obesity and teach healthy lifestyles. In 2006, America’s leading beverage companies teamed with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation to implement national School Beverage Guidelines as part of a broader effort to teach children about the importance of a balanced diet and exercise. These guidelines remove full-calories of soft drinks from all schools and provide for more lower-calorie, nutritious, smaller-portion beverage options. In just two years of a three-year implementation, beverage calories available in schools have already been cut by 58 percent and nearly 80 percent of schools under contract with bottlers are in compliance. We are delivering on our commitment.

The complexities of health care reform won’t be solved by a tax on soda pop. It’s simply the wrong public policy for such a complex problem.

KIMBERLY McCONVILLE

Executive Director

Ohio Soft Drink Association

Columbus

Will overlooked some facts

EDITOR:

George Will accuses UPS of “bending public power for private advantage” because it believes that FedEx’s workers should have the same right to organize as their peers at other package-delivery companies (“Obama is paying bills owed to labor,” July 16).

But he neglects to mention that one reason FedEx’s employees aren’t unionized is because the company spent millions over the past decade lobbying Congress to preserve a legal loophole that restricts its employees’ right to organize. That sounds an awful lot like “bending public power for private advantage.”

FedEx’s chicanery doesn’t stop there. It’s threatening to cancel a multibillion-dollar airplane order — putting thousands of manufacturing jobs at risk — if Congress closes its labor loophole. That sounds like simple blackmail to me.

RICHARD P. MICHALSKI

General vice president

International Association of Machinists

Upper Marlboro, Md.