A stinky yes vote for sales tax; Move Mooney; Shame on nonvoters; Shame on Browns; Lawyers hog settlement; CEO pay justified

He’d hold his nose but still vote for five-year sales-tax renewal

I have just finished reading the report of the sales-tax results and note that Mahoning County Commissioner Anthony Traficanti states that there is “no clear message.”

Let me try to help him out. Looking past the compensation issues, I and many others I have discussed the issue with will not vote in favor of a sales-tax issue if it remains as a permanent “renewal.”

How can a five-year tax issue be converted to permanent and be called a “renewal?”

If it is proposed as a true renewal, I will hold my nose to avoid the odor of the compensation policies with the hope that reality occurs to the commissioners, and vote in favor of a five-year renewal.

Gordon Williams, Ellsworth

Diocese made the wrong decision to keep Cardinal Mooney in city

I was very disappointed to read that Youngstown Bishop George Murry has decided to quash the plans to build a new Cardinal Mooney High School.

I believe that his decision is unwise, shortsighted and misguided. The negative consequences will be the continued atrophy in enrollment and the school’s eventual demise.

Future Cardinal Mooney students and their parents deserve a new, modern, safe school located in a clean, safe venue where the school can realistically compete for the Catholic students who will otherwise attend the fine public schools in the burbs.

Anticipating an increase in enrollment from its current 200 students, to an estimated 1,000, the Diocese of Pittsburgh had the foresight to invest in the new $75 million Cardinal Wuerl high school complex in Cranberry where the population is exploding. That seems like a sound investment to me.

By contrast Youngstown’s bishop wants the diocese’s faithful to invest in a worn- out building, loaded with asbestos, albeit encapsulated, and located in one of the city’s most blighted and moribund neighborhoods.

Tearing down a few houses there is not going to transform this neighborhood from a sow’s ear into a silk purse. Parents from the burbs are not going to enroll their students there when they can send them to fine modern schools in Boardman, South Range, Canfield, Columbiana and Poland.

The bishop should have given the fund-raising effort more of a chance instead of bailing out on the future of Cardinal Mooney so soon. After all, what’s another six months or even another year? Mooney’s parents, alumni, and students are worth the extra effort.

Henry E. Miller, Youngstown

Nonvoters should be ashamed

Since 2001, the United States has had 2,222 military service members killed in Afghanistan so that, among other objectives, the Afghanistan people could vote.

On Tuesday, May 6, 2014, I am sorry to say barely 20 percent of us in the Mahoning Valley could be bothered to vote.

Shame on you if you didn’t.

Robert B. Mangold, Cortland

Robert Mangold is a retired U.S. Army colonel and served as a poll worker in the recent primary.

Shame on the Browns for bad treatment of Slavic Americans

The time has now COME FOR all people of Slavic origin to shun the Cleveland Browns because of their blatantly discriminatory practices against people of Slavic origin.

Browns owner Jimmy Haslam and his cronies fired Slavic head coach Rob Chudzinski after less than one year on the job. Every other coach of the new Cleveland Browns had at least two years to get the job done.

Browns former quarterback, Slavic Bernie Kosar, was the last Cleveland Browns quarterback to lead the Browns to the AFC title game. In fact, he did it three years in a row in the 1980s. Bernie Kosar was also a terrific game analyst for many years during the Browns exhibition game telecasts.

Kosar at times would slur his words because of a condition known as post-concussion syndrome, which was a direct result of the many hits he took during his playing days. Kosar drew the wrath of the St. Louis Rams when he gave in-game negative comments concerning a third- string quarterback for the Rams, two of their receivers and an assistant coach. That’s what he was paid to do.

Does all commentary have to be honey and jam? Whatever happened to free speech? Kosar also was recently fired by the Haslam crew.

Why didn’t the multibillion-dollar NFL get rid of Browns billionaire owner Haslam who has been accused of cheating his best Pilot gas customers out of the rebates entitled to them.

The Slavic people have the largest ethnic population in Northeastern Ohio, a fact that has been deliberately of no consequence to the Haslam cartel. They brutally sacked Chudzinski and Kosar because they knew they could without a backlash from the Slavic communities of Northeastern Ohio.

As a proud Slavic resident of Northeastern Ohio, I will not buy any tickets to Cleveland Browns games, will not buy any products advertised during Browns games or buy any souvenirs or promotional materials pertaining to Cleveland Browns Incorporated.

The rest of Northeastern Ohio should join in shunning Cleveland Browns Inc.

Jim Bunosky, Austintown

Lawyers sure did hog up settlement

Tucked away deep INSIDE The Vindicator of May 9 is an article about a settlement in a lawsuit. The details of the case are of no real interest to me, but the settlement details are.

In the $200,000 settlement, the attorney gets $110,000 and the clients (victims) get $90,000. Where is the justice in a system that rewards only the lawyers?

Don Johnson, Liberty

High CEO salaries can be justified

CEO salaries have been a hot- button issue of debate for as long as I can remember. Last week a letter to The Vindicator talked about how CEO salaries are exorbitantly high and how this translates into what he described as the “reverse Robin Hood” effect. The problem when talking about executive salaries is determining “how much is too much”— and what is that number or percentage relative to a specific metric. As always, the answer is not simple.

It was explained in last week’s letter that the CEO of Oracle is paid an annual salary of $78.4 million. On its face, $78 million is a lot of money. What last week’s letter failed to include was the gross revenue of Oracle was $37.18 billion. If we were to figure a percentage of that CEO’s salary relative to Oracle’s 2013 revenues, it would work out to .21 percent. In terms of percentages, that is not excessive at all.

Is paying someone $78 million a year to run a company that generates $37 billion in revenue justifiable? Oracle’s board of directors seems to think so because the company is succeeding, and what they decide to pay managers of the company is between them and the shareholders.

In my estimation there is one alternative — government intervenes and sets what it believes to be “fair” compensation either by setting a flat rate or assigning a maximum percentage based on some financial metric. But meddling in what corporations can pay for their employees is a dangerous game that can lead down a slippery slope easily. It is bad for the free market and its increasing use as a tool of populist politics is intended to get people riled up without giving them all the facts.

Alex Mangie, Canfield

Alex Mangie is a certified public accountant.