Delays, quality of Mahoning road work questioned; America’s intellectuals flunk on health insurance; Rest In Peace, Ferguson, Mo.

Driver questions delays, quality of road work in Mahoning County

Having just driven from the Five Points area of Western Reserve Road (Springfield and Poland townships) to state Route 62, I am reminded once again of the genius notion to make two speed limits on Western Reserve Road alternating between 35 mph and 45 mph. Pay attention, people, because the changes are frequent. I kept the speed at 35 as I drove up the hill toward New Buffalo Road, the engine straining as if to say “I’m trying to haul us up this hill, and you’re keeping the speed at 35?”

The 35 mph limit is necessary from state Route 170 to Hitchcock Road as the traffic is heavy, but it lightens considerably as I drive west.

Southern Boulevard in Boardman has a speed limit of 45 mph from McClurg Road to Route 224. Who determined the speed limits on Western Reserve Road?

This brings up another question: Why was Western Reserve Road closed off and on for two years for widening from Hitchcock to points west? From two lanes to three or four? Nope, more like three feet on either side Not long after this improvement, South Avenue was widened from two lanes to five. The project took three months. Remarkable.

Another project lasting months in the spring of 2013 was a bridge improvement on state Route 165. The first was the bridge near Blosser Road, and the second was just east of Route 62. The second project seemed to go forever, and when I called to ask when the road would open, I was told that it would open the following week. I asked if the creek (which floods after heavy rain) had been dredged when they had the equipment there for months and was told no. I asked why, and there was silence on the phone. Of course the area flooded after the next heavy rain.

My last gripe with Mahoning County and Ohio engineers involves the possible raising of the roadbed on Western Reserve Road where it goes over Interstate 680 as it is too low for truck traffic coming off the turnpike. I sure hope this is a crazy rumor because I would think that lowering 680 would be easier than raising the Western Reserve Road overpass.

With the constant road work in Mahoning County, and the length of time taken to complete projects, I have to wonder if engineering degrees were granted after online courses from the University of Phoenix.

Lee Smith, Poland

‚ãAmerica’s intellectuals flunk out

After group health insurance is abolished — and it will be — many people will ask how intellectuals got health care so wrong for so long. Intellectuals botched health care so badly I expect a whole future set of literature to gather understanding of why on health care American intellectuals abandoned their vocation.

You wouldn’t expect schools to stay in business long if students were taught 2 + 2 = 5 or that the Civil War was fought between Canada and the United Midwestern states in 1841. Yet, much of the stuff taught about the distribution of health care and what that distribution means is trivia piled upon fallacy and falsehood.

One reviewer’s comment on University of Colorado Professor Jeffrey Bennett’s popular “Math for Life” suggests a shocking explanation for the American academy’s wholesale failure to uncover health care truth.

“Civic corruption, construed broadly to include legal but extremely ill-founded ideas, is an unrecognized disincentive to clearly teach and apply math skills to illuminate and solve real-world problems . . . [such as the existence of] group health insurance.”

If a nation’s Big Money is on junk ideas, junk thinking is what will be taught. Be prepared for stomach-wrenching teachable moments as America’s exceptionalist method of funding health care circles the drain on its way to history’s septic tank.

Too bad America’s schoolhouses and academies refused to explain what was going wrong as it was going wrong. America’s whiteboard warriors will just have to catch up when they can.

Jack Labusch, Niles

Rest in peace, Ferguson, Missouri

Regarding the Vindicator article, “Pathologist: Brown may have had hands raised when shot,” it still is too early to make any sense of what is and has happened in Ferguson, Mo., in the aftermath of the shooting death of Michael Brown.

In the “old” days, we had an axiom that went like this : “Do not believe anything you hear and only 50 percent of what you see.”

The situation that exists in Ferguson is that the whole country has been given the “facts” as proclaimed by the media, television reporters, radio analysts and newspapers ad nauseam. The first time that the police faced a mob, they should have turned in their badges and their guns and left the city. Ferguson residents let outsiders take over their city, which will never be the same, if it ever could have survived the tragedy of one life having been lost.

Mob rule ruined any chance that Ferguson could ever survive or receive any justice. It is no longer a city.

Leonard J. Sainato, Warren