Sunday, May 5, 2019
State bailout of Lordstown trumps nuclear plants aid
General Motors has eliminated 4,500 jobs in Lordstown in the past three years. The population of Lordstown is currently 3,200. The loss of the GM Lordstown Complex has created a dramatic negative financial impact on the village.
The Ohio Legislature has offered no bailout to us. Why should we spend $300 million a year to bail out two bankrupt nuclear plants? This bailout destabilizes the current open and free power-generation market in Ohio at the taxpayers’ expense. Additionally, it jeopardizes a new natural-gas-to-electric power plant in Lordstown that will produce electricity at half the cost of nuclear or coal, saving consumers money.
A new plant will bring 2 million man hours of work to the Mahoning Valley and would have an economic impact of $26 billion to Lordstown, Warren, and the Mahoning Valley over its lifetime. Because of this, I question: Why is a bailout needed? Who is responsible? Do we point to bad management? Poor business decisions?
In a changing world the Mahoning Valley must be on top and ahead of the curve. I appreciate state Rep. Michael O’Brien’s willingness to recognize that this piece of legislation will negatively impact Lords-town and the entire Mahoning Valley. I ask that you call your state legislators and ask them to also vote no on Ohio House Bill 6.
Arno Hill, Lordstown
Arno Hill is mayor of Lordstown
End of abortion in the US would have unintended consequences for society
The state of Ohio and others have installed new laws that are bound to end up in the Supreme Court, one that is staffed with right-to-lifers. The end of abortion rights will have many unintended consequences. Among them are increased crime rates and more abused, murdered and abandoned babies and children. At a time of crisis for our planet’s health, we will have many more people to contribute to its degradation.
The highest crime rate is among unwanted children who were raised by single mothers. The crime rate went down significantly since Roe v. Wade. As abortion gets harder and more expensive, the crime rate will go up as children are born to mothers who can’t take care of them properly.
In a perfect world there would be no abortion; every baby would be wanted and cared for. But in reality, 20,000 would-be babies are aborted every year in Ohio. Passing laws outlawing abortion is attacking the symptom and not the problem. Making birth control unavailable or difficult to obtain aggravates the situation and is counter productive.
Women who abort are usually desperately poor, don’t have needed help or otherwise feel it is better for the baby to not be born. Black women get abortions at the highest rate. Black babies suffer the higher rates of death and health and safety risk. Where is the concern and legislation to improve that situation? Women will be even more miserable and at risk by removing safe abortion from their options. It is not a question of women not having abortions. Some desperate women have always resorted to abortion. The question is whether she will die from the procedure.
Austin Kuder, Seven Hills
Watcher of Fox network ignores history by calling Democrats political haters
Once again, a Fox News watcher has decided to post that network’s slanted and ill-conceived views in a letter to The Vindicator. I am speaking of Ms. Jurina’s letter proclaiming that Democrats are the party of hatred.
She must have overlooked how horribly President Barack Obama and his family were portrayed while he was president. Depictions of him as an ape, being hanged in effigy, that he was an ISIS terrorist and even was the head of ISIS, that he would institute Shariah Law and take away everyone’s guns were spread on an almost daily basis. His wife Michelle was said to be a man in disguise. He was even criticized for the color suit he once wore. The list is almost endless.
The writer also proclaimed that the Republicans “are being hailed as fighters for our country, people, welfare, safety and gain.” I guess if one considers huge cuts being made to social programs, including Trump’s fiscal proposal to cut Social Security benefits, ecological restrictions being abolished to favor big businesses, tax cuts that favor billionaires over the average citizens and running America trillions more in debt and alienating our foreign allies as fighting for our country, then she’s right.
I guarantee that if Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat were in the White House right now, they would have been impeached, indicted, ejected from office and incarcerated by now. The shameless Republican-led Senate will, hopefully, pay dearly for this in 2020.
David Szakacs, Warren
Press silent while coup against Trump attempted
The press has always been considered the guardian of our democracy. What happened?
With the silence of the mainstream media, a bloodless coup against President Donald Trump was attempted. This was the first time in U.S. history that the party in power tried to interfere with a presidential election. James Clapper and John Brennan both lied to Congress under oath. Sally Yates signed off (she denies this) on spying on U.S. citizens without probable cause of a crime. The Democratic National Committee hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on the Trump campaign. This in itself is common in elections, but Fusion hired Christopher Steele, a retired MI6 agent, to create a damning dossier on Donald Trump. He relied on Russians for information. The Justice Department took this dossier to the FISA Court to get permission to spy on American citizens. They lied to the FISA Court claiming that the information had been verified.
The inspector general of the Justice Department is currently investigating this and the report should be finished in a few months. So the real collusion was by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, but your newspaper along with the majority of the press chose to ignore this. Yet you complain when Trump says “fake news”. As the Roman satirist wrote, quis custodies ipsos custodes (who will watch the watchers)? I fear real journalism is just about dead in the U.S. Very sad.
Jim McCloskey, Boardman
Wouldn’t it be great if Dems, GOP cooperated?
I disagree with the por- trait of President Donald Trump that was created by the news media and the Democrats.
The portrait that I and many others have has been a frustrated president accused by a false narrative that was created by Democrats and pushed by the fake media. There is no underlying crime.
This president has a great vision for America, putting America first. He has kept his promise on many issues, even though the Democrats and their willing accomplices, the fake news media, continue to obstruct and attempt to demonize President Trump.
This doesn’t surprise me because this is part of the Democrats’ playbook. They attempted to do it to presidents Reagan and Bush, as well as presidential candidate Romney.
It would be wonderful if the Democrats in Congress would cooperate with the Republicans and address issues that affect the American people.
Dick LaLumia, Youngstown