Jeffersonville annexation and trash can tax

A central theme of the Jeffersonville annexation meetings was convincing the residents that benefits of living in the city offset increases in taxes. One was free garbage pickup. Now comes the parade of new fees and add-ons, the latest being that we buy our own garbage cans.

That’s a $60 tax — more for the family size — for 2,000 households.

The type cans in question are good and should be required. The city or company servicing them should supply them. Our household pays for garbage pickup and the cans are included in the cost, two if we want them.

With five new trucks the city can have five fewer employees and do the job faster according to the newspaper article. If there is a savings in there somewhere it should be passed on to the taxpayer. If not, add the cost and call it what it is — a tax.

— Jim Howard, Jeffersonville



Reader not won over by Sodrel's submission

Mike Sodrel, you’re late to the party. Your Opinions page column on our current energy crisis offered nothing new and was a simple case of political pandering. The only proposal I’ve heard you offer was to drill in ANWR, and that came on the heels of your very expensive political stunt trip there. You know just as well as the rest of us that drilling there won’t produce any tangible oil for at least ten years and will decrease the price we pay at the pump by a whopping two cents.

Unlike you, Baron Hill has been out talking to folks all over the district about this issue and working on legislation to address it. He’s passed a bill that increases fuel efficiency standards for the first time in thirty years, introduced legislation cracking down on unregulated oil speculators who are driving up the price of gasoline, supported tax incentives for businesses to develop green products and focused on pouring our resources into crafting alternative and renewable forms of energy.

If you think one editorial saying things Baron Hill has been talking about for months now will sway votes, you’re sorely mistaken.

— Stephanie Prenatt, New Albany



Not a fan of Palin

I stayed up to watch the acceptance speech of Gov. Palin Wednesday night and it confirmed that she is a gifted speaker. The adlib “what’s the difference between a pit bull and a hockey-mom: lipstick” was very amusing and seemed to help endear her to the partisan crowd. However, facts get in the way of some of her claims.

Gov. Palin claims to have championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress, claiming to have said “thanks but no thanks” for that Bridge to Nowhere. However, as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town with about the same population of Charlestown, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

Gov. Palin criticized Sen. Obama as not authoring “a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate.” However, Sen. Obama worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of our own Sen. Richard Lugar, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, Sen.. Obama was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

Gov. Palin also accused Sen. Obama of wanting to “increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.” However, The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded. Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.

Sen. McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, recently told The Washington Post “This election is not about issues.” What a shame when the issues facing our country are potentially so devastating. Perhaps the McCain/Palin ticket wants to keep the focus off the issues because they know that, when the issues are truly examined, it is apparent that they offer more of the same broken policies that got us in these messes.

By the way, do you know the difference between Bush/Cheney and McCain/Palin? Lipstick.

— Jeffrey Knoebel, Charlestown



Know U.S. heritage

This election is by far the most crucial. It really concerns me. Our society and this country has systematically turned its back on the Founding Fathers and their original intentions.

Do our elected officials even know our true Christian heritage? Have they ever researched The Library of Congress for the truth? Is it not public record?

It’s all over the media, the phrase, “Change We Can Believe In,” offers false hope in man, because we threw out God’s way a long time ago. Just look how active the ACLU has been in numerous Supreme Court cases that you hear very little about in the media.

All of this talk about choice in women’s health and abortions, saying that they should have a choice in these matters, but what about a student’s choice? Shouldn’t they have the same privileges to choose whether or not they can study creation science or intelligent design?

Death is granted by choice on one hand and on the other choice is rejected.

What will these presumptive presidential candidates do to correct these and many other problems?

It’s time for the U.S.A. to return to the deep Christian roots of our founding fathers and become the nation they intended it to be. It’s your choice, America, who will you serve — God or man?

— Gary Kopp, Sellersburg