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Use conservation, sense during crisis

Your Voice

Letters to the Editor

Published: September 16, 2008

Thank you for your thumbs up message on Saturday. This was one of few news media messages that was written with any reasonable common sense at all.

Our TV news programs have fueled this "fuel shortage farce" that has challenged our normal fuel supplies.

We all realized that a storm such as the one Texas has endured would have some effect on fuel prices. Knowing this, if a supplier raises its prices such that it appears to be price gouging, just don't buy from that supplier.

That, along with conservation, is a simple way that we, the public, can pass along a message to these suppliers as well as help to force these prices to moderate.

Taking out our frustrations on the folks at the registers (the front lines), won't be productive either. Usually, they have to buy that same fuel that we buy. As well, that store probably makes only a couple cents per gallon. The store is not causing the increase, it's just forced to pass it along.

Use of a little conservation, common sense and patience will help us all to survive this perceived crisis, and we will survive it.

Jeff Tibbs
Newton

Illegal parking in fire lanes also a problem

In the editorials lately there have been several letters concerning the abuse of handicapped spaces at shopping centers and businesses. My concern is for a related problem — parking in the fire lanes.

This happens quite frequently, and I have never seen someone ticketed or warned for doing this.

While I have never seen such a vehicle get in the way of an emergency vehicle, I am sure it happens. I feel this illegal parking is just due to laziness.

Most of the time, the car is occupied while someone else is in the store. I'm sure their rationale is that "Well, we're only going to be here for a minute." No one lives in the store so every customer is only going to be there a short while.

Parking in handicapped spaces by tagless vehicles, the abuse of a handicapped tag and parking in the fire lane are just due to people's unwillingness to walk a few more feet to do the right thing.

Please respect the law and the needs of others.

Harry Hipps
Hickory

Obama, Biden will make America better

Sunday morning, when I pick up the paper, I see someone talking about how great Sarah Palin is.

Sorry, but I am not going to vote for anyone who talks of going to war with Russia before even getting into office. The American people are tired of war, tired of reading about someone else losing their life in Iraq when the Army had no business going there in the first place.

The U.S. needs to get back to worrying about what's best for this country, not one halfway around the world.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden have better foreign policies then John McCain and Palin. The Republican foreign policy is to send a Navy ship off the coast of the opposing country to try to intimidate these countries. That's not what America needs.

The value of a dollar is falling like a wingless bird, and our reputation around the world is just about as bad as it's ever been, not to mention the unemployment rate is awful. Republicans have had their chance the past eight years to make America better. They have failed.

It's time the middle class in America got a break from outsourced jobs and tax hikes from Republicans who sit back and watch all their rich friends' pockets get fatter and fatter.

Barack Obama says any company who doesn't outsource jobs gets bigger tax breaks, that means more jobs better economy.

Let's get together and make America better. I promise with Barack Obama and Joe Biden in office that is exactly what will happen!

Will Hames
Conover

Palin ups sleaze level to McCain campaign

Carlton Huffman (Your Voice, Sept. 14) and John McCain seem equally delighted in Sarah Palin.

McCain, all smiles, has done much of his campaigning in tandem with Palin. She draws crowds and enthusiasm. He doesn't.

I think it's a measure of just how mediocre the McCain campaign is that the Republican faithful can find pleasure and hope in a vice-presidential candidate who brings nothing to the presidential race except the ability to read a teleprompter and sling out predictable one-liners. Her remarks concerning the regret Barack Obama must feel at not choosing Hillary Clinton show a remarkable degree of hubris.

Now, Sarah Palin has joined John McCain in bringing a sleazy campaign to new and slanderous levels. It is now a strategy worthy of Karl Rove and Pat Buchanan, but not worthy of the American people.

Don Hill
Hickory

Palin not experienced, not acceptable candidate

In response to Brett Frye's letter fawning over Sarah Palin, I couldn't disagree more. It's obvious that Frye is desperately trying to prove that Palin is an acceptable candidate, despite the fact that a person with her lack of experience becoming vice president of our country is absurd.

Spare me the response I keep hearing about her experience as a mayor being relevant. If that's true, then I have to assume you consider Jerry Springer (former mayor of Cincinnati) to be an appropriate candidate also.

I think it's appropriate for me to point out that the media's coverage of Palin seems designed to lift her up to the status of that other female pop icon, Barbie.

I don't believe the media is conspiring for Obama. If anything, they're distracting the public from Palin's lack of a relevant resume by focusing on things like her success as a pageant queen or her ability to field-dress a moose. Interesting facts, but hardly qualifications for vice-president.

Frye's letter also states that Palin "takes away fear."

Let me assure you that the idea of a hockey mom with 20 months experience as governor of Alaska being one heartbeat away from the presidency is an idea that strikes fear in the hearts of millions of intelligent American citizens.

Cami Hepler
Hickory

Public should remember high gasoline prices

Did anyone notice the front page photos in the paper Sunday?

Exxon, which has bragged about the largest profits ever, also had the highest gas price at the pumps, $1 more than some of the competitors and 40 cents more than even another Exxon.

I can't see price manipulation here. Do you?

Seems to me, just like a bad restaurant, we should remember this in our future purchases.

Mike Brittain
Mountain View

Consolidation, deregulation not working too well

This morning, I woke up to hear that Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy protection. So tell me again how deregulation is a good thing?

We have another instance of the taxpayers picking up corporate America's mess because the government got out of the way.

Fannie Mae started as a government-run corporation which allowed the 20- and 30-year mortgages our parents used to realize the American dream of home ownership. Then the free market advocates got it privatized, and now the American taxpayers are on the hook for more billions.

Shades of the 1980s when we had to bail out the savings and loan industry following deregulation. We deregulated the airline industry, and now many airlines are out of business, and I hear nothing but complaints about the service on those that are left. Where are the benefits from competition?

Companies pay CEOs multiple millions, then give them golden parachutes when they fail. But the workers get their unemployment benefits extended- — if they're lucky. Companies can't understand how throwing thousands of their customers out of work is related to falling sales. They just lobby for more taxpayer bailouts so that profits are privatized while risk is socialized. That is not capitalism.

So tell me again how great deregulation works?

Thomas Blanton
Granite Falls