Absentee ballots key to military
10/23/2008My husband recently reenlisted in the U.S. Army. An absentee ballot application was obtained, filled out, and hand-delivered to the Wood County Board of Elections. While I stood there, it was checked by two workers to ensure that it was properly completed.
As of Oct. 14, my husband still had not received the ballot. I called the elections board to see when it was sent. It was never sent. Incredulous, I asked why not. Apparently, the application information was never entered into the computer. Not surprisingly, she could offer me no satisfactory explanation.
Luckily, my husband was home on a four-day pass and had enough time to vote in person. He went into the board of elections and explained his situation. He was very upset. So many military ballots were not counted in the 2004 election and we had done everything right to make sure this would not happen to him.
I urge all voters who sent in absentee ballot applications to check on their status - even those who walked in the application. I am sincerely afraid for the direction of our beloved republic.
Katie Jones
Bowling Green
Media are selective about voter freedoms
If a public organization funded with taxpayers' dollars was working to suppress news organizations from printing or broadcasting the news, I am sure The Blade, along with most newspapers and news networks, would be screaming loudly about the danger of losing one of our most valuable freedoms, freedom of the press.
The right to a free election and the right to vote are probably equally as important as the freedom of the press. So why is it that most news organizations, including The Blade, are strangely quiet about the campaign of voter-registration fraud that the ACORN organization has been conducting for the upcoming election?
Have the news organizations taken it upon themselves to decide which of our constitutional freedoms they wish to defend, and which they feel we can forfeit?
We should be careful which we wish to defend and which we wish to forfeit.
Our decisions may come back to haunt us.
Ray Strassner
LaSalle, Mich.
Some voter errors just plain stupidity
Are you kidding? "Honest mistakes" on voter-registration cards?
Pardon me for being rude, but if you're not smart enough to know your name, address, phone number, and Social Security number, you should not be allowed to vote for our next leader. We teach some of these important pieces of information to our children.
There's a big difference between ignorance (not knowing because you have not been taught) and stupidity (self-explanatory), and the Supreme Court decision crossed that line.
Beau Ruetz
Lima Street
Attacks by McCain cover for ineptitude
Now that John McCain is behind in the polls, the personal character attacks on Barack Obama are rolling out at a fever pitch. When you cannot sell yourself, attack the other party.
Mr. McCain has no good plans or ideas to help this country, so he is reduced to attacking the other candidate. We have had eight years of a dirty politician who has ruined this country. We don't need four more.
Steve Price
Penelope Drive
Socialism will result with Obama victory
The Democratic hierarchy welcomes every down day on Wall Street because it embodies its goal of socialism in this country. The businesses of our country and many other Americans are afraid each time a poll gives more votes to Barack Obama. The Obama regime is anti-business, which is no secret.
It is also easy to see that the class card is being played. The so-called "middle class" is portrayed as the victims and the big businesses are the evil ones - an epilogue to Karl Marx.
Our country is being attacked by organizations such as ACORN, Democratic Socialists of America, and the International Action Network on Small Arms, and by people such as Mr. Obama, William Ayers, George Soros, Rebecca Peters (who wants to disarm everyone), and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (who curses America).
This election is a crucial test for our beloved country. The choices are to be led down the road to socialism or to vote to stand tall and protect our Constitution and our way of life.
Alwin F. Welling
Millbury
Solar costs need more than guesses
This is in answer to the Oct. 9 letter in The Blade, "Solar is a great idea, but not at any price."
I did a little research on the Dura landfill proposal. They want to generate 1 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year with the solar panels. In our area, panels generate the equivalent of their peak production for 1,500 hours per year. That equates to a need for 667 kilowatts of installed capacity.
For a residential installation, the accepted ballpark figure for installed cost is $5 per watt. That equates to $3.33 million for the Dura job, not the $5 million in The Blade's Sept. 22 article.
However, covering a landfill should be much less costly than installing panels on the roof of a house. Also, because of the size of the job, I would expect savings in mounting costs, in inverters, and connecting the panels to the grid. But what do I know? Was an experienced solar engineer consulted on what this might cost?
I'm thinking if this job was bid competitively, the cost might be closer to $2.5 million. That's just my guess. I don't want solar to get a bad name on what was apparently a guess on the part of whoever came up with that $5 million figure.
Jack Roesler
Rossford
Conservation may be best answer to crisis
It is ironic that the Bush Administration as well as the McCain campaign derided the idea of conservation as a means to lower fuel costs, saying that it would not be helpful. Recently, we have seen the price of gas drop and the reason for that drop is a simple lesson in supply and demand.
When oil providers refused to increase production in order to keep the prices high, American drivers reduced consumption by 800,000 barrels per day. Much of this was done by conservation: consolidation of trips, higher-mileage vehicles, and reduction of long trips. Imagine what we could have accomplished if we had thought about it?
George Wagner
Sylvania
It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature
Twenty to 30 years ago, some environmentalists and scientists proposed that the Earth was warming, that man was responsible, and that global catastrophe was imminent if we didn't do something about it immediately. These proposals are accepted as gospel. While it is apparent that the Earth is warming, their other assumptions about man's responsibility and the urgency to act are open to debate.
As the Greenland article in the Oct. 12 issue of The Blade points out, there are other possible reasons for the warming, including natural Earth cycles and the activity of our sun. Indeed, Greenland was green before the Little Ice Age came along to freeze it over well before humans were influencing our environment.
Any number of ridiculous "cures" have been floated, including cloud generators dotted over the oceans to reflect the sun, to removing and sequestering the carbon from the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. All of this and more similarly inane ideas are coming our way from the climate zealots with absolutely no consideration of what new disasters might result from their interference with nature.
Herbert Zieman
Eton Road
The world's oldest profession goes hand in hand with gambling casinos and that work can't be outsourced either.
William A. Gorsuch
Delta, Ohio