Protesters long list of tax gripes

4/29/2009

As a person who attended two Tax Day protests, let me tell you and your readers why I, and hundreds of thousands of people across the country, attended these rallies:

• A pro-Obama mainstream press which squeals like a 13-year-old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert at a mere utterance from our President.

• Government largesse and intrusion into every aspect of our lives.

• An administration that sees our Constitution as an impediment to its socialist agenda, not a document to be protected and defended.

• Two administrations that gave bailouts to failed corporations and let those who ran these companies into the ground keep their bonuses.

• An ever-larger and onerous tax code that gets larger and more complex every year. President Obama promised that 95 percent of working Americans would get a tax cut. We didn t get a tax cut, but a welfare program.

• Illegal immigrants who are on the verge of receiving amnesty despite the fact they are breaking the law. Congress tried this last year and it went down in flames.

• The last administration and Congress (for a few years) were led by Republicans, not conservatives. Republicans are about politics and elections; conservatism is about political ideology and philosophy.

• We are all socialists now. That was the headline on the Newsweek cover a month ago, a headline from a liberal newsweekly The Blade apparently missed.

• Senate Bill 773, otherwise known as the Cyber Security Act of 2009, gives government the right to monitor, investigate, and censor the Internet. This is done by authoritarian regimes like North Korea and Iran, not the United States.

• The present administration wants to circumvent the Second Amendment right to bear arms by placing massive taxes on ammunition that we use for our constitutionally protected firearms. This is like protecting free speech by trying to take away the use of words.

Joshua C. Miller

Colima Driver

A recent Blade article announced that the Toledo Symphony would make its New York debut performing in Carnegie Hall in May, 2011.

In the old joke, a tourist asks a New Yorker, How do you get to Carnegie Hall? The native responds, Practice.

That s how our TSO is getting there 65 years of creating great concerts in Toledo and recently being selected because of its outstanding music.

We are planning to attend. Our only reluctance is knowing we will be depriving two New Yorkers who might otherwise occupy our seats. When Toledoans are bragging about our city s many attributes, the TSO should fall from our lips as smoothly as do the museum of art, the Mud Hens, and the zoo. It is an outstanding orchestra and every year thousands of Toledoans enjoy the dozens of concerts TSO performs.

Hal Jenks and Minda Ward

Manchester Boulevard

I am hoping that your writer to the Readers Forum who expects an apology from President Obama is willing to also stand up and apologize for her insinuation that group homes are merely godforsaken places where uninvolved families put their disabled children.

If she had done her homework over the years, she would have had a plan in place for her daughter. The Toledo and surrounding areas, along with the Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, offer a lifetime of services as well as respite care.

I am so tired of hearing the story of the aging parent who did not plan for the inevitable. What are they thinking?

Group homes and their staff are angels on Earth. They are well trained to handle the daily needs of the residents in their care. Group homes provide a nurturing, productive environment for the resident to achieve all that he or she can be, even the most severely disabled.

Shirley Pakulski

Oregon

The Iraq war has a lot of important aspects: weapons, government, security, oil, terrorists, money, and justice, but what about the weapons used against women in this war?

Rape is known as a tool of war. There have been plenty of cases where women have been raped by U.S. military personnel and Iraqi police that go unnoticed or overlooked by government officials and people in the military. If people in the United States could become more informed of how large a human-rights issue rape is in Iraq, then maybe a difference could be made.

There are few organizations that have been more .dedicated to this issue than the Organization of Women s Freedom in Iraq and Women for Women International. The fight against rape could grow if more people become informed about the issue.

Everyone needs to know the truth about the women suffering in Iraq because rape is being used as a tool of war by police and soldiers from both sides.

Marisa Kitzmiller

Lambertville

County Commissioner Ben Konop suggested that Toledo garbage collectors should also help police the city. These same people are constantly being told that their jobs are in jeopardy. Now he wants them to do the work of two departments for the price of one.

Maybe instead of new trucks, we should have spent our money on capes and tights.

This proposal reminds me of airports and deaf people. Do we want to trade one problem child for another?

Kate Colley

Springfield Township

Tina Skeldon Wozniak epitomizes the wave of socialism sweeping this country with her proposal to put a moratorium on home foreclosures in Ohio.

Does she know that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac just had a five-month moratorium? Does she know that Fannie and Freddie already have programs in place for these people? Does she know that foreclosure is the last of many steps for these people? Does she know that this stops a free-market economy from recovering?

Wake up, America. You are paying for these people to stay in these homes for free. I would much rather see them pay for these people to move into apartments and sell these properties at a low price to responsible mortgagees. Remember: These people do not have the money to make the mortgage. Do you really think they have the money for the utilities and upkeep of the property?

If Ms. Skeldon Wozniak wants to have a moratorium, why not have one for all of us for six months? We are paying for it anyway. But that just would not be the socialist way of spreading the wealth, would it, Mrs. Skeldon Wozniak?

I would recommend that she take a low-level college economics course to learn about how a free-market society works.

John Jacobs

Ottawa Lake, Mich.

Isn t it amazing that the mayor of Toledo, who is always on his soap box about how he promotes and brings jobs to the area, has hired a law fi rm from Columbus to represent him in his fi ght for his job?

Maybe he has already run all the local attorneys out of town and Columbus had the next closest one available. Way to keep Toledo working once again, Mr. Mayor.

KIM ELLIS

Maumee