To the editor: Kaptur makes wrong call on Davis-Besse
3/17/2018I was saddened and angered to learn this past week that Rep. Marcy Kaptur has come out in favor of the bailout package proposed for the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant. Most Ohioans don’t know that this bailout would mean their electricity bills could double, triple or even quadruple in the next few years, just as most Ohioans don’t know that Davis-Besse is leaking radioactive tritium into Lake Erie or that the plant’s containment dome is cracked and in danger of collapsing.
It’s ironic that this announcement came the week before the seventh anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. All of northwest Ohio is in danger of becoming a Fukushima-style wasteland as long as that plant continues to run. Most people in northwest Ohio also don’t know that the plant nearly did have a meltdown once already in the infamous “hole in the head” accident, where boric acid nearly ate through the reactor head.
In her support letter, Miss Kaptur cites jobs as the reason for keeping the plant open. Yet subsidizing the few hundred jobs at the nuclear plant will cost thousands of jobs around the state as electricity costs rise. Wind and solar power are creating millions of new jobs around the country, but as long as short-sighted lawmakers keep propping up last century’s failed technology, we will not see those jobs in Ohio.
Lives are more important than jobs. At one time, Miss Kaptur opposed nukes, and correctly made the argument that nuclear waste presents a real threat to our descendants. Now, she’s sided with Mr. Trump and the Republicans for short-term political gain.
Shame.
JOSEPH DEMARE
Bowling Green
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Ohio must empower nurses
U.S. News and World recently published its Best States Rankings, rating citizen outcomes by state on 75 different metrics. Ohio achieved an abysmal rank of 40th overall, and equally disheartening, a health rank of #36, based on measures of health care access, health quality, and public health.
Nearly 75 percent of other states have healthier citizens, with Hawaii (#1) and Washington (#2) leading the way. What Hawaii, Washington, and 15 other states in the top 25 have in common are nurse practitioners with legal authority to practice to the full extent of their professional license, known as “Full Practice Authority.” Unfortunately for Ohioans, the state is neither ranked among the 25 healthiest nor has it granted patients direct access to nurse practitioner care — key to addressing quality and access challenge across the state.
If Ohio joined the 22 states and the District of Columbia in overcoming regulatory barriers that prevent nurse practitioners from fully serving patients, tax dollars currently spent policing mandatory and needless physician oversight of nurse practitioners could be redirected to fighting the heroin epidemic, infant/​maternal death rates, and smoking. Then Ohio might finally join top-ranked states that ensure their citizens access to high-quality health care.
KRIS SPINELLI
Flanders Hill Court
Editor’s note: Ms. Spinelli is a certified nurse practioner.
Hats off to the UAW Local 12
Thank you, UAW Local 12. I say this with pride for all you do to help the people of the Toledo area.
Receiving significant donations and use of the Union Hall are: United Way, March of Dimes, Old Newsboys, Red Cross, and the Boys and Girls Clubs. The hall is also used to host meetings and special events for the Salvation Army Toys for Tots, blood drives, Jeep Fest, talks on human trafficking and other social issues, just to name a few.
Time and time again, when I see the hall in the background on TV being used for these events, I thank Local 12 for all you do for community. This is called giving back and is all a part of the union’s goal to help anyone in need.
I am proud to say I have been a union member for over 45 years.
BOB BOCHI
Oregon
A show of disrespect
I recently read in my VFW Magazine that President Donald Trump had made March 28, 2017, “Vietnam Veterans Day.”
As a 69-year-old veteran of the U.S. Air Force with 26 years service and one year of service in Vietnam, I try to understand how a man with four college deferments and one medical deferment, the result of bone spurs, to get out of military service and avoid Vietnam can honor us with a Vietnam Veterans Day.
I’m not speaking for all veterans, just myself. To me this feels like a slap in the face from a man who wanted nothing to do with Vietnam or military service.
This letter is in no way intended to dishonor or disrespect all who served in Vietnam or the military.
RICK SCHWEITZER
Wauseon
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