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As California Goes?
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Why do public officials violate Ohio Ethics Laws?
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Closings….Not the Good Kind!
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Video game sales drop in May
Published on Sunday, Jan 27, 2008
In President Bush's recent request to the Saudis for more oil, he has once again turned his back on the nation's need to reduce consumption.
Instead, he chose to embrace a policy not unlike that of a junkie who would rather fill the pockets of his filthy-rich dealer than to kick the habit.
Furthermore, even if Saudi Arabia granted his request, there is nothing to prevent the Saudis or other Middle East oil nations from turning back the flow when it suits them.
All of us are feeling the pinch of high gas prices. But the only way to deal with the problem is to use less gasoline. We did it once. And we can do it again.
In the mid-1970s, when the first modern gas crunch squeezed the nation, the average American car weighed more than two tons. The nation responded rationally. In four years, the weight of an average American car dropped about a ton. As a result, oil dropped to $6 a barrel. We had OPEC over that barrel.
America's flirtation with common sense did not last long. Because energy became cheap again, the average weight of an American car zoomed right back up.
The United States — with about 5 percent of the world's population — currently burns more than 40 percent of the world's gasoline. As such, this nation has a powerful impact on world oil prices. Our gluttonous driving habits drive the price up. As our experience in the late 1970s demonstrated, we can drive the price back down.
But the only way to lock in such gains is to keep consumption down. Therefore, the president's ''solution'' is no solution at all.
One way to maintain such gains, painful as it sounds, is to keep gasoline prices where they are. But if the price of oil drops, we can maintain the downward pressure by taxing gasoline and using that revenue to finance the development of hybrids and fuel-cell automobiles.
If America can figure out how to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth, we have the ingenuity to develop such highly efficient transportation.
Once America has achieved that goal, the nation will never again need so much foreign oil, and the Saudis can peddle their ''drug'' elsewhere — or drink it, for all I care.
The nation will be better off. The environment will be better off.
As for the Saudis and other oil-rich nations, maybe they can redirect their focus from peddling their planetary poison to something having to do with human progress.
All it takes is the national will to do it.
Mark Ira Kaufman
Silver Lake
North's way up
What an informative and interesting commentary, ''Bold enough to be North High School,'' by former Principal Larry Weigle (Jan. 18). It could easily be published as a how-to book.
So often we hear that our schools and faculties aren't doing enough. Weigle's explanation of their plan painted an entirely different picture.
It can't happen overnight, but North has shown that with thoughtful planning, patience and time, a difference can be made.
North High, you have much to be proud of. Keep up the good work.
Mary Ann Cook
Tallmadge
Why church and
state are separate
With so many attacks on our personal and civil rights over the years, I am sick of hearing of those who attack organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union that exist to protect these rights. When are they going to realize that the Founders gave up everything they had to escape religious persecution, form a new country, and write a Constitution centered on the idea that the best way to ensure that all citizens could worship as they please would be to separate church and state so the state could not sanction one religion over another?
I don't know if those attacking this separation slept through their history classes in school, but why is it so hard for them to see how un-American it is to soil this beautiful concept of religious freedom? Those who would prefer to live under the rule of a religious king should move to a place like Iran where the government is intimately tied to the state religion. As Sinclair Lewis so brilliantly put it, ''When fascism comes to this country, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.''
Brian Smith
Cuyahoga Falls
For many riders,
Metro is a lifeline
I have been a Metro SCAT rider since 1978 and have used Metro ADA services since 1993. Metro RTA and its services have become my lifeline.
I live in a supported-living home in Ellet with two roommates who also use wheelchairs. They cannot be left alone. Our house shares a van with another home in Barberton. If I need the van for a ride home from evening choir practice at church, someone can only bring me home if someone else is with my roommates. Having access to a van can help, but it does not begin to address all of my transportation needs.
If weekend transportation is eliminated, I see myself going from being an active choir member at St. Matthew Catholic Church to receiving communion at home, because I'd have a hard time getting to Mass. Sharing my singing and harmonica playing is one way I give back to God and my church. I am part of a large spiritual family there.
In addition, I use Metro weekend transportation to visit my family, meet friends for lunch and shopping, and do banking when necessary. To be cut off from all weekend activities would aggravate my chronic depression and result in complications to my overall well-being. Being active and feeling like my actions make positive differences help keep my depression stable.
One of Metro RTA's slogans is ''Our Doors Open Opportunities.'' How can that be true if my friends with weekend jobs do not know whether they will be able to get to work? Private van services are very expensive and out of the question for many Metro riders. No weekend service in April 2008 and no SCAT in 2009 will make many people isolated, discouraged and sick.
Marian L. Kindel
Akron
Can a new president
turn things around?
Here it is, 2008, and OPEC has raised the price of oil to $100 a barrel, a record high. You'd think with all the big profits overwealthy oil companies made in 2007 and previous years, they would give a little to their customers and keep the price of gasoline around $3 a gallon, not climb to $4 as predicted in the near future.
Can you imagine, $4 a gallon, when minimum wage today is only a little over $7 per hour? When I was a kid in 1955, gasoline was 18 cents a gallon, and minimum wage was $1.05 per hour — or a little over five times the price of one gallon of gas. Today, minimum wage is a little over two times the price of one gallon. Then look what happens when the price pushes toward $4 per gallon.
This is what is called a ''fixed inflation rate.''
How will our grandchildren ever cope and defend themselves against such catastrophic inflationary prices spiraling out of control?
Something is not right when all these politicians, while on the campaign trail promising this and that, are spending million upon millions of dollars to become the president of the United States, who is surely not one to fix everything. Just look at the present president and the current situation and mess this country is in.
Hopefully the right person will be elected in November and will help turn this country around, which is definitely heading in the wrong direction. Overinflated prices and the terrible trade deficit, along with corporate greed and the health-care nightmare are all causing many problems for the middle-class in this great country of ours.
Many issues have to be resolved, and,once again,the United States will become the most prosperous nation on Earth.
Fred C. Pall
Norton
Employers of illegal
aliens are the problem
Why are so many people eager to build the American version of the Berlin Wall? Some say it's for security, to keep the terrorists out. If that is the case, we need to build a wall across the Canadian border as well. And there are thousands of miles of seacoast. We need walls along the coasts so terrorists can't sneak into any out-of-the way inlets and coves along our coastlines.
The real reason, of course, is to keep out illegal aliens. Why is there so much animosity toward these people coming here looking for jobs? Why isn't the animosity directed toward those employers who are hiring illegal aliens?
Those employers are the ones taking jobs from Americans.
But given the way things are going, perhaps we shouldn't make that wall too strong. In a few years, Americans may be trying to sneak into Mexico in pursuit of those jobs provided by the American companies that oved their operations to Mexico. By then, our standard of living will have spiraled so low that those wages we sneer at now may be looking pretty good.
Margaret Malone London
Akron
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