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Love Is In The Air (SING IT!)

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Fashion Police?

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From the White House – New Federal Approach to Hiring

Second mortgage, anyone?

Published on Wednesday, Feb 13, 2008



The people who brought you the subprime loan are selling a new product, and the salesman is none other than Don Plusquellic, mayor of Akron.

It's called ''Akron Plan for the 21st Century.'' It will mortgage your home so the mayor can hand out college scholarships (''Mayor offers tuition plan,'' Beacon Journal, Feb. 8).

On the surface, it seems like a good plan. The mayor gets out of running a sewer system facing millions of dollars of Environmental Protection Agency mandates over the next few years. He gets to hand out scholarships.

Educators get more funding. University of Akron President Luis Proenza gets to select scholarship recipients. Parents no longer have to worry about paying for college.

Everybody gets something — including a second mortgage.

Sanitary sewers belong to the customers, paid for through a system of tap-in fees. With $100 million in value and 90,000 customers, that is about $1,100 per property, which is in the ballpark of what Akron has collected in tap-in fees through the years.

The cost of this is rolled into the value of the home, and usually a mortgage taken out to pay for that property.

If the city were to sell the sewer, it essentially would be confiscating a part of the equity of that house and selling it to a private company, which would take out a loan to pay for it.

The company would service the loan out of fees charged to the customer, the property owner.

The value of the sewer system is a trust owned by the system's customers and administered by the city. That is the meaning of publicly owned. It does not mean the sewer is owned by hizzoner, the mayor.

If the system is sold, the proceeds should go to the owners and not the administrators. A functioning sanitary-sewer system seems like a good investment for my $1,100.

Not an Akron sewer customer, so it won't affect you? Think again. The Botzum plant processes sewage from many collection systems, including the Summit County Department of Environmental Services and from Cuyahoga Falls. So fees would be distributed equitably, because that is how the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio sets rates.

All that is left for you to do is to pay for Akron scholarships with your sewer bill.
David Lockledge
Akron

Field of dreams

With all the home foreclosures in the area, the University of Akron is spending millions on a football field. Why not make these millions available to needy homeowners at little or no interest?

The community needs homes for the needy, not ball fields for a select few.

With all the uncontrollable crime in the very area picked out for the new stadium, who is going to feel safe to attend any events there? Perhaps millions should be spent in making Akron safer for the people who live and attend school in the city.
Eli Rantanes
Clinton

A 'loyal'
Republican?

I was quite surprised to read in her Feb. 4 letter (''Heydorn snubbing was the last straw'') that Cheryl R. Hoover claimed to be a loyal Republican.

Furthermore, she professed to have the key to future Republican successes when she wrote: ''We must reunite, rid ourselves of tired, corrupt leadership and reinvigorate the Summit County Republican Party.''

Isn't this the same Cheryl Hoover who was the chairwoman of Democrat Wayne Jones' campaign for Cuyahoga Falls mayor a few years back? Isn't this the same Jones who is about to become chairman of the Summit County Democratic Party?

With supporters such as Hoover, is it any wonder Kevin Coughlin's ill-fated mutiny is about to sink like the Titanic?
Donald Nelsch
Cuyahoga Falls

Teachers are
highly educated

In response to Peter Skurkiss' analysis of the quality of education that public-school teachers receive (''Bad news for U.S. schools,'' Voice of the People, Jan. 15), one should ask where the data are to support his claim that education majors are ''at the bottom of the academic collegiate barrel.''

One's jaw should drop in total disbelief that any informed person would make such an ignorant claim.

Teachers are some of the most highly educated professionals in our society, as they are more frequently required to hold a graduate degree to maintain their positions and achieve tenure. One is not merely granted admission into graduate school without displaying sufficient academic achievement.

Furthermore, as most people know, maintaining at least a ''B'' average is required to achieve a graduate degree. Meeting such requirements certainly does not fit the profile of someone at the bottom of the barrel.

Also, if it's the teachers' quality of education that is the problem with our public school system, why do districts that have involved, nurturing parents also have students who perform well on standardized testing and succeed in other academic challenges?

Anyone can see this conveniently ignored reality by looking at the reports given for any Ohio school district at http://ilrc.ode.state.oh.us/Districts.

In addressing Skurkiss' dissatisfaction with per-pupil spending in the United States versus such spending in other countries, one wonders whether he accounted for the higher cost of purchasing goods and services in the United States versus other countries.
Kevin Rudd
Tallmadge

Ron Paul should be
America's choice

We, the people — something that our government has forgotten, except to bleed the working people dry. We are taxed to a point where some are working two and three jobs just to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table. Forget the ''extras.''

Foreclosures and evictions are at an all-time high, with no end in sight. We have weakened this country tremendously due to our troops being scattered all over the world, and not taking care of the business at home.

The number of illegal aliens entering America is at an all-time high, and they're given everything at taxpayers' expense. What future do we or our children have when aliens get free education, welfare, housing and health care, and they want us to have to learn to speak a different language to accommodate them in our country?

Tell me again why the Federal Reserve System (a quasi-public banking cartel) collects $30 million an hour in interest from taxpayers in this country. It is no wonder that working-class people cannot afford to live.

The more research I do on Ron Paul, the more I am convinced that he should be America's choice for president. From abolishing the IRS, to bringing all our troops home to protect our own country and remake it the great nation it was, to strengthening our borders and ridding our country of illegal aliens — this is just the tip of the iceberg of what he wants to do.

Paul wants to bring our Constitution back to the people of this country — the same people who are being taxed to death daily by our corrupt government officials who line their own pockets and are the only ones who gain throughout all of this.

Where does it end?

Hopefully, the majority of the American people will not fall for short-term solutions like a small tax rebate or have patience with the war. It is time for long-term action. Bring our troops home, bring our jobs back, and quit taxing us to death, so maybe we can all live a decent life without working two and three jobs to do so. Our government lives quite well at the taxpayers' expense, and their misery.
Rick Peterson
Uniontown

Separation is what
founders intended

The United States of America is not a ''Christian nation.'' It was never intended by the Founding Fathers to be a Christian nation. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin were students of the Enlightenment — secular humanists who, at best, viewed God as some sort of a ''divine watchmaker'' who set the universe spinning and then went on his way.

These were men who were heavily influenced by the writings of social and political philosophers like Tom Paine, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, thinkers who believed in the social-contract model of government, a concept that was decidedly at odds with the grim, fatalistic, Calvinist model of Christianity prevalent in New England in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Jefferson, Adams, et al., founded this nation on the twin beliefs that man was the arbiter of his own destiny and that the government was his tool to achieve that destiny.

While he was president, Jefferson himself stressed the importance of ''building a wall of separation between church and state.'' I don't think it can get much clearer than that.

Whether Puritan or Catholic, Christianity in the 18th century was not a philosophy that held much importance for our illustrious forebears.
Theodore Mallison
Akron


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