Untitled Document
We welcome letters. Please include your full name,
address, and telephone number. We edit all letters. Send them to Letters, Illinois Times, P.O. Box 5256,
Springfield, IL 62705; fax 217-753-3958; e-mail editor@illinoistimes.com.
I’M PRO-CHOICE AND ANTI-ABORTION As someone who truly is pro-choice, I think I can
answer Paul Gesterling’s questions [“Letters,” April 24].
You see, unlike the “pro-life” people, I am actually
anti-abortion. I don’t like the idea of it. If one of my daughters
wanted one, I would discourage it as much as I could. If anyone else asked
my opinion, I would discourage them as well. However, your abortion is none of my business. The
abortion should concern only three people: the fetus’ father, its
mother, and their doctor. I should have no say in the matter unless
I’m the daddy, Mr. Gesterling should have no say in the matter unless
he is the father, and my government should have no say in the matter,
either. Life doesn’t begin at conception, as the
Catholics and some fundamentalist Christian religions claim. It
doesn’t begin at all. It only started once on this planet (and
perhaps nowhere else) and has just continued afterward. Your sperm are
alive, a woman’s eggs are alive, your skin cells and red blood cells
are alive. The abortion of a blastocyst
destroys less life than when you cut yourself shaving. I cannot consider a
blastocyst a human. Unlike most others who fraudulently call themselves
pro-choice, I support a woman’s right to inject herself with heroin,
cocaine, nicotine, or fast-food grease and otherwise screw up her life in
any way she chooses. Like abortion, it’s none of my business and
should be none of my government’s business. If you support the war on
drugs or the anti-smoking laws or anti-prostitution laws or anti-gambling
laws, you cannot truthfully call yourself pro-choice.
Likewise, if you support the war in Iraq or the war
in Afghanistan or the death penalty, you cannot truthfully call yourself
pro-life. Both sides of the abortion issue are disingenuous. Steve McGrew Springfield
LET’S CUT THE LIGHTS The other night, my friend and I were going to
Mario’s at Piper Glen and we took that newer road that goes to
Chatham Road and past all the car dealers by Meijer. Well, it was later and
all the dealerships were closed, but every single light was on. There are
many big street lights, and every dealership was lit up. What a waste of
energy! Please, if you get a chance, drive by those dealerships after hours
and you’ll see what I mean. I understand that people may want to see
the cars at night, but are all those lights necessary?
Jessica Shoup
Springfield
DEMOCRATS SHOULD HAVE KNOWN Most Democrats in Congress and the few left in the
media must have known that George W. Bush embarked on a “secret
agenda” to throw all the money he could toward his special interests,
cut taxes, and not cut any social programs or government agencies that
would lose Republican votes. That was a prescription that would eventually cause
such a financial crunch that programs would have to be cut across the
board, including many social programs Republicans never liked. They could
cripple those programs by coming in through the back door and not lose
votes doing it. Democrats knew it, but not one of them warned the
American people. Now we come to the war, which fits right into that
agenda because Democrats did not have the courage to refuse to vote to fund
this war. They should have put the ball in the president’s court by
saying they would only vote to fund this war if the president put on a
special tax to pay for it. Instead, they let him put it on the bill, where
it is fast becoming the fulfillment of Bush’s “secret
agenda.”
Not only would such a war tax probably have ended the
war, it would have saved the programs Democrats have fought hard to get
through the years. Early on in this war John McCain was for such a tax.
He said we shouldn’t be for a war unless we were willing to pay for
it. Democrats haven’t asked him if he intends to do it that way if he
becomes president — maybe because they still don’t have the
courage to say they will do it if they gain the presidency. Tom Ferrari Tovey
OPTIMISTIC
VIEWPOINT APPRECIATED This is an article that I really enjoyed: Dusty
Rhodes’ column “The death of Superman” [April 24]. I
thought she had an optimistic viewpoint. I would like to see more of this!
John M. Tego Virginia, Ill.
KILLINGGOD’SCREATION A big thank you to R.L. Nave for his story on the
Pillsbury plant [“Make like a tree,” April 24]. There
wasn’t any sense in butchering 30 perfectly healthy trees, including
evergreens. Many who live by the mill can’t understand what killing
trees has to do with removing scrap metal from the plant. Trees are among
the biggest pollution fighters. They ruined them the day before Earth Day!
They destroyed God’s creation late at night when no one would have a
chance to complain. I hope they don’t take all the metal out and
leave an empty shell there.
Danny
Faulkner
Springfield
WHY I OPPOSE PROPOSED WIND FARM I am deeply troubled by the proposed wind farm for
Montgomery and Christian counties and with the very short notice given to
the public to ask questions or make comments. In local papers, there was no
mention of any of the many problems known to exist with wind farms. Mother Nature gave us a warning on Friday, April 18,
with a 5.2-magnitude earthquake at 4:37 a.m. The U.S. Geological Survey
predicts a 97.7 percent probability of a quake of 6.7 in the next 30 years.
The New Madrid earthquake in the winter of 1811-1812 was the worst in U.S.
history. It’s estimated to be 14 times as strong as the quake that
destroyed San Francisco in 1906. Coal shafts have left the ground less
stable, enabling quakes to do more damage spreading many miles. Imagine the
catastrophic results of as many as 200 towers 300 feet tall, weighing 160
tons each, with spinning blades crashing to the ground, destroying homes
and injuring people. Would the cost of the cleanup be left to the
taxpayers, as were the coal mines?
Getting all the equipment, as well as the huge tower
sections and rotor blades (comparable to the wingspan of a 747 jumbo jet)
into farmland requires the construction of wide, straight, strong roads.
Taxpayers in the two counties will pay to construct, pave, and maintain
these roads. Although construction is temporary, it will require heavy
equipment, including bulldozers, graders, trenching machines, concrete
trucks, flatbed trucks, and large cranes. Hundreds of pounds of dust will
be created by the building of roads to each turbine. The 12 to 16 employees
hired to maintain the towers will likely be specially trained technicians
who would have to move here from outside the area. The noise and vibration produced by the turbines
varies, with the highest intensity at night. Strobe lights on the poles and
the pulsating throb of the blades cause sleep interruptions and result in
health problems. Many diseases are caused by or are worsened by loss of
sleep. This has been proved in medical studies in this country and a
27-year study from a medical school in Portugal. Included are epilepsy,
stroke, depression, heart attacks, asthma, and family-life disturbances. After a wind farm is built, the county commissioners
could declare the wind-farm property an “enterprise zone,”
which could exempt the company from property taxes up to 10 years
(abatement provision 18-170, or property-tax provision 18-165 of the
Illinois Revenue Code). Land and existing buildings are not exempted. The federal government offers numerous tax
deductions, tax incentives, and credits. There will be mortgages to finance
the cost of construction and significant deductions on the company’s
business taxes, unknowingly coming from taxpayers. Such subsidies
won’t last more than a couple of years. If the wind farm is not
successful, will 200 huge turbines sit and rust away on good farm ground
while farmers and county residents pay increased taxes?
Wind energy is uncertain. Summers in central Illinois
include hot, humid, and still air. Therefore, when we need the extra
energy, the wind won’t be blowing. There is a proven and much less damaging alternative
in geothermal power production, which works much as a heat pump does. It
injects water deeply into the earth through a pipe. The water is converted
into steam by the heat of the earth and returned to the surface to power
generators. The company that wants to build wind farms already owns land at
the Kincaid mine, and there is a lake close by that could be used as a
source of water, with none of the known health effects that are caused by
wind-driven generators. It would also be a simpler construction and a
constant power source within the earth instead of the uncertainty of the
wind. It could also put many of the unemployed miners back to work. Wind farms are problem ridden and would benefit only
a few in the community, whereas geothermal power (power from the earth)
would benefit us all. The county commissioners could conduct publicly open
negotiations with the company. This would be the democratic process in
action. And with an election coming up in November it could easily be put
on the ballot now. Every month a percentage of the profits the company
makes could be deposited in interest-bearing designated accounts. These
could be used for schools, roads, and bridges; for upkeep of county and township buildings and equipment; and for lower
property taxes or other accounts used to benefit all citizens and eliminate many
problems of wind farms. (For more information go to www.aweo.org.) William B. Risse Morrisonville
SAVE US FROM CAREER POLITICIANS America is a great country, and some very good things
have taken place in the past 50 years. Career politicians want to take
credit for the good things, but this progress and much more would have
taken place without career politicians. Many of the bad things that have happened are a
direct result of the career politician. Raiding of the Social Security
trust fund, the energy crisis, the decline of education, porous borders,
and a 67,000-page tax code are but a few of their appalling failures. In the Constitution, the Founders did not protect us
from the career politician, and our income-tax amendment in the early 1900s
gave them all they needed to dig a very big hole for America because it
gave the career politicians way too much power. Their path is devoid of
vision. A transformation is needed to save us from the career
politician, and this can be accomplished by putting the same restraint on
them that we have on the president — that is, term limits that number
two. With this single powerful act our elected representatives would be set
free to vote their conscience instead of being submissive to a political
party and the special interests that corrupt them. Bob Ruble Springfield
WHEN DRUG USE IS CHILD ABUSE The first thing that comes to my mind after reading
Dusty Rhodes’ story “Seventh heaven” is: Are the mothers
of these children in jail? Are there laws in place to punish the women that
abuse drugs and alcohol during pregnancy? Should it not be considered child
abuse to have a child born with a dependency? If there is such heated
debate over abortion and stem-cell research — whether or not the
fetus is considered a human life and at what point — shouldn’t
a full-term child in a mother’s womb be considered a human life? When
a person kills a pregnant woman and her child dies too, that person would
be punished for taking two lives. If giving a child alcohol or drugs is
illegal, then it should also be illegal (child abuse) to drink or take
drugs while pregnant. In a perfect world of political righteousness, they
would go directly to jail after giving birth. Maybe that’s just my
opinion. Oh, and kudos to the woman who had enough courage and love to
adopt those seven children. Good luck to her and all her kids.
Tauna King Springfield
This article appears in Apr 24-30, 2008.
