Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009

Your Letters

House ignored citizens

On Nov. 7, an act that could easily be considered treasonous was committed against the citizens of the United States of America.

As an American, a father, a husband, a citizen and a veteran, my heart was broken by the members of Congress who, with total disregard for the voices that cried out to them, voted to pass the Affordable Health Care of America Act. This bill is nothing less than 1,990 pages of destruction and deception, designed to decapitate the liberties that we hold so dear as a free country.

Hundreds of thousands of working Americans rushed to Washington, D.C., to voice their concern, an act unprecedented in our history, but the political machine only slowed, bogged down in fear. As the hard-working, God-fearing Americans returned to their towns and cities, the lies that oil the political machine were reapplied, and the machine began again to grind away at our Constitution via the guise of "affordable health care" in an effort to derail our republic.

Many Americans wonder what they can do, as they are just one vote in a sea of millions. I cannot tell you what to do, but my Congressman is Bob Etheridge, and he felt that even though thousands of us have come to his office and called his phone and begged him not to vote for this bill, he decided to ignore our pleas.

Today, I wish to place this congressman on notice that I will do everything in my power and will spend my funds to ensure that he and other bill supporters are never elected again.

Congressman, your time is done. You do not represent me; please step down, now.

Arnold Osborn

Garner

ACLU to the rescue

I read with interest the article on the Gideons handing out their Bibles in Johnston County schools. How traumatizing it must have been to be confronted with such seditious and corrupting materials. Hopefully the students were quickly removed to classrooms where they could be deprogrammed with a healthy dose of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion."

What was most insightful was how quickly ACLU representative Katy Parker was to cite, incorrectly, the unconstitutionality of the act.

I wonder if it would shock Ms. Parker and her friends at the ACLU to learn that Thomas Jefferson, the man they most love to cite as an architect of the "wall of separation," chaired the school board for the District of Columbia while president of the United States? As chairman, he authored the first D.C. plan of education, which used the Bible and Isaac Watts' "Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs" (1707) as the principle books for teaching students to read.

It is truly a shame that a group that claims to promote civil liberties so often stands against the religious free speech that is protected by the First Amendment. It is also sad how ignorant many Christians, like the anonymous mom in the story, are of the Christian heritage of our great nation. I wonder how many Christians in North Carolina know that our first state constitution, written in 1776, barred any individual from holding office in the state if he denied "the being of God" or held "religious principles incompatible with the freedoms and safety of the state"? (North Carolina Constitution, 1776, Section XXXII) It really makes you wonder how those people back then ever survived without the American Civil Liberties Union to protect them from all that religious zealotry.

Jerrod Rose

Clayton

A disaster in the making

I was saddened though not surprised to learn that the City of Garner has undertaken an ambitious "plan" to revitalize the downtown. By squandering taxpayer dollars on high-priced consultants, the city will now push forward on how a select few feel the city should "evolve." Despite the fact that the city cannot adequately maintain its current infrastructure, it is embarking on grandiose plans that will forever alter the look and feel of the city. The impact on residents' pocketbooks and quality of life will be severe.

Having previously resided in a city's redevelopment zone, I can assure residents that if this plan goes forward, you can count on the following "benefits":

Increased taxes and debt to fund construction.

Increased traffic loads without adequate infrastructure.

Reduced public services.

Increased property taxes as bonds for existing services are tacked on.

Increased congestion.

Increased government bloat and costs (rest assured the city will erect lavish new city offices on your dime).

Reduced freedom as more ordinances and regulations are passed

Rampant, high-density development with developers' needs in mind, not yours.

Particularly at risk are owners of businesses who rent office space in areas earmarked as redevelopment zones, as they will be forced to relocate. For those who own their land and building, their outcome will be more favorable, as they will be compensated.

What is even more troubling is the audaciousness of foisting such a plan given the horrific economic climate; what is the city doing to help existing business stay afloat and residents keep their jobs and homes? Why isn't the city investing in education, schools, job training, luring employers to the area or other long-term endeavors that will actually help its residents?

In the end, though, the city will have a much larger and more-robust tax base from which to collect revenue, and that is ultimately what is the driving vehicle behind such ill-conceived plans like these.

David J. Hartman

Raleigh

Hardly a market approach

John Hodges, executive director of the Garner Revitalization Association, attempts to assure readers that his organization is embracing a "market-based approach" to Garner's "downtown revitalization" (A market-based approach, Nov. 11).

Hodges blatantly betrays this claim with his own words. In his letter, the word "plan" or "planning" appears 10 times. Indeed, Hodges' vision of a "group made up of citizens, elected officials and town staff" to develop a "realistic and achievable plan" is the antithesis of a true market-based approach.

The market economy is a process whereby individuals cooperate with each other based on their value judgments of how best to serve each other's needs as well as their individual needs. Consumers seek to satisfy their most urgent needs for goods and services at a price they are willing to pay, and producers compete with each other in order to best serve those needs.

The market constantly evolves as individual consumers and entrepreneurs adjust their actions to maximize their gains through mutual cooperation. Coordinating this process are countless decisions made by actors within the market system, decisions made according to each individual's unique knowledge and preferences. Such knowledge and preferences are often tacitly (i.e., only internally) possessed by these individuals, and therefore they are unknowable to even the most highly trained "experts." Nor are they transferrable to any study.

This process is disrupted only when an external group of "experts" place themselves in the position of attempting to identify "the types of retail, commercial and residential needs" not currently being met. Because the market process, even for a local economy such as Garner's, is such an inherently complex and unpredictable phenomena, any attempt to plan -- "down to the square foot" -- how to anticipate and meet consumer demands is futile.

Enlisting a small committee to develop a "plan" to direct Garner's resources fails any logical interpretation of a "market-based" approach.

Brian Balfour

Budget and Tax Policy Analyst

Civitas Institute, Raleigh