Letters, 1/27: Bad time for more spending

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This letter is being written for the edification of the 2015 Vision Group, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Lincoln City Council. With a recession looming, high gas prices, food and heating oil at an all-time high, now is not the time to be asking taxpayers to finance a new arena, move the State Fair and build a new research park.

The council’s decision to help finance a study for a new arena is outrageous. It shows me council members cannot be trusted to do what is right with taxpayers’ money. Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that now is not a good time to be pushing through new projects.

We need to take care of our roads, our sidewalks, our senior citizens and our disabled. How does the council explain to the taxpayers of Lincoln all the recent cuts in services, but justify spending $1.2 million on a study for a new arena?

And please don’t tell us that these new projects will benefit everyone. The only individuals who benefit are the developers and the already rich.

If 2015 Vision, the university and the City Council want a new arena, a research park and the fair moved, let them pay for it out of their pockets. Because of their wealth, they are insulated from the hardship that something like this will place on the average taxpayer.

Council members, please stop funding new projects on IOUs. You are going to bankrupt this city. I for one will be voting “no” on any bond issue put before me.

Daniel R. Groshans, Lincoln

Learn from Starkweather

I, too, read the Starkweather memories in the Journal Star. I was a year younger than Caril Fugate. I was living in Shelton, and I remember looking out the window with several friends toward U.S. 30, and we wondered if they would come by where we were. We were afraid!

I did not have my family murdered, so that could change my view, and it may not be a popular remark, but I also feel sorry for people who not only have wasted their whole lives, and those of others by their actions, but also that they lived bad lives up to that time.

I keep hearing about the kinds of lives these kids have had, from the two who killed in the Columbine, Colo., school, the boy in Omaha having to look for a home to live in, to my own son and grandson being made fun of in school. Did we interview the ones who made fun of Charles Starkweather’s bowed legs, or his clothes or his poor home?

If a human being has nowhere to turn in life, and no firm foundation to fall back on, there may be problems. None of us really know what our lives would have been like or what we might have done if in similar circumstances.

With a campaign now in the schools to prevent bullying, it might be time to learn from the mistakes and tragedy of others and prevent them.

When my son, who had a learning disability, had to take a year over in a small country school and was made fun of by the whole school at recess time, it was devastating to him, at an age of 6 years old. I told him, “You know how this feels? Just remember that you don’t want anyone else to ever have this feeling, so be good to everyone.”

My son had a firm foundation, love of parents, a home, a church and love.

My son lost his life at age 21, and at his funeral a classmate, whom I heard was a loner and outcast, came up to me and said, “Your son was the only one who ever spoke to me in school!”

Phyllis J. Gardner, Lincoln

Lessons on bare land taxes

It seems that Lincoln and all of Nebraska have had financial problems. It seems that the existing taxes fail to cover the urgent expense needs. Hasn’t anyone thought of studying the principles of taxation enough to discover that the existing tax structure is largely responsible for the problems?

One important principle is that every tax has a tendency to destroy or at least reduce its own base. The property tax as we levy it seems to be destroying improvement while encouraging bare lot speculation.

Really, no change in law is necessary. The present practices in most counties seem to bear too heavily upon improvements and not enough on bare land. This is mostly the result of fudging.

I know that when I was a property owner, my lot and house were assessed separately. The lot was badly fudged downward in value, and the house had to carry most of the burden.

For me, it didn’t matter so much. But if any vacant lot is assessed at a low value, the carrying cost is so low that the owner can afford to hold it idle. This does not exactly encourage business or economical residential construction.

A tax on vacant land does not destroy the land. It would urge its owner to use it or get rid of it to someone who would.

There are a few cities and towns in Pennsylvania that have reduced improvement taxes slightly and increased bare lot taxes correspondingly. The results have shown up very favorably.

Everett W. Gross, Crete

Cable not the only option

Yes, Virginia, there is competition for Time Warner Cable.  It’s called … DirecTV and Dish Network.

Go ahead, make the switch.  You’ll love it.

Richard Packwood, Lincoln

Translations violate rules

I am appalled to read in the Jan. 21 edition of the Journal Star that $25,000 is being spent to translate various civil and self-represented litigant forms into Spanish, Vietnamese and Arabic.

Unconstitutional? Yes. Article 1, Section 27 of the Nebraska Constitution reads as follows: “The English language is hereby declared to be the official language of this state, and all official proceedings, records and publications shall be in such language, and the common school branches shall be taught in said language in public, private, denominational and parochial schools.”

I believe the forms that will be translated into three languages certainly would be considered “official proceedings, records and publications” as referenced in the state constitution.

Three teams of certified court interpreters will be required to translate these documents, according to the Journal Star. That sounds like a significant “hidden” additional expense to this project, which itself flagrantly violates our state’s founding document.

While I am familiar with the flawed reasoning behind those who support this effort, that does not change the fact that without an amendment to our state constitution, it is in direct violation of Article 1, Section 27 and must not be allowed to continue.

Those who wish to reside in Nebraska should put the time and effort into learning the language that has been declared in our state’s founding document as the official language of Nebraska.

Andy Ringsmuth, Lincoln

No need for marijuana bill

I write in response to the recent Journal Star article about a bill (LB844) to increase marijuana penalties.

The reason marijuana penalties are so lenient is because the use of marijuana (as opposed to alcohol) does not seriously harm the user. Marijuana does not create overdose deaths. Only 5 percent of the 68.6 million who had tried marijuana in 1996 became addicted, as opposed to 10 percent of caffeine users.

The Shafer Commission, created by Richard Nixon to study the effects of marijuana on the user, blackballed Nixon (who created drug schedules and made weed illegal) by finding that weed prohibition caused more harm to the user than the drug itself, as did the LaGuardia report, commissioned in the 1930s by New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.

To increase weed penalties would mean we would be increasing the number of nonviolent drug offenders in our exploding prison populations. We are not talking about violent crack addicts.

I know several people who live in the upstanding neighborhoods of Beatrice who use marijuana to go to sleep, reduce anxiety or pain, and/or to just have a good time. Now we want to throw them in jail because punishment for its use is less than that of a drug (yes, I said drug) like alcohol, which kills more people every year than all illicit drugs combined. Smart thinking … not.

Cody Russell, Beatrice