Letters to the Editor/<br>  Free Press Forum

In the last two years, nearly one million U.S. service-members have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Regardless of how you may feel about the war, most of us agree that those service-members deserve the best possible care and treatment our country can provide.

Unfortunately, in some cases, things haven't worked out so well. Some of our service-members have fallen through the cracks, with reports of homelessness, trauma and suicide. According to the NEJM, as many as 15% of returning service-members from Iraq will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Thousands have been wounded, and those who were killed left families behind.

Veterans for Common Sense has made available on the internet, and soon in print, a guide for returning veterans to help them navigate the available benefits and assistance available. Our goal is to make it as comprehensive as possible, to let returning veterans know of where they can get assistance if there are any issues with readjustment on their return home.

Thanks for article on SS privatization. I'd been thinking lately along the same lines, but would characterize it perhaps a little more cynically. As an MBA I've studied the market [primarily in the early 90s]: Technical analysis was rapidly replacing fundamental analysis. The market had become psychological. Now with the DOW at 10,000--the fundamentals of the US economy doubtful--the huge impact of the so-called Plunge Team [officially goes by another name] and with the many mysterious accounting reforms--the market is adrift in artificiality. It is a pyramid waiting to fall. There is only one thing to keep it afloat [as all of the excess funds available to prop it up have been "invested"] and we're talking about the need for a whole lot of money. And so we have privatization of SS. I don't think it's as much about another bull market as it is about another round of large-scale Ponzi capitalism. It's SS injection or people start to poke around, determine that there is really nothing fundamental supporting the PE ratios and the whole thing takes a nosedive. It's find a new source of funds or go home. It's about pushing the US community further out into deeper water.

In recent times, automotive companies have been incorporating a device that has been tracking your driving; this device can be used against you if you are in an accident. The device I mention of is an Event Data Recorder or an E.D.R. The E.D.R. is called the automotive black box because it monitors certain aspects of driving and can record information up to five seconds before an accident, or event.

To the Editor:

History provides another "other side" to the debate over Senate Bill 24, the misleadingly titled "academic bill of rights for higher education".  Consider... 

There was a time when most people thought Earth was flat...  Until the 1500s, most people believed that Earth was the center of the universe, and Copernicus was excommunicated for arguing that Earth revolved around the Sun... 

I'd like to think that Senator Mumper will continue to support teachers persistently teaching that the Earth is round and goes around the Sun, even though his intellectual forebears would challenge HIS right to challenge THEIR values by doing so.  I'd also like to think that Senator Mumper would support discriminating against flat-earthers in hiring airline pilots, air traffic controllers, bombardiers, astronauts, and astronomers. 

Please Join us for an Ohio Partnership for Prevention action, this Monday, Valentine's day, when we tell the governor and our elected officals: Don't Break My Heart!

The Ohio Partnership for Prevention will be holding a gathering to to draw attention to the massive health care cuts in the governor's budget (15,000 Disability Medical Assistance recipients making $115 a month or less; 25,000 working parents making from 90%-100% of the poverty level who received health care through Medicaid; 800,000 adults who receive vision and dental services; and now it looks like some children receiving services from the Bureau of Children with Mental Handicaps.)

We're going to tell the governor and lawmakers not to break our hearts and cut health care! Raise the tobacco tax instead and invest in health care.

Congressional Democrats are faced with a challenge, the challenge of an out-of-control fascist regime. How did the Democrats respond today?, they gave the regime what it wants, another impediment to citizens' rights in the courts. Way ta go Dems, you're doing great IF what you are trying to do is run interference for the fascists. Where are the bills of impeachment? Where are the fillibusters? where are the ten-million-person marches? Dems, are you listening? Maybe we better leave the Dems behind, and start with step one, a ten-million-person march on Washington demanding the end of the corporate-fascist regime, and the return of the government to the people.

A. Attlee

Dear Editor:

I shudder to think what Gov. Taft's state of the state address is going to be like. From hearing Pres. Bush's state of the union address, he and the Republicans (The real "Evil Empire") didn't mention one word about jobs, healthcare, or education, which I've come to a conclusion that the Republicans don't have too high on their priority list. As a citizen of Galion (population 11,200) and volunteer at the Galion Public Library, I for one, disapprove of the job that Gov. Taft is doing during his final term in office. I knew from the very outset that Taft was going to cut back on state funding on both education and library expenses, and not to mention create a very dismal unemployment rate, which I believe we are still suffering to this day.

It is time that the Karl Roves and Dick Cheneys take their place on center stage of the Bush puppeteer and puppet show. Bush is the puppet. Jumping and frilling about in the stick while the brains of Roves and Cheney’s are during the day-to-day planning!

Rove-Cheney-Bush a year or so ago decided essentially that, “We are an Empire now through ‘The New World Order,’ Therefore, when we speak and act we create our own ‘Reality’ a reality that is based in crisis, fear, misinformation, confusion, promotion of mass ignorance, and mass need to be saved from these images of our manufactured crisis. Fear and crisis themes evoke emotional leverage and facilitate easy mass control. Creating this New Reality is really God like; therefore, we can then carefully claim our image of God like. This brings ‘Religious Initiative’ the thinking public will be left a ‘study’ what we do, therefore, they can only react after we have finished and are safe!”

Dear Mr. Waserman,

Your column is so on the money!  I believe Bush even concieves of himself as Caesar. Even John McLaughlin on his show; McLaughlin Group, this Friday posed the same idea that the aim is to kill Social Security not to save it.

To put it succinctly; FDR's legacy was the New Deal, whereas, "W"'s legacy is a Raw Deal...

Anita Knight

St. Petersburg, Florida

To the Editor - Dear Friend:

The Senate’s confirmation yesterday (2/4/05) of Alberto Gonzales, the torture lawyer, not only marks the most shameful low in the history of the U.S. Senate, but it clearly violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment That the issue was explicitly part of the national debate makes the 60 confirming Senators accessories to Gonzales.

The confirmation adds a new dimension of illegality to senators already guilty of failing to remove a president of tainted election who has committed U.S. troops to an illegal and unconstitutional war. If ever a national class action were needed against a Congress and a President, it is now.

Senator First will begin this Monday to have the Senate change class action laws. Aborting due process, however, requires Constitutional Amendment.