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Letters To The Editor

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 8, 2008

Clumsy Legalese
Like many of my fellow Floridians, I went to the polls this week armed with my completed sample ballot and spent just a few minutes casting my vote in the booth. But I had spent a considerable amount of time beforehand trying to decipher the legalese used in the proposed constitutional amendments. I finally gave up and waited for the Trib to translate them for me. That's unacceptable!

We voters deserve language on the ballot that is understandable by everybody, and it's time to take action.

I propose we e-mail our state representatives (find their e-mail addresses at www.myfloridahouse.gov) and ask them to pass legislation requiring that every proposed amendment be written so it is easily understood by an average high school senior.

Every citizen, be he a high school drop-out or a brain surgeon, has the right to be treated with respect by the officials he elects.

A simple "plain-speak requirement" for our ballots is long overdue.

LOLA WALTER

Brandon

Celebrating Democracy

There was one clear and decisive winner in Tuesday's election. It was the democracy of the United States of America. I couldn't decide if it was Election Day on Nov. 4 or Independence Day.

America learned that when each eligible voter exercises their right to vote, our country works better. Of the people, by the people and for the people is what it is all about.

And our job is not done. Oh, no, we have to live up to the challenge every day.

So get out there and do whatever it is you do best to contribute to the heart of America and honor those who have given their all.

LAURIE RUHL

Tampa

Election Sideshow

At our assigned voting place, the recreation center at Webb Middle School, we were confronted with a parking lot jammed full of carnival trailers, leaving only a scant handful of parking spaces for voters. Stupid carnival trailers!

Either the people in charge of operating the polling place or the Town 'n Country Association failed to use wise planning and forethought.

Or maybe their carnival is more important than our sacred right to vote.

FERN HORTON

Tampa

Level The Driveway

I would like to present a fair and balanced other side of the story response to the recent Chicago Tribune "Don't Rescue Detroit" editorial (Views, Nov. 1).

When Lee Iacocca came to Chrysler, he explained several reasons why the American auto industry did not have a level playing field. Among these was the Japanese government subsidized its auto industry by granting $5,000 for each car they sold in the U.S. Further, the Japanese government anticipated Washington would react to this unfair action with the levy of tariffs, which they failed to do.

Accordingly, the Japanese government provided additional financial support to its auto industry to build assembly plans in the U.S., but there would be only one plant per state. This was to maximize senatorial influence.

Toyota now has 10 plants in 10 states. These facts helped Iacocca obtain the famous "bailout" that Chrysler paid back with a profit to Washington.

My point is this: Does it seem unreasonable for Washington to take equal actions to "level the playing field" for all American industries, including the Detroit (American) auto industry?

Do we want a complete collapse of our industrial base, with the loss of jobs, before Washington addresses these issues? Washington understands, but will they respond in time?

CHESTER FERGUSON

Sun City Center

The Energy Crunch

On the front page of Views Nov. 1, Public Service Commission Chairman Matthew Carter says that 751 people are moving to Florida per day.

Then, on the front page of Business it says, after steady growth, Progress Energy and Tampa Electric reported a slight drop in customers.

How do some of these people become CEOs and chairmen, when an everyday person knows that people are not moving in at the rate Carter says or the number of electric customers wouldn't be down?

Due to vacancies and foreclosures, they have fewer customers.

TECO wants a rate increase. Yes, so does everyone else.

Solar and wind should have been used years ago. Florida is so far behind. Even at night, when the sun goes down, there are other ways.

Use regular resources then; then turn them off and go back to solar and wind.

If Frito-Lay can run a whole factory on solar, others can also.

EVELYN J. TETA

Lithia

Fair Reductions, Taxes

I read with interest the piece Nov. 4, "Ideas To Jolt The Economy."

The section offered by Dimitri Papadimitriou suggested suspending Social Security contributions to effectively boost employees' take-home pay and pump billions of dollars each week into the economy. Why not also suspend Medicare and income tax deductions and even realize an even greater plus for our economy?

This would not have any downside to the plan - that is, if his plan included the Fair Tax as part of our new tax system. How about that idea?

WHALEN D. SHATRAW

Land O' Lakes

Consider The Taxes

For everyone mad at ExxonMobil and its record profit, including the man who wants to boycott their gas stations to prove a point ("Profit Guzzlers," Letters, Nov. 4):

You must not realize and did not research how much they paid in taxes - a little over $32 billion compared to $14 billion in profit. Fair?

ANTHONY CREEL

Lakeland

Remembering Cesare

An era has come to an end with the loss of Cesare Bastone.

When I moved to Tampa in 1989 my new friend, Donna, invited me for a slice of pizza. She described Cesare's mouth-watering tomato and spinach pizza as the best in the world! I remember the first time I walked into Cesare's of New York on Church and Neptune and met this kind, smiling but serious connoisseur of pizza. This was a man who cooked from his heart!

With his devoted wife, Eva, and daughter Silvana by his side, Cesare ran a restaurant that kept you wanting to come back for more. Quickly, Cesare and pizza became synonymous to me and my three children. Going to Cesare's became our weekly adventure and delight. Shortly after walking into the restaurant and sitting at our favorite spot, a home-grown tomato and garlic salad magically appeared on our table. Soon to follow were steaming plates of broccoli, Swiss chard and pizza.

Nothing pleased Cesare more than to see his customers well fed. Let's celebrate Cesare's life, and may his memories live on through his devoted daughter, who has cooked by her dad's side since she was 8.

JOANN COLEY

Clearwater Beach

Support Cancer Walk

I find it shameful that your paper did not have any coverage of the three-day Breast Cancer Walk last weekend. With all the bad news in the paper, such as murders and wars , a story about this wonderful cause would have been appreciated. I see it as disrespect to the women who have lost the fight, are still fighting and who have survived this horrible disease.

DENISE HERTENSTEIN

Lutz

Reject Broad Brush

A healthy population is the base of any nation's strength. One item the new president will have to tackle is the present health-care outrage. As a nurse, I can vouch that our failing hodgepodge of profit-driven, sickness-addressing providers and "insurers" that are more like "prepaid medical care" for the few is grotesquely inefficient and rife with cruelty, duplication and fraud. There's no functioning incentive to improve or even to control costs without causing needless pain.

"Conservatives" want to tar any improved "national socialized Communist medicine" with the British brush. Anecdotes teach what's wrong there. Any number of anecdotes teaches what's right with single-payer-with-options health services in other democracies, even where most people pay a third or more of their income in taxes for "social services" like schooling and health care.

Medicare and the VA system are not perfect - the former largely due to business-interest meddling and lobbying; the latter to underfunding and "conservative" contempt. But both offer workable models once you get past the phony hot buttons of "socialized medicine" and "choice" and focus on fostering positive governance. Maybe we can finally figure out that "government" is really all of us.

JON MCPHEE

St. Petersburg

Wishing For Weekend

We have just completed a historic two-year journey through our third consecutive divisive presidential election in this highly polarized, hotly contested electoral "jewel" of a state.

So, please explain to me why a newspaper in the largest media market in Florida would cut its Opinion content by 50 percent four weeks before this election? Forgetting about your own opinions for a moment, do you think any of the political columnists have written anything interesting over the last couple of days? Maybe the readers have some things on their minds?

I thought it would pass with the smorgasbord of syndicated content that is probably available right now. But nope, there it was again Thursday. To the left of the much-appreciated Buddy Johnson editorial, the weather page. What exactly are you thinking here?

I find your change to be an absolute literary disservice to your entire subscriber base and a sign of just how out of touch you are with readers. Seems as though you have carved out a new niche for yourself, though - weekends. See ya then.

RICK SWARTWOOD

Valrico

Historical Perspective

Having turned 60 this year, I look back to my youth in the 1960s and remember the idealism of my college days. The 2008 presidential election is a culmination of Martin Luther King's dream that some day we will all be judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character.

JON LYNN

Lutz

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