We've devoted so much space to the Amendment One debate over the past month that many letters on other topics got overrun. Here are more than a dozen.
Yes, hearing aids are expensive, as a recent letter-writer protested. Knowing they are costly, only about 15 percent of the estimated 30 million with hearing impairment even bother to seek help. Most insurance policies offer no coverage at all. Because hearing loss can have serious side effects, the condition should not be ignored.
Help is available to those with limited incomes. Check the website of the Hearing Loss Association of America. Listed there is contact information for a number of organizations that offer assistance. Your public library will help you with the research.
To focus on one excellent source: Lions Club International lists many of the hearing aid banks run by clubs around the U.S. They collect and recycle used hearing aids and give referrals to cooperating audiologists and dispensers. LCI has an affordable hearing aid program that contracts with a major manufacturer to supply new aids to clubs, which then donate them via the above-mentioned dispensers.
As for comparing costs with iPhones and iPads, few of us appreciate the complex technology involved. My brother, who is retired from a career in audiology, says, Why should we believe that smaller should be cheaper? A hearing aid that automatically adjusts to different listening environments is not unlike a car that parks itself, and they don’t come cheap.
Carol Cary
Cary
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In Jim Jenkins’ April 19 column, he really went on a binge about what’s so terrible about Mitt Romney running for president. Most of his tirade was about the fact that Romney is a wealthy man and therefore couldn’t possibly have the common touch with the common man.
I guess if a president had owned 8,000 acres of prime farmland and had a net worth of $525 million that would dictate that he would make a terrible president. That’s what the net worth of President George Washington was in today’s dollars.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and JFK were both millionaires (all inherited), and it was all right for them to be president because they were Democrats.
We should remember, too, that Democrats Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank had the wonderful idea that everyone should own a home regardless of their incomes or credit ratings, resulting in economic turmoil. But that’s OK; they’re Democrats.
I’m registered unaffiliated, but I do wish newspaper pundits would make some sort of effort to be objective and not resort to mud-throwing writing. It’s insulting to the intellect of their readers or it should be.
Bob Harper
Tarboro
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As a neuroscientist, I’ve devoted my career to understanding how the brain works when it comes to addiction. Every day, my colleagues and I are engaged in work that contributes to local and global scientific ingenuity and innovation. Collectively, we’re working to unlock the mysteries of the brain and bolster efforts to develop new treatments for addiction to alcohol, nicotine and other devastating drugs of abuse.
Addiction to drugs, not only destroys the addict, it also destroys their families and friends and has devastating effects on the society. We believe that addiction is a treatable brain disease. Our research at Duke University is focused in solving the mystery of addiction and finding proper treatment for it. This is only possible through funding by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Without a strong commitment from the Congress to make science a national priority, many research projects and great ideas may be shelved due to expected budget cuts for NIH and NSF. I urge U.S. Rep. David Price and U.S. Sens. Richard Burr and Kay Hagan to ensure that biomedical research remain a national priority and find ways to increase, not cut, funding for our nation’s top research enterprises.
Amir H. Rezvani, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Psychology and Neuroscience
Duke University Medical Center
Durham
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Your fact-checking about Mitt Romney’s claims about stagnation of our state’s unemployment rate was trapped in his false premise that unemployment here is caused only by President Obama’s national policies. On the contrary, thanks to this state’s Republican-led General Assembly, the rate would have been much worse without Obama’s economic stimulus.
The reason employment has not rebounded as quickly here as in other states was the Republican takeover of our statehouse nearly two years ago. The new Republican majority has dismantled, brick by brick, the programs, policies and expenditures that once made us a job-creating powerhouse. Every benefit gained by aggressive job-creation programs of the past – including job training, community college programs, excellent education from early childhood through post-graduate, good environmental stewardship, healthy children, great infrastructure and recreation, adherence to good science and a moderating approach to social issues – is being harmed by this group.
Without the money supplied by Obama’s economic stimulus, we would have been in an unemployment free fall.
Diana Evans Ricketts
Chapel Hill
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Once again it is good to see that our elected officials have our best interests at heart (“Senate panel approves fracking plan,” April 19 news article). Led by Sen. Bob Rucho, a state Senate committee is doing their best to ram this through and the only information has come from the oil and gas company associations. I wonder if Rucho was on the recent junket paid for by the same oil and gas industry groups that clearly showed our legislators that there is no danger and everyone wins, especially them.
I will wholeheartedly support this bill if the following condition is included in any bill passed: All legislators who vote yes (and their families) will be required to drink one quart of water per week from any randomly selected well within a quarter-mile diameter of an active drilling sites. Also I would highly recommend they view the documentary “Gasland,” and read both the America’s Natural Gas Alliance rebuttal and the “Gasland” response to their claims of being pure as the driven snow. Can anybody remember Love Canal and the other toxic sites we the public inherited from corporations that took the money and ran?
Charles R. Schroeder
Cary
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In 2009, nearly a million North Carolinians benefited from the Earned Income Tax Credit. The EITC is an essential policy because it makes the tax system fairer, offsetting sales and other taxes for lower income working families.
In North Carolina, a low-income household pays nearly 10 percent of its income in total state and local taxes, while those in the top 1 percent of the income distribution pay just 7 percent. For lower income households, that 3 percentage point margin can mean having to choose between food and gasoline to get to work.
To protect working families, we must protect and strengthen the Earned Income Tax Credit. And to those who say we can’t afford the EITC, I would suggest state lawmakers fund it by closing the loophole that lets out-of-state corporations avoid paying income taxes on profits earned in North Carolina and by reinstating the personal income tax surcharge on millionaires.
Christina Stableford
Raleigh
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I was fortunate to be one of the 8,000 people in Carmichael Arena on April 24 to hear President Obama give such a heartfelt speech about student debt and what it means for young people to begin the world without the freedom we had back in the 1960s, when tuition was just $2,000 per year which, at the time, seemed like a lot.
Both my husband and I went through graduate school on National Defense Education Act fellowships because back then our country’s leaders understood that educating the next generation of leaders was in the best interest of the nation. It means a lot to have a president who understands this still. If only Congress would support what’s best for all of us instead of just a few of us.
I am proud to have a president whose values, understanding and heart all lead him to advocate for access for all of us. I think everyone there shared my feelings and left knowing that this country needs Obama for another four years – so he can continue to work hard for future generations of working Americans.
Sondra Stein
Durham
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North Carolina’s 541,927 small businesses represent the best of Americans’ entrepreneurial spirit to take charge of their own livelihood, promote healthy competition and provide goods and services to meet the marketplace's demand. However, Washington politics is threatening to hurt small businesses in favor of outrageous spending programs.
An example of this threat is the Health Insurance Tax (HIT). This tax, hidden within the health care reform bill, is set to take effect in 2014. The HIT seeks to collect $87 billion in the first decade and will reduce the annual take-home wages of the average small business employee by $500 every year. The bottom line is that the HIT will increase costs and demolish any confidence that small business owners have in economic recovery.
North Carolina small businesses are already struggling to stay afloat during these uncertain economic times; the last thing they need is another costly tax. Economic experts have warned Washington to repeal this tax before it goes into effect and slows our economic recovery. Small-business owners in Raleigh are calling on Washington to stop the tax before it has a devastating impact on the North Carolina small business community.
Gregg Thompson
N.C. state director, National Federation of Independent Business
Raleigh
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Regarding “Senate panel OKs fracking plan”: This is a sad day in North Carolina. Fracking is an extreme way to get at natural gas, yet data show many problems. The chemically loaded water poisons nearby water tables, toxic chemicals from the blasted rock and gas leak into the air affecting children greatly, and there is a correlation with increased earthquakes. Yet setting that aside, fracking takes a huge amount of water that cannot go back into the drinking supply. Water is a dear commodity. We must move away today from fossil fuels and toward alternative energy and conservation.
Keith Wilson
Charlotte
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The arrest of George Zimmerman is just the tip of the iceberg now endangering America. The real problem is not whether Zimmerman committed a racist act but involves attitudes, beliefs and laws that are dividing this nation and threatening to tear us asunder.
Politicians have proclaimed that everyone be allowed to carry a firearm to protect themselves and their communities. Others have stated that hard-earned tax dollars could be saved if police officers and their unions were replaced by well-armed volunteer militia units, and that if we rely only on the police we will end up living in a police state. Homeowners associations have sanctioned armed individuals to patrol their neighborhoods and maintain law and order. These individuals have had little or no training but are backed up by “Stand Your Ground” legislation. Law enforcement agencies have valiantly condemned these reckless approaches to safeguarding our communities.
I believe that untrained citizens carrying lethal weapons pose a more dangerous threat to our freedoms than anything else. I would rather trust my freedoms to professionally trained police officers than to armed civilians educated by their politicians, talk-radio jocks and out-of-the-mainstream “news” programs. Know your enemies.
Larry Bob Evans
Clayton
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According to your Feb. 18 article “Bottle ban helps boost recycling,” data showed there had been a 50 percent increase in recycled plastic bottles statewide since implementation of the program banning these bottles from landfills. After reading this article, I headed out for day two of a cleanup with three other members of the Fearrington Adopt-a-Highway team, heading south beyond our established two-mile area of 15/501. In addition to that two-day cleanup, our entire team was out Feb. 11 for our regular cleanup.
Sadly, we have seen no reduction in trash, including plastic bottles. Fearrington’s two-mile section looks fairly good only because we clean it monthly. Additionally, several of us do extra duty by cleaning north and south of our designated area. Our recent two-day cleanup south of Fearrington left us discouraged by the amount of garbage people toss from their vehicles.
In addition to asking people to stop littering, I urge more individuals and businesses along 15/501 from the Chapel Hill/Chatham line to Pittsboro to take pride in their road and establish Adopt-a-Highway teams. Go to the NCDOT website to find out more about the Adopt-a-Highway program and check out ncdot.gov/~littersweep to learn more about the Spring 2012 Litter Sweep Roadside Cleanup.
Ann E. Holloman
Pittsboro
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Lately there have been a number of letters suggesting that people go from plastic to cloth bags. I certainly agree with the fact that we need to use less plastic but suggest that people use paper as well as cloth bags when shopping.
Paper bags make wonderful garbage bags. With a large clip, we attach a waterproof container, such as a milk carton or sour cream or cottage cheese container, to the side of the can within the paper bag. This can be used to hold wet garbage. When we empty the can, we detach the clip and let the container go into the bag.
This saves a lot of plastic from going into the land fill. If you fill up the wet garbage container, you can unclip it, make sure it is upright in the paper bag and clip on another container.
Peg Rees
Chapel Hill
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Michael Jacobs’ Feb. 21 Point of View article (“Charting cities’ financial stewardship”) performs a great service. The average taxpayer cannot discern what he is paying versus what other people pay in different communities.
The problem is similar to health care. Without comparative information about cost, quality and alternatives, buyers (taxpayers or patients) are lost. There can be no effective marketplace and no justification to chose one supplier over another (stay in the same community or move) or to fire (turn out of office) government leaders.
A lack of information is a danger to democracy. Would it be possible to create a cost index for taxes paid for a family of two or four, living in a $300,000 house in every city, county and state that is in and surrounds North Carolina as a first step?
As a taxpayer, living amongst the high-taxed, high-priced water consuming citizens of Chapel Hill, I would pay for that service. Later, we can listen to the reasons for the disparity and let the people decide if it is all worth it. But it is going to be a hard sell to claim that Chapel Hill’s basic public services are almost 50 percent better than Cary’s and 70 percent better than Raleigh’s.
Jay Strong
Chapel Hill
