Readers
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
Big not big enough to describe Obama gov’t
With a straight face, President Obama claims that he is not in favor of big government for big government’s sake.
Given his history of always supporting big government, the only sense in which Obama’s claim could possibly be true is if what he really backs is not big government, but instead gigantic, humongous, elephantine, oppressive and tyrannical government.
Mark Kalinowski
New York, N.Y.
Replace engine rather than buy new car
In today’s economy, most people realize they need to reduce expenses. A great way to save significant money is to keep and maintain your current vehicle.
Replacing your worn-out engine with a remanufactured or rebuilt engine rather than buying a new or used car may be an excellent way for you to cut costs and realize long-term savings.
When a car or truck suffers major engine damage, often the first reaction is to buy a new or used vehicle. But the cost to repower an engine is a drop in the bucket compared with the higher insurance rates and monthly loan payments that come with a new car.
The bottom line is that a repowered engine makes a vehicle more dependable, more fuel efficient, less polluting and more valuable.
With engine repowering, a vehicle’s engine, or an identical one from a like-vehicle, is completely disassembled, cleaned, machined and remanufactured or rebuilt.
Unlike used or junk yard engines with an unknown performance and maintenance history, repowered engines are dependable, reliable and backed by excellent warranty programs.
In addition to its financial benefits, engine repowering also saves the tremendous amount of energy used in processing discarded engines and vehicles. It also saves an incredible amount of raw materials that would have been used in building a new engine.
To learn more about the benefits of installing a remanufactured or rebuilt engine, visit the Engine Repower Council’s Web site at www.enginerepower.org.
Steve Rich
chairman
Engine Repower Council
Bethesda, Md.
D’backs owe it to Tucson to keep training here
As a former president of the Cactus League Association and chair of the Governor’s Baseball Commission, I have seen a lot of positive changes in spring training in Arizona. New facilities, additional teams and our favorable weather have all added to the surge.
I saw a very smart move on behalf of the Arizona Diamondbacks when the franchise was granted to make the team an Arizona team. Training in a new facility and having its top minor league team in Tucson gave the franchise that statewide perspective.
Tucson has been a very important part of spring training for many years. Tucson marshaled the resources to build a facility to the Diamondbacks’ specifications just over 10 years ago. The taxpayers of Tucson and Pima County have been very generous to the team.
The Diamondbacks call it “due diligence.” I call it arrogance and a total disregard for the economics of these times for the Diamondbacks to even think about moving out of Tucson.
They should reconsider their actions.
Ronald Pies
Tempe
Once upon a time,
U.S. was self-reliant
Once upon a time, long ago, there was a country populated by industrious, self-reliant people. They created a central government to protect and defend their country and the government largely confined itself to that matter.
The people multiplied and spread across a continent, creating farms and towns and capitalistic commerce where there had been none, and the people prospered. They created extended families in which adults cared for their children and the children, when they reached adulthood, cared for their own children and their aging parents.
From time to time, the people encountered adversity – bad weather, illness, economic uncertainties and hardship – but they persevered and overcame the adversities. They were Americans.
As the years passed, periodically elected members of the government grew bored with the job of defending the country.
The Exalted Leader (EL), who was called president, and the Exalted Leader Wannabes (ELW), who were called senators or representatives, took note of the adversity encountered from time to time by the people.
The EL and ELW perceived some of the adversities as insurmountable problems even though the people had historically dealt with them successfully. That caused the EL and ELW to be gravely concerned.
The EL and ELW convinced themselves that what had always been normal wants and aspirations of the people were needs that the government was morally and ethically bound to meet.
A succession of ELs and ELWs created programs to meet the perceived needs of the people. As time went by, increasingly burdensome taxes were imposed on the people to finance the programs.
ELs and ELW had cleverly created a tax system that was progressive, which meant that individuals with higher incomes paid a disproportionately large percentage of taxes. As a result of that arrangement, many individuals attracted by the government’s largesse, who were called the beneficiaries, were not the individuals who paid for it.
The beneficiaries understood that and were ashamed – at least a little bit, for a while. But the temptation for most of them was irresistible.
They got over the embarrassment their proud and self-reliant ancestors would have felt when accepting benefits they had not earned.
As time passed, more and more of the people became beneficiaries. Joyful about their windfall, the beneficiaries tended to vote for ELs and ELWs who were responsible for it.
That made ELs and ELWs joyful, too, and provided them with a powerful incentive to maintain the largesse. They did so, right up to the present, when the government has a debt of $10.9 trillion and a long-term unfunded liability of many times that amount for mandatory entitlement programs the ELs and ELWs created long ago.
Founding Father Ben Franklin supposedly said “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
The ELs and ELWs should have heeded Franklin’s warning.
Phil Edmunds
Boalsburg, Pa.