Published: April 24, 2008 08:02 pm            

Letters to the editor - Friday, April 25, 2008

Kokomo annexation is a great idea

I just read the Mayor’s ideas on annexation. Not only is it a great idea, I don't see how we can grow without it. The ultimate answer to many challenges now weighing on our community is growth. Our competition to growth is every other community of our size, not only within our state but surrounding states.

As they have annexed population to increase their numbers, they benefit from the "perception" of being a growing vibrant community. The Mayor's recent proposal clearly pointed out there is a benefit of annexation to us all.

Our ability to attract new businesses is based largely on the current financial health of Kokomo. The proposed annexation gives the city the extra vitality needed to compete effectively in this highly competitive arena. We should all be concerned, city and county residents alike, about the ability of Kokomo to attract new businesses and residents to our highly capable city. I played high school, college and Marine Corp football.

We played as a team, lost as a team and more often won as a team. We all knew it would be a team effort that created the result. The city and the county are on the same team and we all have a vested interest in a financially secure future. If we are going to win as a team we have to play as a team. The proposed annexation clearly points out the overwhelming benefit to us all for the lowest possible cost to any one player. Good job, great idea.

Rick Hutchins

Howard County

Lab professionals are important

There are many faces to the American Red Cross. There is the face of the frequent blood donor, the community member that responds to disasters and the CPR teacher at a local high school health class.

But there is one face that is seen behind the doors of the American Red Cross. It is the face of the invaluable medical laboratory professional that works with each blood donation to make sure it is safe for hospital patients in need.

During the week of April 20, the American Red Cross is honoring the medical lab professionals who help make a safe blood supply possible. The National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week is a way to say thank you to lab professionals at the American Red Cross, local hospital professionals and many other organizations.

Without medical laboratory professionals, the safety of not only donating, but receiving blood would not be as advanced as it is.

The American Red Cross is thankful for the irreplaceable medical laboratory professionals that focus on helping to ensure the local blood supply is safe everyday.

Sharyn Whitman

CEO, American Red Cross,

Indiana-Ohio Blood

Services Region

Obama is an elitist

In an article titled “Elitist is as elitist does,” columnist Dick Polman raises the irony of Senators Clinton and McCain branding Sen. Barack H. Obama an elitist. He is absolutely correct in his observations that neither of Sen. Obama’s critics can escape the same branding.

However, Mr. Polman exceeds the boundaries of credulity by suggesting that we are to believe that Sen. Obama is not an elitist. It is not his childhood background that we should evaluate; it is the ideologies

and policies that he expresses now that are to be evaluated.

Virtually everything that Sen. Obama currently espouses is based upon the premise that he knows what is better for us than we know ourselves. The unspecified “change” upon which he is basing his campaign indicate a belief that government - specifically the federal government - should accumulate more power through the economic machinery of higher taxes and limited economic choices. There is hardly anything more politically elitist than this.

Senators Clinton and McCain are right to brand Sen. Obama an elitist not because they are not, but because that is exactly what Sen. Obama is.

Charles A. Layne

Bunker Hill

        

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