Letters to the Editor
badgal73
Published Letters: 17 Editor's Choice: 1
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Scooters, rickshaws, etc...
[Read the article: Black gas-price Monday?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The comments about scooters and other smaller vehicles don't take into account the weather in much of the country: I have a motorcycle and live in Michigan. I can use it about 5 to 6 months out of the year for commuting, small errands, etc but I can't use it for grocery shopping or picking up anything larger than a saddlebag (or even shaped bulkily) and riding in the rain is no fun and unsafe. Perhaps an enclosed rickshaw would work, but does it have a heater for those 15 degree mornings in January?
I'd happily pay European prices for gas if it were going to taxes to pay for public transit and the like, but when $10 billion is going to Exxon shareholders (mostly not Grandma with her 1,000 shares, BTW) that just stinks of greed.
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Sounds nice, except...
[Read the article: I love L.A.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...when you all need more water because the Colorado is all tapped out, don't come looking at the Great Lakes that all the transplants left behind. Our economy may be tanking, but at least we don't have to fight with our neighbors over water rights.
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The quotes....
[Read the article: Dubai goes shopping -- for Barneys]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The quotes, ranging from Chuck Schumer to the "outraged mullah" read like something out of the Onion.
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Respectfully, Cosmic Mojo
[Read the article: Her sexy T-shirt says "Kitty Not Happy" -- is that OK at work?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As a GenX gal who had and still has many, many offensive, double entendre-spouting, and yes, punk rock T-shirts, her shirt means pussy. As in vagina. You can says it means gal as much as you want, but it is a double entendre with multiple meanings and I'm having a hard time believing in this context she didn't mean it as an immature, look-at-me thing.
That said, we've probably all worn something innappropriate at one time in our lives and yes, the LW should leave it alone. I wouldn't want to work with either one of these twits.
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Veiled women and photo ID
[Read the article: Veiled women allowed to vote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I used to work in retail cosmetics and waited on a veiled woman who wanted to use traveler's checks to pay for her purchase. Our policy was to ask for photo ID with checks, and she willingingly obliged. She showed me her face and her passport from Saudi Arabia, her photo taken without a veil. If Saudi Arabia of all places can have photo ID's of women without their faces covered and this woman was willing to show her face & ID to female salesperson in a department store, I don't see why it would be big deal to have female election staff verify the voter's identity. Same goes for that woman in Florida who wanted her driver's license photo taken while veiled. If the religious police in the kingdom of Saud have found a way to make it work, we should be able to, also.
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Sizing as an incentive to lose weight
[Read the article: Plus size, minus a few years]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've been learning to sew my own clothing over the last few years, and I have to say that the commercial, home-sewer pattern market is basically the same as the ready-to-wear clothing market: not much cute or stylish or non-mumu-like over certain sizes. And since drafting your own patterns is such a bitch, I've been compelled to lose some weight to be able to use commercial patterns. I was never influenced like this as a chubby teenager or 20-something looking at the clothing industry, but something about the damn pattern industry has made me want to get in better shape, and not in some self-hating way, but in a healthy "hey, look what I'll be able to take part in" kind of way. If fashionable patterns existed in my size (and I ain't that big) I don't know if I'd be trying to do it.
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@ Agniescka
[Read the article: The case against homeownership]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Your family won't move because here in Michigan we have the beauty of the Great Lakes...and because they're stubborn Eastern Europeans, like me and mine.
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The Big 3 can't make a decent small car!
[Read the article: Is Mitt Romney taking Michigan for a ride?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm a lifelong Michigander and my husband is a UAW member working for a supplier that makes parts for Honda, Ford, Mazda and Nissan. I'd like to buy a new small car/wagon that was assembled in a UAW plant, but the about only thing they make in UAW plants anymore are boring, ugly, 6-cylinder sedans or big SUV's/pickups. I'm trying to buy something fuel-efficient, semi-cute and Detroit has nothing to offer me that is actually assembled here (Saturn Astra or hybrid Vue? Belgium and Mexico, respectively).
My conspriracy theory is that this is how they will finally break the UAW: when the people who buy these giant SUV's and 6 or 8 cylinder sedans die off in the next generation, they'll close the plants that made them but keep the Mexico/South Korea/China plants going, cranking out whatever small, fuel-efficient, stylish autos that they produce. Believe me, I hate having the economic well-being of my state tied to these idiots in power at the Big 3 who just rolled around naked in all the money they were making in the 1990's and had no foresight whatsoever.
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It's not just about Michigan manufacturing...
[Read the article: Is Mitt Romney taking Michigan for a ride?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm also concerned about the other employees of the Big 3: the engineers, the marketing people, the custodians, and the secretaries. This extends to the other businesses that exist because these other workers support them (the retail stores, ad firms, real estate people, restaurants, etc). This has a huge ripple effect, extending into our state treasury because unfortunately this industry has been my home state's economic mainstay.
And I certainly don't agree with everything that many UAW members get in their contracts ($5 drug copays? No doctor's office copays? The job banks? Guaranteed overtime, so you with no higher education expect to afford a boat and a cottage up north?) but these agreements do help set the minimun standards bar/prevailing wages for all the other non-union plants around the US, so the folks in Indiana that made your Subaru do benefit, albeit indriectly, and I think that decent wages for what is often difficult, dirty, and sometimes boring work is good for our society as a whole.