YOUR OPINION 6/27/2009

Reject extensions on KOZ projects

Editor: What happened to the firm stance that Scranton City Council had regarding the KOZ giveaway program? Why table all of them one week, only to selectively approve certain ones the next week?

It makes no sense to give one entity in the development at Tripp Park approval for an extension, while denying other developers in that same area.

If anyone other than Janet Evans actually had a backbone on council, they would've denied ALL of them.

Each of these businesses had ample chance to exploit the tax abatement program and to get those properties up and running before the coverage lapsed.

From part of the article in The Times-Tribune on Wednesday, it seems as if some potential occupants of the new business park were threatening to not move in unless they received the abatement.

GOOD. We don't need you here in Scranton, go find some other host community to go leech off of for 10 years or so.

All too often local communities give away the farm for these companies coming here with the promise of "good- paying jobs" and once they get their greedy mitts into the taxpayers' pockets they want more, more and more.

Even better is that these good-paying jobs they promise go up in smoke and they replace them with jobs paying barely above minimum wage. We've seen it happen before and it'll happen again because the local taxing bodies don't know how to say no to these greedy so and sos.

I just hope the school board isn't as stupid as the county and the City Council and they put a halt to any of these KOZ extensions. We don't need anymore people not paying taxes. After all, we already have the University of Scranton taking up half the Hill Section and not paying taxes on a majority of the buildings.

MICHAEL KOHUT Scranton

Hot dog!

Editor: A welcome back to the new Coney Island. I went there opening day to say hello to the owner and to have the best hot dog in are area, and I could not believe my eyes. There were people standing in line, and waiting in line was the best time for me.

The owners welcomed everyone that came in and the service was at the top of the list. With the newly remolded building, it was very nice to sit there and see people you used to see before the fire, and talk about the old times, and how times change.

All of the people who go there are very proud and glad the owner did what he did - come back to Scranton and keep the good old welcome.                                                                                               JOHN ROY WILLIAMS

scranton

No Hope out there

Editor:  I suppose a letter about taste and decency will seem hopelessly outdated in today's reality-TV-obsessed world, but I'm hoping there are still a few people out there who agree with what I'm about to write.

Recently a popular late-night talk show host made an inappropriate comment about a governor's teenage daughter on national television and received no censure for it.

In fact, I would not be surprised to learn that his ratings have received a boost because of it, and it also wouldn't surprise me if he received a raise.

This appears to be business as usual in a Howard Stern world, where comedians claim the right to spin the facts as they seem fit in the name of the almighty laugh. 

I don't think Howard Stern or those subscribing to his particular brand of humor would find it so funny if someone made light of something important to him, like his ethnicity, his religion, or a difficult or trying period in his life. Yet, according to the modern comedians' credo, any of these topics are fair game as long as the person on the receiving end of this type of humiliation is a "public figure."

To this day, the greatest comedian that I can think of is Bob Hope, who made millions of people laugh without offending anyone in a decades-long career. Today's comedians should take a page from his book and realize that if they can't tell a knock-knock joke and get a laugh then maybe it's time to shut up and get a real job.

PATRICK J. GRIFFIN

Scranton

Art's bleak picture

Editor: Are the arts in Pennsylvania approaching their version of a "nuclear winter?"

Are the lights in theaters going dark as drama groups cannot buy scripts or paint for scenery?

Are world-class museums and orchestras cutting their programs and causing a ripple effect to closing restaurants and hotels in places like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Scranton and cities and town of all sizes?

Are the doors of refrigerators barren without your children's artwork because children are tossing their crayons in the trash because there are no drawing classes in school?

Are the voices of choirs, musical comedies, folk singers and jazz groups silenced because arts funding cannot be found in the Keystone State?

Please call your representatives to see if they understand the gravity of the destructive domino effect that would result from any departure from the proposed $14 million budget for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

ROBERT N. LETTIERI

Chairman, Citizens for the Arts in Pennsylvania

Scranton

Seeing too much

Editor: After reading "Watching Your Every Move" in the June 22 Times-Tribune, about surveillance cameras in Lancaster, it seems Orwell's terrifying futuristic novel "1984" has come to full fruition.  

Eric Blair's (Orwell's real name) book is celebrating its 60th anniversary and, while some seem to understand  its basic tenets - Big Brother, double speak, power, propaganda, language corruption - this prophetic work of anti-utopian literature takes on a new urgency today. 

From citizens of London being recorded on average 300 times a day by 4.2 million closed-circuit television cameras, to the police chief in Houston calling for monitoring people in their own homes, the balance between privacy and security is being eroded. 

But perhaps the most disturbing of Orwell's prophesies coming true is the way the use of propaganda is distorting the language.

Orwell was cognizant of the degrading use of words and the way it made thinking critically, historically and freely about the complex world we live in very difficult. 

Much like Thomas Paine before him - another perceptive prophetic writer -Orwell does not easily fall into partisan niches of a right/left political paradigm. Instead he is embraced by people of all ideological persuasions who still can think, feel and have an unquenchable desire for freedom and privacy. As Ben Franklin once said: "They who give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

JEFFREY PETRUCCI

  South Abington Twp.