Published: November 02, 2009 09:20 pm      

TRIBUNE LETTERS: Nov. 3, 2009

Cancer Society says thanks for fundraiser

On behalf of the American Cancer Society, I would like to thank the Greater Louisville community for its generosity and support of the American Cancer Society Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk.

More than 14,000 walkers and hundreds of volunteers participated, and we raised more than $720,000 to fight for every birthday threatened by breast cancer in every community.

Making Strides Against Breast Cancer is a chance to celebrate survivorship. I want to applaud the many survivors who led the way. These women are heroes. They are our mothers, sisters, daughters, wives and friends.

They are the reason we continue to fight, and they remind us all of a very important message — together with the American Cancer Society, we are fighting breast cancer and saving lives.

We also appreciate the generosity of this year’s flagship sponsors — Fantastic Sams, Kroger and YUM / KFC / UFPC — for their contributions and participation in this year’s walk.

Again, thank you for supporting your American Cancer Society in our efforts to create a world with less breast cancer and more birthdays.

Funds raised at events like Making Strides Against Breast Cancer are critical in meeting the needs of breast cancer in the community. If you have outstanding donations or would like to make a contribution, it’s not too late.

Contact your local American Cancer Society office at 502-584-WALK or make a gift online at cancer.org/stridesonline. You can also contact us anytime, day or night, for cancer-related information, support and resources at 800-227-2345 or visit www.cancer.org.

— Lisa Brown, American Cancer Society executive director, Louisville





Flexibility to change

Congratulations to Gov. Mitch Daniels for acknowledging that the experiment in wholly privatizing the delivery of welfare services by the state’s Family and Social Services Administration was not working as he had hoped and for taking positive steps to correct the situation. It takes courage for anyone, but especially a high-profile political figure such as our governor, to admit publically that a program for which he or she was responsible failed to deliver as promised.

To his credit, Gov. Daniels’ tenure has been marked by innovation and action. But even as he has proceeded with an aggressive agenda, there have been times when he has demonstrated the flexibility to reconsider and adjust his position as new information or public reaction dictated. Cancelling the IBM contract with FSSA is the latest example of this. He demonstrated similar flexibility when he decided not to pursue the Central Indiana “commerce connector” highway when the public failed to embrace his vision of a 21st century transportation network.

Times change; circumstances change; the economy changes. When those changes happen, government needs the flexibility to react. That’s why it is so difficult to understand why our governor, who has demonstrated the courage to acknowledge that major policy initiatives don’t always play out as anticipated, is so adamant that the 1-2-3 property tax caps — which are already placing severe hardship on many local units of government — should be locked into the state’s Constitution.

Indiana Farm Bureau and its members heartily endorse the governor’s initiative to control spending at all levels of government. We agree that measures to reign in excesses need to be pursued. At the same time, we recognize the danger in irrevocably committing to any initiative before its ramifications are fully understood. We don’t want Indiana to end up like California, where overly ambitious property tax controls have driven the state into virtual bankruptcy.

Therefore, while we applaud Gov. Daniels for his courage and wisdom in addressing the FSSA situation, we ask him to exercise similar conservative discretion and reconsider his endorsement of the constitutional amendment to render the 1-2-3 property tax caps irrevocable.

— Bob Kraft, Director of State Government Relations, Indiana Farm Bureau Inc., Indianapolis





Reader: Free speech is open

In your article “It’s no smoke: IU Southeast students protest smoking ban” you point out that students assembled for their protest at the campus “free speech area.” If this is correct, students at IUS have much bigger problems on their campus than a smoking ban. By limiting student protest and speech to a few small areas on campus, “Free Speech Zones” silence campus debate and hurt the marketplace of ideas that needs to exist on our campuses. In the past ten years, these policies have been challenged and eliminated by students at almost a dozen schools, including just last week at the University of North Texas.

Students at IUS should take a lesson from their peers around the country and work to eliminate these restrictive policies.

— Adam Gaya, Program Director for The Center for Campus Free Speech, Chicago