Letters to the editor: Cost of postage for mailing Auburn tickets getting outrageous

Letters to the editor
Published: October 15, 2008

Cost of postage for mailing Auburn tickets getting outrageous

I am an Auburn graduate, retired in 1991 and moved back to Auburn. I love Auburn University, am a life member of the Auburn Alumni Engineering Society, and love all Auburn athletics including football and basketball, but sometimes the university doesn’t do the right things. For example, I paid $2,000, as usual, for two season basketball tickets and then later got a bill, as usual, for $5 to cover the cost of postage and handling!

Am I unreasonable to think that somewhere nestled down in the $2,000 I sent there can be found a dollar or two to cover the cost of placing the tickets in an envelope and then running it through a postage machine?

The $5 charge may be reasonable for mailing the tickets, but postage and handling charges, in general, are getting to be outrageous! If I were an automobile dealer, I would advertise my cars for $50 plus delivery and handling costs and would have many prospects, until they learned what the delivery and handling charges, including profit, amount to.

Homer Turner
Auburn

Alabama should become an Initiative and Referendum state

Much has been written about “crimes of moral turpitude.”

What that term means has been given several interpretations. The only interpretation that will be valid is one defined by the state Legislature according to one court already.

This question has been kicked around more than footballs on Saturdays, and the Legislature still hasn’t addressed the issue. Sadly, we also know that this is only one important issue that our do-not-much-of-anything-for-the-people Legislature has failed to address.

What can Alabamians do to have issues that we consider important addressed?

I believe the answer is that Alabama voters need a way to address those issues themselves that allows them to create legislation that will bypass both the Legislature and the governor and be placed on a ballot for Alabama voters to accept or reject at the polls. Such a way would be for Alabama to become the 25th Initiative and Referendum (I&R) state, but it will take thousands of Alabama voters working toward that goal to succeed.

They need to contact the two members of the Legislature who represent them and tell them to “work diligently to pass legislation to make Alabama the 25th I&R state. If you don’t, I and every one of your constituents that I can influence will work diligently to insure your defeat if you should seek re-election to your current office, or election to any other office.”

Don Seibold
Wetumpka

Childbearing woman’s greatest achievement? Not so fast

Tom Tippett’s letter regarding childbearing as a woman’s greatest achievement missed mentioning a few other joys as well: the happiness derived from a well-ironed shirt, the blissfulness of a scrubbed kitchen floor, the contentment of a sparkling toilet bowl, and the inner glow from serving one’s husband and all his needs. I’m sure those women, who for medical reasons, cannot achieve the ultimate happiness, will have to be satisfied with being less than a total woman.
As for women who have babies out of wedlock like Halle Berry and Bristol Palin, our society needs to be vigilant, or next thing you know women will be congregating unsupervised outside the home.

Carol Robicheaux
Auburn

Obama demanded immediate and total withdrawal of troops

Jim Gravois’ letter in the Oct. 8 edition of the Opelika-Auburn News was very amusing. He began by quoting from the New York Times, a publication that has abandoned objectivity regarding the political scene in recent years. He attempted to use that article to demonstrate that the president has adopted Barack Obama’s deadline for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops. That’s how facts are spun, folks.

The fact is that Obama began demanding an immediate and total withdrawal of troops soon after he found himself in the U.S. Senate. That was long before the “surge”  — the tactic Obama then said was doomed to failure. The success of the surge and the “Sunni awakening” has led to a complete turnaround of the situation on the ground in Iraq and caused Obama to modify his demand from an immediate withdrawal to “a reasonable and measured withdrawal of combat troops,” as his demands became overtaken by events.

Our successes have led the way to the beginning of the end of our effort to replace a tyrannical regime in Iraq with a sovereign democracy and has enabled the president and his generals to begin to plan for the reduction of troops from Iraq with honor. To attempt to imply that the reductions are due to adoption of Obama’s defeatist attitude falls somewhere between ludicrous and ridiculous.

The fact that Gravois doesn’t understand the requirement for a Status of Forces agreement with any country in which American troops are stationed, in order to protect them from the vagaries of the domestic courts of those many and varied nations, is lamentable. But every president of the U.S. has insisted on this measure since our country took on the task of promoting democracy and freedom around the world. Those are facts, as opposed to demagoguery.

Howard Deane
Auburn