Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 29, 1994 TAG: 9405270076
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
On the day before, your newspaper quoted Clinton in Indiana as praising the morality of the '60s and two of its legendary martyrs, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Surely, these two also could have been depicted with their pants down.
I read that the Justice Department will aid in the defense of our chief fornicator in a case involving alleged sexual harassment (May 19 Associated Press article, ``Federal lawyers join Clinton case''). The taxpaying public becomes a party to his wanton proclivities.
JUDITH N. CATES
BLACKSBURG
I-77 corridor is ready for business
HAVE YOU traveled on U.S. 460 or U.S. 220 at any hour? They're loaded with traffic!
Businessmen, with their economic outlook, i.e., their wallets, will lead travelers southeast to northwest, or reverse, off a direct route 50 miles in a circle to Roanoke and back to the original route. For whose benefit? Theirs. Just to sell gas, beds and food.
The fallout for them is of so small degree that they'll impose added traffic on all of us. The fallout for others, like the through traffic, will be a burden.
Interstate 77, with its pristine environment on both sides, is where you place new businesses of any size, and transportation is immediately available, built first. There's room for executives, working people and their homes, in beauty that startles you.
LOUIS JOHN FOELVARY
ROANOKE
A higher law than Roe vs. Wade
SINCE the abortion issue has been turned every which way but loose, perhaps it's time to see it for what it is and walk away from it.
Abortion is a result of slavery. We're enslaved to our own desires and lust. If we wanted to stop abortion, then we shouldn't do things that cause the need for it.
It's been decided a fetus is less than human, it's not a person or a citizen, and it doesn't have voting rights. Chief Justice Roger Taney said the same thing about Dred Scott, a slave. He was wrong, and history proved that. Look around and see.
We'll not be able to look around and see if Justice Harry Blackmun was correct about the aborted fetus. All we'll see is 60 million would-be parents who remember occasionally, but try to forget. We'll see social problems in America increase, and this increase will be measured in new prisons for our young men and women whose bondage will have become a way of life, a reality, a punishment, because they didn't want to understand. If you commit adultery, you become a servant to it.
We all have a choice, which is above the law, because it comes before the law. The law itself is a choice; therefore, our choices are subject to the law. A greater law than Roe vs. Wade was given for our benefit. And if we obeyed it, we'd understand. Abortion mills and clinics would be shut down for lack of business.
MARSHALL TACKETT
BUCHANAN
Smokers also drive polluting vehicles
NONSMOKERS enjoy reading letters to the editor from smokers disgraced by anti-smoking laws. Each letter serves as a sign of progress. However, there should be a question as to the intelligence behind these letters as a growing number of smokers, in a last-ditch effort, point fingers at nonsmokers for also polluting the air via automobile. Not only is this double-standard thinking, it assumes only nonsmokers drive.
It's ironic that as smokers, who also drive, do their finger-pointing, a well-known cigarette brand lends its name to a ``sport'' synonymous with auto-emissions pollution - Winston Cup racing. Adding to this, there doesn't exist a gas station where Winston Cup paraphernalia and cigarette propaganda don't clutter the place. And smokers never object to a cigarette delivery truck's pollution.
Automobiles cause air pollution, but the United States depends on them. Until something's produced that can quickly transport individuals (bicycles won't do) while protecting them from the elements - all the while keeping the air clean - automobiles will remain.
There's no point in arguing that smokers also drive. Cigarette butts littering our roads and highways serve as proof.
TIM BLACK
DUBLIN
Premiums differ due to the boss
A POLICYHOLDER raised a question regarding differences in Blue Cross-Blue Shield health-care premiums in her March 31 letter (``Blues unfairly ration health care'' by Marilyn V. Brigham). Here's the answer:
Group members pay less than individuals for monthly health premiums, because employers often pay a large portion of premiums for their workers. U.S. senators and representatives (examples cited in her letter) and other federal workers pay less than individual consumers because the government's Federal Employee Program pays 53 percent to 75 percent of the monthly premium, depending on the specific health plan. Government sets these percentages, not Blue Cross-Blue Shield.
Like the government program, Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Virginia offers individuals a variety of coverage options to select the health plan that best meets their needs.
KATHY ASHBY MERRY
Vice President and General Manager, Individual Markets
Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Virginia
ROANOKE
by CNB