Speak Out

I understand, much to my dismay, that the planned renovation of the Bynum School into a community/senior center has been removed from the 2009 Oxford city budget.

This project, which has been promised to us off and on for several years, is sorely needed. We have elderly and disabled people with no place to get together for meetings, games and social events. We are 10 to 15 miles from the other Oxford facilities such as the Civic Center, Friendship Community Center and the new multi-million-dollar library. Traveling to these facilities is not an option, especially with the high fuel prices.

It seems that millions can be spent nearer to downtown or in the eastern areas of Oxford, but all that is happening in the Bynum, Coldwater and Eastaboga areas is that we're becoming an industrial park with the congestion, noise and traffic problems. We pay city and sales taxes in Oxford, so I think it's time that we get a little more consideration for some of the better things our taxes are being used for.

Further, why the outgoing council members should have anything to say about a budget that they will not be there to implement nor control is beyond me.

Phil Gardner, who is running for the City Council in the run-off election on Tuesday, has committed to expend every effort possible to get the Bynum School project reinstated in the 2009 budget. I, therefore, encourage all eligible voters in the Bynum, Coldwater and Eastaboga areas, as well as the entire city, to vote for Phil Gardner. He will fight for fairness for all of us.

A.B. Pennington
Bynum

Andrews saw the future

Glenn Andrews Sr. was an Ivy League maverick. Imagine the audacity of a politician in 1950s-1960s Alabama, running as a Republican without trepidation. If I may quote Muddy Waters, "I'm a Man"; so was Glenn Andrews.

My grandmother voted a complete Democratic ticket. My extended family voted Democrat for years because they were still angry with Abraham Lincoln and the carpetbaggers.

If my grandmother were still alive, I wonder what she would think of a Barack Obama/Joe Biden slate. Well, I am an independent because I do not want to be subjected to a party line (party line was also a telephone system for you younger readers).

Nevertheless, this is not about the past, as so many demagogues say John McCain was all about during the first debate. This election is about our present and future.

Obama made sense and appealed to the populism of Gov. George Wallace. McCain used the past to try and prove his vision for the future. Y'all decide because I've made up my mind.

Southern politics still baffles the rest of the nation, but we live here and we have a finger on the vibe.

The honorable Rep. Glenn Andrews took notice, appealed to, and ultimately received the votes of some of my staunch Democratic relatives. That was indeed a feat.

God rest Glenn Andrews. My sympathy is extended to his family and friends.

Otis Hunter
Anniston

Corporate culpability

If these great, big-money CEOs, CFOs, directors and other "I got mine, where's yours?" incompetents can't cut it, take theirs and let the buzzards have what's left of 'em.

If the little Mom-and-Pop businesses (the mainstay of our employment/economy) can make it work, why can't greedy corporate America?

The people didn't cause this mess, corporate America did. They made the mess, let them clean it up. Yes, it can be done!

James L. Nix
Hartselle