LETTERS
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SHAKE A PAW, VOTE We need your help to vote for Springfield, Illinois, in the Bark For Your Park Contest. The winner will win $100,000 to build a PetSafe dog park and four other cities will also receive a $25,000 prize. Finalist cities will be selected based on availability of land, civic leader support and number of votes.
You may vote once a day on each site (www.petsafe. net and Petsafe’s Facebook page). Please help spread the word for our Washington Dog Park. Springfield is already registered. You can also find the link on www. washingtondogpark.com. You can sign in through Facebook or create an account without receiving promotional material. It just takes a moment.
We have raised about 80 percent of our $100,000 goal with the help of our Mother’s Day Weekend Dog Walk held in Washington Park. We need public support, funds in place and a great design worthy of our Washington Park for park board approval. Please help us by submitting your votes for Springfield, Illinois, today and every day until June 7. Karen Hoelzer Springfield
ONE-SIDED STORY Patrick Yeagle’s piece on coal (“Gambling on a black rock,” May 8) is marked “feature” but it should be marked “editorial.” It’s filled with superlatives and onesided claims. FutureGen seeks to address many of the objections that Yeagle raises. Yeagle chooses to focus on past problems rather than future solutions.
Coal may not be a perfect fuel but it is sustainable for another 100 years while other energy sources continue to develop. Through coal gasification, we could have clean-burning hydrogen, synthetic natural gas and other products while recovering the sulfur and carbon dioxide. New products using the CO2, such as insulation products, should be developed.
Illinois is well positioned for coal production which means good-paying jobs in areas where jobs are desperately needed. There are two sides to this story. Too bad only one side was told in this cover story/editorial. David Porter Springfield
GOVERNMENT NOT GUILTY The Guestwork column in this week’s Illinois Times (“Immigration reform is a family value,” May 8) noted that during the Obama administration over two million people have been deported from the U.S.,
and deplored the breaking up of families resulting from deporting these persons. The blame for breaking up these families was put squarely on the government. However, no one in government is forcing these deportees to leave their families behind. Even if the rest of their families were here legally, the government wasn’t forcing those family members to stay here, while their other family member, here illegally, was deported.
From my way of thinking, the deportees and their families chose to break up the family by choosing to not accompany the deportee out of the U.S. This does not in any way diminish the very wrenching decision it must be for these families to make, i.e., whether to leave as a family and give up the benefits of living here, or stay in the U.S. as a split-up family. Nor does it diminish the need for immigration reform, as pointed out in the article.
Nonetheless, it is unfair to blame the Obama administration or, for that matter, the overall government, for carrying out the law and deporting persons who are here illegally (as any other country in the world likely does), and the resulting break up of their families. That is a decision the family made, not the government. Dick McLane Springfield
