We welcome letters. Please include your full name, address and telephone number. We edit all letters. Send them to letters@illinoistimes.com.
BAN DICAMBA Whoever extended the deadline for dicamba application to July 15 should be asked to resign (“Dicamba is proving a headache for some Illinois farmers,” Aug. 15). The Illinois Department of Agriculture has informed me as of July 29 that my off-site misuse complaints for soybeans, trees and health hazards will not be investigated for at least six weeks, approximately the time of harvest of these soybeans.
The Illinois Department of Agriculture has breached its duty to the public and farmers suffering from this terrible dicamba damage. It appears that the USEPA and the Department of Agriculture are not working for the farmers or the public, but rather the ones who donate money to re-election campaigns. The Department of Agriculture office is too busy fielding complaints of pesticide misuse to complete investigations in a timely manner.
Take a drive up here to northern Champaign County so you can see damage to trees, soybeans and garden plants everywhere, even the air quality.
Ban dicamba now before it kills us. Not enough is known about it when used with other chemicals. It’s poison like Agent Orange, and it’s flying through the air just like in Vietnam. We won’t go outside, because it is present and will be for weeks yet. Bryan Schluter Gifford
DON’T BAN GUNS I appreciate Bruce Rushton’s columns. Given my conservative bent, I find myself nonetheless mostly agreeing with him. However, I have a different take on his call for gun control (“Guns, guns, guns, guns,” Aug. 15). I neither own a gun or rifle, nor hunt. But today they come for guns and I say nothing because I don’t own one; tomorrow … Who is out there reporting on the millions of schools each day on which there are no shootings?
This “epidemic” that isn’t has more people falsely convinced that these things make sense:
1. We need more laws – as if murder has not been illegal for thousands of years.
2. Making guns illegal will take them off the street – works so well with cocaine and heroin.
3. Hold gun makers liable for the illegal use of their product. While we’re at it, sue the food utensil industry for the obesity epidemic.
4. There are 300,000,000 guns. Twenty people used them for mass shootings. The other 299,999,980 law-abiding citizens must suffer.
5. Criminality isn’t the problem, it’s guns.
6. The only purpose of guns is to kill.
Never mind that many collectors never shoot their guns, much less kill anything, and that the mass shooters were not hunters (or NRA members).
Irrational fear stoked by craven politicians equals bad laws. I was around for the “war on drugs.” Ted Harvatin Springfield
FAKE NEWS? The editor’s note in the August 22-28 issue of IT fails to point out that while President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush supported immigration, they did not support illegal immigration. At that time, most Democrats including Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama also opposed illegal immigration. Unfortunately, they now only oppose any effort by President Trump to reduce illegal immigration. Another fact that you ignored was that Trump currently often expresses his support for legal immigration.
I can only attribute your errors to purely biased reporting or ignorance of the facts. This is a perfect example of “fake news” that has completely destroyed the credibility of the modern news media. Dick Montrey Chatham
