Ban radar in Pennsylvania
Arming local police with radar is a thinly disguised attempt to unfairly tax safe motorists to fund the legislature, the courts, the radar manufacturers, the police and local municipalities by using half-truths and lies concerning highway safety.
Radar should be banned in Pennsylvania. There is no epidemic crisis of speeding, only an epidemic crisis of highway engineering malpractice condoned by politicians seeking more and more money from safe drivers.
Speed as a cause of accidents when traffic is free flowing is a rare event, but this is when the majority of citations are written. Speed traps are staged where it is safe to drive faster. Yet, 50 years of government propaganda and misinformation about highway safety makes it easy for our elected servants to declare that unless we give local police radar guns, everybody’s going to die. Far too many otherwise reasonable people agree, so the special interests who profit from radar — the politicians, the radar manufacturers and their army of lobbyists, the police, and the courts — get their go-ahead to unfairly tax drivers.
Hunting down drivers with radar guns will not improve highway safety, and the unfair and unnecessary enforcement of too-low limits will foster contempt for law enforcement. Money is the one and only reason for radar, and the voters know this. Stop the nonsense and ban radar in Pennsylvania.
Tom McCarey
National Motorists Association
We need local newspapers
Along with entertainment, classifieds and upcoming events, newspapers inform us about local, state and federal government and its actions that affect us. It serves to keep government accountable. It does the same in regard to our neighborhood and community representatives.
Of course, TV, radio and internet can do the same. An adequately authoritative newspaper, however, can give more in-depth facts and figures, including differing opinions, interpretations and commentary regarding the state of all affairs affecting the population that it serves.
Lack of knowledge leaves us ignorant. Ignorance leaves us uninformed. The uninformed are easy to govern. Easy to sway. Easy to defraud. Easy to trample. Easy to cast aside by laws passed in a vacuum of ignorance.
That we are given a free newspaper delivered to our door with information about our community and its people is the hallmark of American freedom. Please keep the Northeast Times, among all others, coming to our doors. Even if it is pitched from the window of the delivery truck.
Prudence Patton
Torresdale
Make Cohen a judge
Dear fellow Democrats,
I’m writing to ask you to join me in voting for Mark B. Cohen for judge of the Court of Common Pleas.
For more than 40 years, Mark served as our representative in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. During his tenure, he was responsible for much legislation that ended up becoming models for laws at the federal level.
A few examples of issues that Mark worked on that were models for federal law are: chemical right to know in the workplace, organ donor option on drivers’ licenses and the Pharmaceutical Assistance Contract for the Elderly.
I believe that Mark’s experience as a legislator gives him a real edge over most judicial candidates. When applying the law, he will be able to consider more easily a law’s legislative intent. That’s a perspective that even sitting judges may lack.
If elected, Mark will be a fair and impartial judge. Keep this in mind when making your decision: Mark wrote the law as a legislator, so he knows the law.
Please join me in pushing button №23 for Mark Cohen for judge of the Court of Common Pleas in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, May 16.
Matt Jackson
Castor Gardens
Front-lawn pools illegal
Memorial Day is right around the corner and those illegal, unsightly, behemoth, blue swimming pools will be cropping up all over the front lawns and patios of residential properties throughout the Northeast.
Yes, they are illegal. According to the Philadelphia Code, no swimming pool can be placed on the front or side of a residential property. Above-ground swimming pools can be placed in the rear of a residential property with certain restrictions and a permit is required. As soon as you see one of these illegal monstrosities on the front or side of a property in your neighborhood, please report it to 311 so that L&I can promptly issue a violation.
Joanne Kinkaid
Wissinoming
