My property taxes went up over $1,000 a year. Was tax freeze for seniors a cruel joke?

Promise of property taxes help a cruel joke

I am a senior lucky enough to live in a nice, safe area.

I just checked my upcoming property tax bill — it went up over $1,000 a year. Not long ago, The Dispatch ran articles about how our fine legislators were working hard to come up with property tax relief for both seniors and others.

The results, absolutely nothing!

This year I may well pay more in property taxes than I will pay in federal income taxes.

Our View: Property tax increase is about to hit Ohio seniors – hard. Freezing taxes will help.

What a cruel joke on the hard-working citizens and seniors living in Ohio. And people in government wonder why people like me and others think our legislators are only out for themselves and their rich supporters.

Thomas Moser, Lewis Center

Biblical nonsense about the law

Re Carl Felton of Columbus got it wrong, writing, “Before man makes any law, he should first go to the Bible to get the answers” (letter, Sunday).

Nonsense.

First, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—extended to states by the Fourteenth Amendment—prohibits the establishment of religion including Felton’s Bible bangery.

Second, the Treaty of Tripoli—ratified unanimously by the U.S. Senate on June 7, 1797, and made part of the law of the land by the U.S. Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2—clearly states, in stark inconvenience to Bible thumpers, “[T[he Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

Third, just because the Bible says it doesn’t mean it’s true.

The Bible affirms slavery (see Philemon and 1 Peter 2:18—20), genocide (see Deuteronomy 20:16—18 and Joshua 6:20—21), the death penalty (see Exodus 22:18 and Leviticus 24:17) and a geocentric universe with a flat and unmoving earth at its center (see Deuteronomy 13:7, Joshua 10:13, 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 75:3 and Revelation 7:1).

All are wrong, and all are in the Bible.

On the contrary, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Nurses Association all endorse appropriate health care for transgender youth.

Joseph Eric Peters, Columbus

Do you smell the con?

Re "Burning Daylight," Jan. 7: I can't help comparing the 1962 movie The Music Man to the 'deal' the city of Columbus has made with AEP for the southside solar project.

Does anyone else smell a con?

The question is, who in the city's administration is questioning and looking out for its citizens? Certainly, doesn't look like its top chief. What do you suppose is really going on?

Cindy Kiener, Columbus

Safe school buses

The January 2024 editorial of the nationwide, industry publication “School Transportation News” points out that all the Ohio Governor’s School Bus Safety Working Group sessions boil down to the use of seatbelts on school buses.

Further, despite the naysayers, the editorial indicates that logic demands, based on seatbelt’s demonstrated safety and behavior improvements, that consideration of seatbelt installation by school districts should not be driven by misunderstanding, sheer opposition, unlikely events, usage policies, cost, need for training or age-old frivolous arguments about evacuation delays.

Instead, recommendations from authoritative safety organizations, research results from the NTSB, school bus driver experience and children’s long-term and practiced seatbelt skills must be the basis for the school bus transportation industry fulfilling their obligation to make school buses as safe as possible for their communities, mandate or not.

Rudy Breglia, Avon Lake

We had better look up

Not long ago, a dystopian drama aired on a streaming service entitled, “Don’t Look Up," the story of how astronomers sighted a huge meteor on a trajectory, in the near future, to destroy planet Earth.

Scientists, in this story, try desperately to warn the world of this impending disaster.

Politicians, worried only about maintaining power, spread lots of misinformation, and shortsightedly gaslight their constituents by telling them, nothing to see there, just don’t look up.

Tragically, constituents in the drama accept misinformation.

Art imitates life, in this metaphorical film, as our very real climate crisis is much like a deadly meteor hurling toward Earth.

Scientists are telling us regularly that we have an ever-decreasing period of time to drastically reduce our fossil fuel addiction. And yet, how do our gerrymandered, statehouse, supermajority, politicians reply to the scientists and experts on the climate crisis?

They gaslight with misinformation statements like “Don’t let the evil Biden Administration force you to buy an electrical vehicle.”

“Carbon emissions are being exaggerated.”

“Don’t believe that anything we do could harm our planet.”

“This is all some left-wing conspiracy theory.” In other words: don’t look up!

Mike Halaiko, Pickerington

Sitting a dog on your lap while driving a danger

The enactment of the distracted driving law in October was a much-needed law that has already shown a reduction in vehicle crashes.

A similar enforcement law should also be considered to ban drivers from carrying dogs on their laps with their heads out the window while driving.

This practice has the potential to also distract the driver and cause an accident.

William Bucher, Sunbury

US must shut off the aid spigot to Israel until the genocide stops

In a Jan. 5 Dispatch article, former Vice President Mike Pence chides the world community who "always seems to find its way eventually to criticizing Israel, particularly in places like the United Nations."

I am saddened by the United States supplying Israel with bombs and shells that are murdering thousands of Palestinians.

I told a few friends when this last war started that, I had a feeling that Benjamin Netanyahu and his inner circle knew for months the unconscionable attack by Hamas was coming.

And I further suggested that he appears to have let it happen so he would have an excuse to go into Gaza and elsewhere and run the Palestinians out and never let them return.

A full reboot of the 1948 former rape of that land and its people. I have not changed my mind. I have total respect for Judaism as a religion, but when a nation, a so-called democracy for some but not for others, slaughters thousands of innocents and destroys billions of dollars-worth of property and possessions, I say the United States should shut off the aid spigot until the genocide stops.

And when this war ends, anything less than total freedom for the Palestinians, from Israeli soldiers standing over the citizens with drawn guns, without a Palestinian port, without control of their own air space, without control over their own commerce, then the free world has failed.

A free state for Palestine is the only final acceptable solution for this forever war. It is time to begin anew, and that will require negotiations on the part of Israel, Palestine, the U.S. and the United Nations.

This work will not be easy, but it must begin. This forever killing must be effectively addressed.

Charles W. Hill, United Methodist retired minister, Blacklick

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Was plan to freeze property taxes for seniors a joke?