Letters to the editor, April 27

Murals were a waste of gas tax funds

In reference to Sean Oneill's letter of April 12, how do signs and murals improve quality of life?

Let me see if I got this straight. According to the editor's note, "The city paid for its half with gasoline taxes. Grant funding also covered the cost of the murals."

Aren't these taxes supposed to go to building new highways and repairing roads?

Oh, by the way, the murals are senseless and a waste of the gasoline taxes.

Charles Sheldon

Dayton

Looking at election from the corporate world

The United States of America is the world's biggest corporation. Let's call it USA Inc. Instead of having a CEO, we have a president. Instead of a board of directors, we have the House and the Senate. The stockholders in USA Inc. are those who pay federal income taxes.

In the corporate world, when you have a CEO who is either taking the company down the wrong path or is simply dysfunctional, the company fires him/her and searches for a replacement. In USA Inc., we look at our incumbent CEO - the president - or, if it's after two terms, we look at potential CEOs from the various rival factions.

In this election cycle, we have a few stockholders who are happy with our CEO's work, but many more who are dissatisfied with the way he's running our company.

It is interesting to note our CEO is very popular with that segment of the population who are not stockholders but receive much in the way of benefits from the largesse of our board of directors and CEO.

This election cycle will come down to the stockholders who want a new CEO and the non-stockholders who want more of the goodies our CEO and board of directors are passing out.

By the way, isn't it a conflict of interest for non-stockholders to vote for the CEO of USA Inc.?

Ron Landmann

Minden