OUR VIEWS

Which one does Bush anger?

The Bush administration, always very attentive to the anti-Castro Cuban-American lobby, is about to tighten up on sales of agricultural and medical goods to Cuba, one of the few exemptions in the long-standing U.S. economic embargo on Havana.

That has outraged the farm lobby, already not too happy with the administration over President Bush's proposed cuts in farm subsidies.

Congress created the exemption for food and medicine in 2000, and since then, U.S. agricultural sales to Cuba have totaled more than $762 million and Cuba has become the United States' 25th-largest farm export market.

Alabama producers participate in the Cuba trade. They sold $15 million worth of products in direct cash sales during 2004. In December, a delegation headed by Ron Sparks, state commissioner of agriculture and industry, arranged trade contracts worth $18 million. This state also benefits from the shipment of agricultural products from other states that pass through the port of Mobile on the way to Cuba.

Now the Treasury Department proposes to crimp that trade by requiring Cuba to pay cash in advance.

Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, is threatening to block Bush's Treasury nominees until the department backs off. And a couple of influential farm-state Republicans — Pat Roberts of Kansas and Larry Craig of Idaho — say they will introduce legislation to stop Treasury from hindering agricultural sales to Cuba.

The farm lobby has the clout in Congress; the Cuban-American lobby, clout with the Bush administration. The trade embargo on Cuba is a four-decade-old failure, but domestic politics have conspired to keep it in place.

However, since Bush took office, Congress has come closer and closer to lifting large parts of that embargo, but the president has succeeded in not only preserving the embargo but tightening it, particularly with regard to travel to Cuba.

The ban on visits to Cuba is a gross infringement of Americans' right to travel where they wish. Maybe aggrieved wheat, meat and soybean producers can win that right back.

2 wrongs are 2 wrongs

When the commissioners next face voters, they should be held accountable for this and other decisions.

However, as bad as the sales tax decision was, the current attempt by county legislators to repeal it is at least equally bad; we would argue it is worse because legislators are sticking their noses where they don't belong.

State Rep. Mary Moore's proposed state constitutional amendment, which was approved by the county House delegation Wednesday on a 10-5 vote, would remove Jefferson County from one of the few provisions in state law that actually grants a smidgeon of home rule to counties. Moore would repeal the current sales tax for schools and make any future sales tax subject to public referendum.

In effect, the proposal would tighten the legal straitjacket within which county government operates. It would further limit the commissioners already too limited ability to respond to public needs. Paradoxically, the proposal would actually make county government less accountable to the people it serves.

Government accountability is a two-way street. Just as voters must have the periodic power to get rid of public officials who make poor, but legal decisions, so must those officials have sufficient authority to choose among various methods of responding to public needs. That authority includes the freedom to make mistakes, for which voters can later call the officials to account.

If public officials don't have choices, they can't be held accountable, even though they can be voted out of office.

Jefferson County legislators ought to have enough to do trying to solve statewide problems without taking time to interfere with county government. Voters don't need misguided legislative help to hold the County Commission accountable.

The Moore proposal is at least as wrong as the tax it seeks to repeal. Two wrongs don't result in a right; they are still two wrongs.

YOUR VIEWS

Voters can use own lobbying power

We know that a lobbyist is someone representing special interests, who tries to influence legislators to cast votes that favor those interests, and that those in the halls of our Legislature have been very successful at that. Why? Because they can give the legislators something they need to stay in power — large sums of money to be used in re-election campaigns or, on the other hand, large sums for an opponent if the legislators don't do their bidding.

So, what can we, the taxpayers and voters, do in our own interests?

Potentially, we voters can be the largest and most powerful lobbying force, even without the money, because we have something more important to the legislators — our vote. Special interest lobbyists can only provide the money to be used to try to get our votes, but they are ours to cast as we see fit. All we need to do is become active, unite and lobby in our own behalf.

If enough voters in any one Senate or House district contact their two legislators, and speak with one voice, they will be heard and heeded, out of the fear that they can vote those legislators out of office regardless of how much money is given to them by the "Big Mules."

Simple enough, isn't it. Now, just do it.

Don Seibold

Wetumpka 36093

Obviously

Armond "Si" Simmons

Pell City 35128

May not understand

Any human being has a plentiful supply of stem cells, and they can be transplanted and grown into any other type of healthy cell. Therefore, a diseased heart can grow new healthy human heart muscle, stem cells placed in human bones can grow new human bone such as skull bone and the list of uses to grow healthy tissue and muscle continues in unlimited applications.

Research using stem cells with another DNA, such as with donor stem cells from human embryos, has not produced any cures such as have been found using a person's on DNA/stem cells. What simply boggles my mind is why anyone would want to kill a tiny baby for his or her stem cells that are also of a different DNA. They won't ever match, and they won't ever be able to grow into miracle cures.

When I think of the stem cell research controversy, I often think of how much God loves us, and how it is never necessary to kill another person in order to survive or to be cured from sickness.

Ms. Robbie R. Kidwell

Pelham 35124-1628

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