Thanks to road crews

To the Editor:

I would like to commend the snow crews on cleaning Illinois 13. I took my wife to work at 7 a.m. one day last week and the roads were in very good shape for the amount of ice we received. I just wanted all the crews working out there know how much we appreciate them. Thanks! Thanks! Thanks!

Gary Woods

Marion

Stop the electric rate hike

To the Editor:

The average people of this area cannot keep paying these rate hikes. People at Ameren are getting rich at average and old people's expense.

Dee Zimmer

Murphysboro

Help was appreciated after storm

To the Editor:

Special thanks to the Carbondale Township crew for taking the extra time to help clear South Hunt Road during the ice storm. The road was impassable because of fallen trees. Thanks to Brad Lamb for the extra efforts to push back the debris and ice. Also, many thanks to the REA workers who restored power to our area.

George Barrett

Carbondale

Blue staters aren't lemmings

To the Editor:

Poor Walter Ware - just another liberal-bashing Limbaughite looking for a stage to plop down his soap box. News flash, Mr. Ware - if you had been following the FutureGen project, you would have realized its demise had nothing to do with Illinois being a blue state.

You are right about President Bush only being human and therefore he does make mistakes, but he is the president of the United States and must be held accountable for his actions. We blue staters are not conservative lemmings. We will not follow Mr. Bush or any other leader over a cliff just because he is the POTUS.

Steve Karcher

Sullivan

FutureGen lost to Lone Star loyalty

To the Editor:

So, what did you expect? Did you really think that this FutureGen project was going to happen in Illinois when Texas lost the site? That would be like believing the decision was really made by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. This guy was recommended for his appointment by former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, a Texas oil man and a very close friend of George W. Bush.

Bodman made his move to energy from his position as Deputy Treasury Secretary in February 2005, surprising many because it is extremely rare for a deputy secretary to be promoted to secretary in his own agency, much less directly to the head of another.

But then, of course, it should be rare for any administration but this one to appoint a person like Bodman to the head of the Energy Department. He once headed the Boston-based chemical firm Cabot, which had to pay fines to the government for failing to report hazardous spills and failing to comply with federal orders to clean them up.

No, I would say the reason that such a weak sister was appointed to a fairly critical position is that energy decisions are still going to be made from President Cheney's office.

The letter writer from Energy asserts the reason the folks of Coles County lost their hard-won prize is because legislators from our "blue state" have offended the Incompetent-in-Chief. I think maybe it had more to do with Lone Star loyalty than with punishing Illinois.

Tom Vaughn

Christopher