Bigger freight trucks provide several benefits

I respond to the Jan. 26 op-ed "Police chiefs oppose plans for bigger freight trucks" by Chief Jeffrey K. Scott of Notre Dame College. With all due respect to the chief, he is wrong about the risks of longer trucks on our roads. Research and realworld experience show that modestly extended twin trailers actually enhance highway safety while reducing emissions and offer significant economic advantages for consumers.

Allowing trucks to haul more freight would mean fewer vehicles on our highways, decreasing the probability of accidents. For instance, increasing the length of twin 28-foot trailers to 33 feet, which do not exceed current federal weight restrictions, would have meant 3.1 billion fewer vehicle miles traveled and 4,500 fewer truck crashes in 2014. In fact, a modest five-foot extension actually increases stability, making trucks less likely to roll over or jackknife.

New technologies have made modern trucks much safer than their predecessors, and Twin 33s actually perform as well or better than Twin 28s in four critical safety measures.

Minimizing the number of trucks on the road also would reduce wear and tear on already-crumbling public infrastructure. And they’re easier on the environment. Twin 33s would have burned 255 million fewer gallons of fuel and eliminated 2.9 million tons of carbon emissions in 2014.

There are 75 million more vehicles on U.S. roads today than there were in 1990, yet the rules governing truck length have not been updated in nearly 40 years. And increasing the cargo capacity of trucks is especially important now in the e-commerce era. We urge Congress to modernize our antiquated regulations. Randy Mullett, executive director, Americans for Modern Transportation, Berryville, Virginia

Campaign strategy will backfire on Brown

Sen. Sherrod Brown has represented Ohio well and was recently re-elected. It is beneath him to run around the country calling the president a racist because, as a private citizen, he questioned Barack Obama's background (Dispatch article, Monday). If Brown is president, what will he do to better this country? I want to know about finance, economics, health, security for our people, border security, what he knows about foreign affairs, etc.

President Trump is anything but a racist. He tries to help minorities and he is against illegal immigration, as we all should be. None of us is against Hispanic people. We just want the border secure and people to enter the country legally.

I would like to know what Brown would fight for to clear up and strengthen the mess that our immigration laws are in.

Judith Martin, Powell

We should be thankful for response to weather

There were many things to be thankful for during the recent arctic blast. Good planning from our government entities allowed our libraries, community and senior citizen centers across Ohio to be safe havens from the bitter cold. Our charitable organizations and churches opened their doors and were able to provide warm shelter.

We are appreciative of the snowplow drivers, bus drivers and utility personnel who helped us get where we needed to go. We should be thankful to our emergency personnel, like firefighters, medics and police officers who showed up and risked their own safety to answer the call of duty. And with the extraordinary development of Ohio's natural-gas resources, we had abundant and reliable energy that heated our homes, cooked our food and generated much of our electricity. We should all be thankful. Rhonda Reda, Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program, Granville

Boosting nuclear power wrong move for Ohio

In his Sunday op-ed supporting nuclear energy, Judd Gregg stated that electric rates increased 50 percent in Vermont when its nuclear plant closed. This claim is not in line with Energy Information Administration data showing that electric rates in Vermont have increased only 4 percent in the past five years (Ohio's rates have increased 6 percent in the same period). As with all New England states, Vermont's rates are higher than Ohio's, with or without reactors.

If the legislature approves subsidizing Ohio's old, expensive nuclear plants, as seems likely, we are faced with the prospect of paying an additional $5 a month for electricity. Meanwhile, Ohio ranks 49th in the nation for cheap renewable energy. Clearly, we are headed in the wrong direction.

Alan Rosenfeld, Columbus

Democrats gain power via illegal immigrants

On a recent trip to Panama, Costa Rica and Cartagena, Columbia, we were amazed to learn from our tour guides that we were not to give children who surrounded us money because they wanted them to learn to work and not take handouts. Costa Rica, a fairly well-to-do country, says immigrants are welcome to come legally for work but not for handouts so they do not have an illegal-immigrant problem. In the U.S., we set up sanctuary cities and states.

The majority of Americans don’t realize how much power and money the Democrats make off of illegal immigrants. They include their numbers as part of the U.S. census, and for every 770,000 illegals in Democratic-controlled areas, they get a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Dems have found a legal way to get money and seats in Congress without having to rig elections and all at taxpayer expense, according to One America News.

The Republicans had two years to get a wall or fence and did nothing, so what is the real reason? Could it be that both parties want to push their globalist one-world government on unsuspecting citizens through this ruse?

Linda Bishop, Findlay

More taxes on wealth would not hurt growth

The Monday Dispatch article “Dems’ ‘tax the rich’ plans draw skepticism” was a very one-sided depiction of the reaction to Democrats’ taxation plans. Many columnists, economists and other pundits have praised these proposals to address the problem of extreme inequality in this new Gilded Age. Sen. Elizabeth Warren drew up her plan to tax the super wealthy, starting at $50 million in assets, with the input of economists.

The U.S. already has a wealth tax on the middle class levied on the most valuable assets most families

own: It’s the property tax paid by homeowners. Other proposals for higher marginal tax rates on the highest income earners would restore tax rates of the 1950s and ‘60s, a time of great prosperity; as studies have shown, this would not hurt economic growth.

With changes in tax policy, such as the drastic reduction of the estate tax in recent years, we are well on our way to creating a permanent aristocracy. Is that really what we want in the United States?

Sara Balderston, Columbus

Track opiate prescriptions for signs of trouble

It is heartening that Ohio now encourages or requires prescribers to offer a naloxone prescription to accompany an opiate prescription (Dispatch article, Sunday). There also is a “Good Samaritan” naloxone law that protects people who administer naloxone, which may also be purchased without a prescription or received from a Project Dawn program.

Naloxone reverses the opiate effect temporarily; it does nothing to stop addiction. As the lawsuits progress against Purdue Pharma, we can see how the dice were loaded. One in seven people are at high risk of developing addiction when prescribed opiates.

The only realistic way to prevent new tragedies of addiction is to change Ohio law to require prescribers (or their allowable designates) to follow up on every opiate prescription to evaluate their status and immediately link them to help if there are signs of trouble or calls for help.

We have the data; opiate prescriptions are tracked in electronic health records, pharmacy, hospital and insurance systems. It is past time to use this data in a legally permissible way to prevent further tragedy. Sharon Mech, Columbus