Courier-Post from Camden, New Jersey • Page 15

Fridtiy, August 28, 2(H)!) Where to write Mail to: Lfittnrs tn tha Ooini They Said It -f "Growing up. your brothers and sis- wA tors are your friends. You can see that in the Kennedys they looked out for each other." Ann McNamara, ol Dublin, Ireland, where the Kennedy family is 1 held in high regard because of its Irish roots, on the death of U.S. Sen. Edward M.

Kennedy (856) 486-2418 Box 5300, Cheery Fax; (856) 663-2831. E-mail: cpeditcourierpostonllne.com. cpcditcourierpostonlinc.com Editorial Page Editor Mike Daniels Courier-Post 4 Gannett Newspaper Tim Dowd, President and Publisher Everett J. Mitchell II. Executive Editor Mike Daniels.

Editorial Page Editor Jean Wysocki. Controller Tom Hearon. Operations Director THESE SETTLEMENTS ARE AM IMPEPIMENT ID ill" HUM fjjjif The editorial board includes the president and publisher, executive editor and the opinion page editor. Jfiiin1 ini till rfi Court was right on affordable housing WHERE WE STAND: Towns can't be allowed to summarily reject affordable housing. y' Letters to the editor Established in 1875, the Post moved to Camden in 1879.

It merged with The Telegram in 1899 to become The Post Si Telegram. In 1926, The Post Telegram and the Camden Courier consolidated. The Courier-Post joined the Gannett family in 1959. borhood's general character. But at the same time, in America, property owners have fundamental rights to be able to build on their property, so long as the construction is in keeping with the general zoning of the neighborhood.

Towns in New Jersey and elsewhere have lost countless court cases over the years because they overreached in trying to tell property owners what they couldn't do with their property. To open the door for towns to summarily reject the construction of any affordable housing units because the town already has whatever minimum number of affordable units are required by the state Council on Affordable Housing would be wrong. It would be just as wrong as, say, putting a cap on how many expensive homes there couldbe. Purely hypothetical, say a town, by law, had to have a minimum of 20 homes whose assessed value was at least $1 million. Say the town had 20 such homes already.

Then a landowner came to the zoning board asking for a variance to combine his two adjoining lots and build another $1 million home. Would it be right for the zoning board to reject that request just on the grounds that the town already had the minimum number of expensive homes it needed? Of course not. While we agree with towns that the latest minimum mandates from the state Council on Affordable Housing are steep and even unrealistic for some communities, we also believe the appeals court ruled correctly here. Land use boards can't be given the power to openly discriminate and keep out affordable housing just because it is affordable housing. 'v' ''sir Associated Press file Bob Dylan, seen In this 2006 photo, was questioned by police In Long Branch In July after a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood.

VfrM r-2t-to CRW. com when asked to do so. We weren't informed of the race of the person who called the police, nor whether he or she reported the race of the suspect when the call was made. All was resolved without incident and without the need of a "beer summit." Mr. Gates and Mr.

Obama are you taking notes? WALT ROUH Mantua for our survival as a free people." When education consists of disinformation and misinformation and is combined with a slothful public we get zero much-needed competition in the health care marketplace. Is it in our best interests to continue to treat the health care industry like such a delicate flower? ROY LEHMAN Woolwich resources? By what method will they know how much of what kind of health care people want? In markets with good institutions, profit-seeking producers can get answers to these questions by observing prices and their own profits and losses in order to determine which uses of resources are more or less valuable to consumers. (P)rofits and prices signal the efficiency (or lack thereof) of resource use and allow producers to learn from those signals." Profit is the key to competition. Anyone who claims to favor competition but looks down at profit has no idea what he is talking about The writer is co-anchor of ABC News' "2020." Contact him at Creators Syndicate, 5777 Century Blvd. 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045.

I We applaud a state appeals court for its ruling Monday, which makes clear to towns that just having the minimum required amount of affordable housing units doesn't give license to reject further development of affordable housing. The appeals court upheld a lower court's ruling that rejected the Eastampton land use board's denial of a zoning variance from the nonprofit Homes for Hope. The organization has plans to build two duplexes in Eastampton. The Eastampton land use board denied the variance request because it said the township had already met its affordable housing quota under the state's Fair Share Housing Act. The lower court and now the appeals court has ruled correctly here.

Allowing Eastampton to reject a legitimate development request on this basis would set a dangerous precedent It would send a message to every other town in New Jersey that it could tell landowners they cannot build affordable housing on their property for the sole reason that it is affordable housing. "We have enough poor working class people in our town, so please go away. You can't do what you want with the property you own." that's basically what Eastampton and other towns would have been able to say. It's one thing if towns want to hold firm on land uses and not permit construction where the variance being asked for is something wildly out of character a four-story apartment building on a block full of single-family homes, for example. Towns should have a right to maintain zoning laws and a master plan that upholds each neigh COMMENTARY Obama's stance "Choice, competition, reducing costs those are the things that I want to see accomplished in this health reform bill," President Barack Obama told talk-show host Michael Smerconish last week.

Choice and competition would be good. They would indeed reduce costs. If only the president meant it Or understood it In a free market, a business that is complacent about costs learns that its prices are too high when it sees lower-cost competitors winning over its customers. The market actually, the consumer holds businesses accountable and keeps them honest No "public option" is needed. So the hope for reducing medical costs indeed lies in competition and choice.

Today competition is squelched by government regulation and privilege. But Obama's so-called reforms Outrage As the benefit person for my employer, I am extremely upset about the health care reform proposal It is a struggle every year to provide health insurance to our three employees. I completely agree that the system needs to be improved, but the cost of reform cannot be saddled on the backs of small businesses. Forcing small-business owners, who already can barely afford to provide health insurance, to pay a burdensome payroll tax is an outrage. Congress has bailed out countless big businesses.

But it has done nothing to help small businesses, like the one I work for, to afford health insurance. Taxing small business will not solve the health care crisis. Why put another tax on jobs? The new cost on labor will actually kill jobs 1.6 million according to the National Federation of Independent Business and will make it much harder to hire new employees as we are already struggling in this economy. What we need are more affordable insurance options and a simpler way to shop for insurance not new taxes that we cannot afford. Congress must try again to develop legislation that makes, things better, not worse, for America's job creators.

LORETTA M. VATTIMO Township Swayed Who told us deregulation of Wall Street was the way to go? Who told us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? The right-wing Republicans and their bloviators on AM radio. Now, who is telling us there is such a thing as "death panels?" Who says that competition from we the people against a conglomerate health insurance behemoth is a bad thing? The right-wing Republicans and their bloviators on AM radio? What industry is skimming off a reported $1.4 million a day from our insurance fees for health care and bustle. Well-meaning politicians have created untold misery by assuming they and their experts know enough already. The health care bills are perfect examples.

If competition is a discovery process, the congressional bills would impose the opposite of competition. They would forbid real choice. Virtually identical plans In place of the variety of products that competition would generate, we would be forced to "choose" among virtually identical insurance plans. Government would define these plans down to the last detail. In this respect it wouldn't matter Congress created a "public option," a government insurance plan.

In either case, bureaucrats would dictate virtually Cooperative Re: "You're Bob Dylan? Police want to see some ID" Bob Dylan was recently stopped by the polfce in Long Branch. He wasn't trying to secure entry into a house, he was merely taking a stroll. He wasn't able to produce identification, but was reported to be cooperative to shovel to lobbyists to destroy needed competition in the marketplace? The health insurance industry. How does that affect the cost of my health care? But back to my original thought With the aforementioned poor record for veracity, why are so many so easily swayed by the right-wing propaganda machine? Thomas Jefferson said, "An educated citizenry is a vital requisite every aspect of the health insurance business. What Obama says in favor of a public option as of today, at least tells us how little he understands competition.

The public option's virtue, he told Smerconish, is that "there wouldn't be a profit motive involved." But as St Lawrence University economist Steven Horwitz writes in The Freeman magazine, profit is not just a motive. Profit (along with loss) is what enables competition to perform its discovery role: "Suppose for a moment that we try to take the profit motive out of health care by going to a system in which government pays for andor directly provides the services. (P)ublic-spirited politicians and bureaucrats have replaced profit-seeking firms. "By what method exactly will the officials know how to allocate on public option shows how little he understands competition John 1 tr Stossel rj would not create real competition and choice. They would prohibit it Competition is not a bunch of companies offering the same products and services in the same way.

That sterile notion of competition assumes we 'already know all there is to know. But consumers often don't know what they want until it's offered, and their preferences and requirements change. Businesses don't know exactly what consumers want or the most efficient way to produce it until they are in the thick of the competitive hustle.