Letters: Verify your polling place
October 19, 2012 10:46PM
Updated: November 22, 2012 6:11AM
I am writing this letter to alert people who did not vote in the primary election this year, but intend to vote on Nov. 6, in the general election.
Take a minute to check your new voter registration card for your polling place. I moved to Joliet in 1974, and in the ensuing 38 years, I had the exact same polling place.
Luckily, I checked the new card, and the sample ballot published in The Herald-News. Lo and behold, my polling placed was moved from one Lutheran church to another Lutheran church a mile away.
Don’t be disappointed. Before you leave home, double-check your voting location. Don’t wait in a long line and then be told you are in the wrong place.
Rita A. Miller
Joliet
End deaths for profit
Pollution from the coal-fired Waukegan, Joliet and Romeoville power plants causes asthma attacks, heart attacks and deaths.
Midwest Generation says that their plants meet tough state requirements for emissions. But the fact remains: the thousands of tons of air pollution that these plants emit — even with pollution controls — still harm and kill people in our community. No one deserves to have their health or life put at risk so that power plants can keep operating.
In 2011, Illinois added more clean wind power turbines than any other state. In addition, five old, dirty coal power plants in Illinois retired in the last year, and more closures are likely. Within the last few months, more than a dozen Will County communities — including Joliet and Romeoville — also decided to support clean, renewable energy while saving residents money on their electric bills.
We deserve clean, healthy, renewable energy. Even if the best pollution controls available today were installed, these coal-fired power plants would still pollute our air and harm our health. It’s time to shut down the Waukegan, Joliet and Romeoville power plants.
Brian Urbaszewski
Director,
Environmental Health Programs
Respiratory Health Association
MorningStar Mission Ministries
Fretting about Medicare
As a retired state worker in Joliet, I am worried about the changes Mitt Romney and Judy Biggert want to make to Medicare. They would take traditional Medicare and change it so that many seniors would be on their own to get coverage from private insurance companies.
Retirees love Medicare because it finally gets us away from the big insurance companies that keep charging us more and giving us less. I worry that insurance companies will charge us a fortune the older and less healthy we get.
To me, what Romney and Biggert want will give seniors nothing but more worry and less money. Don’t the big insurance companies already have enough power and profit?
John Ormins
Joliet
