How much of the global product carries the label “Made (and created)” anywhere in the Middle East? And they do not actually produce the oil but instead are only fortuitous benefactors for residing where the oil is lying a few thousand feet below the desert sands. Furthermore, if not for Western technology, the oil would still be there and their current living standards would be even far less opulent.

For all of the trillions of Western dollars paid in return for the oil, what has the Middle East done with the money to add worthwhile value to anything? How has all of that money added knowledge, creativity and understanding to the benefit of humankind?

Perhaps, the same question should be presented to the vast majority of the foreign exporters of oil, whose leaders simply sit back pumping and grinning. An abundance of oil can and does lead to bad habits.

Going “cold turkey” on this oil addiction would be doing humankind and the world a big favor. “The love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10).

With the passage of the $250 million Lincoln Public Schools bond issue, it has become apparent to me that the majority of voters who turned out voted without reasoning. Apparently cognitive thinking and factual reasoning have escaped the minds of the voters. Voting with emotion and swayed by guilt were the yes voters.

The supporters requested a “special” election costing the taxpayers greater than $70,000 to administer. How responsible is that? And the public scoffs at other city departments for being fiscally irresponsible. But to their credit they scheduled the election for a very busy holiday, knowing that the majority of voters who will vote will be in favor.

Finally, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is telling the truth. He said corruption is something that is corrosive of democracy. He was talking to and about the president of Venezuela.

I suggest to the people of Nebraska to research and consider the rock-solid plans that our next governor, Dave Nabity, has to fix what is wrong with our great state’s past and current government.

1) Modernize and streamline state government, make it the most efficient in America. 2) Simplify and lower income, property, sales, and car taxes. 3) Promote hunting, fishing and tourism in this great state. 4) Strengthen family values by ensuring state government upholds and protects the marriage between a man and a woman and protects the rights of the unborn.

Susan Thelander opined in a recent letter that it would be a safer city if there were a law requiring lights on both the front and back of bikes. There is an ordinance (10.48.110) in Lincoln that says exactly that. I was one of the people that helped write it following the death of Tim Helms in 2001.

Recently, I participated in an online discussion that the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals had on this very topic. How can we get bicyclists to use front and rear lights?

The easy answer is police enforcement — after all, we have the law — but that kind of talk is cheap. The police have got to prioritize their time between burglaries, DUIs, domestic problems and worse. I sincerely wish they could give this problem more attention, too, but one must understand their situation. They have lots of important things to deal with.

In my opinion, social pressure can help. If you know someone who rides a bicycle at night without lights, tell him or her that they can hurt themselves and hurt others. Let them know that you care about them, but also let them know that you disapprove. Tell them that reflectors simply aren’t enough.

It’s a little like drunk driving, where social pressure in recent decades has complemented enforcement to reduce the number of lives that would otherwise be lost.

I got to know Joe Soukup (LJS article, Feb. 2) back in the late 1960s when I was director of Volunteer Service at the Lincoln Regional Center. Joe volunteered in my office helping with a variety of tasks, the most important one leading groups of students who came to tour the hospital.

While we had about 1,800 patients when I began working at the hospital in 1966, mental hospitals around the country, including those in Nebraska, were in the early stages of reform. Community mental health clinics were being organized and patients were being released to community care programs.

Joe’s mission then, as now, was to help students and the public understand what life in mental hospitals was really like back in those very dark days when so many patients were forgotten, neglected and often mistreated. After all, it was only in the 1950s that Mary Jane Ward’s story, “The Snake Pit,” had been published and many Americans learned about the horrors taking place in our mental hospitals.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to Joe and others like him who are willing to tell their stories. All too often we want to forget the unpleasant, the sad, the cruel in our history. As states around the country now experience big problems in funding mental health programs, a look back at the life of a man like Joe should tell us how critically important are well-funded, well-managed community-based mental programs to our society.

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