I read two stories in Sunday's Times with great interest. One was more bad local economic news about developers losing property to forfeit or foreclosure. The other was about the three constitutional amendments on the Nov. 4 ballot.

One of these, Amendment No. 3, was presented in your article in a way that was decidedly one-sided. No reason to vote against it was given by any of the people The Times consulted.

Amendment No. 3 will allow developers to borrow money by selling tax-free bonds, just like those sold by local governments. It also allows those same developers to levy property taxes to pay for those bonds, again just like local governments. This grant of governmental powers to residential developers is a startling change in the way our local governments have operated in the past.

Amendment No. 3 looks like nothing more than a local bailout mechanism for residential developers whose financial speculations have failed. It is not fair to ask county taxpayers to give up their exclusive rights to low-cost public financing and particularly the exclusive power to levy taxes, just to bail out wealthy developers with poor judgment.

Darcie Holcomb
Gainesville

Obama is hiding his socialist ideals
We face some hard choices now. This election, in the midst of economic turmoil, could make the USA into a USSA. That's because Barack Obama seems to enjoy socialism of the nationalist kind. So do all his friends.

Obama famously said (in private) that people who oppose him are bitter, clinging to their guns and their religion.

If he means that, then like socialists from the 1930s, if elected he will attempt to disarm his opponents. Both Hitler and Stalin confiscated firearms when they came into power. So is Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

But the Democrats have learned a lesson. Head-on attacks on Americans and their firearms won't work, because Americans are free, and we still have a Second Amendment.

Therefore, if Obama and a Democratic Congress are elected, we should expect that they will try something else. Perhaps they will tax ammunition, rather than outlaw firearms. After all, the Constitution says nothing about ammunition, does it? If every shot costs $400, then fewer shots will be fired, right? Except by outlaws, of course, who will steal whatever they need.

Plus, as Hillary said, Democrats want felons to be able to vote. And Obama will do it all "because of the children," even if the "children" are 17 and running in gangs.

Obama and his financiers have many more of these kinds of strategies in store. We cannot see them easily because Obama's strategists try hard to keep his record hidden. The Investor's Business Daily agrees, writing, "As the New York Times reported, ‘Obama declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student co-worker, roommate or friend from those years.'" Why not?

You and I better understand that Obama's financiers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get him elected. Specifically, George Soros is a very rich man who really does not like the USA. I suppose he thinks you and I should sing on the way home from his fields, every evening.

Obama is smooth about hiding his Leninist ideas, but we know that his financiers are pure poison for freedom.

WT "Ted" Hinds
Gainesville