The Tulsa Beacon, April 30 issue, has this editorial, advocating that either political parties should pay for their own presidential primaries, or that the Oklahoma presidential primaries should be abolished and replaced with caucuses. The editorial notes that it costs the taxpayers $300,000 per presidential election year for the state to hold presidential primaries. The Tulsa Beacon is a print weekly.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
This would never happen, but the parties should pay for their primaries. In Montana the Republicans had a presidential caucus and a taxpayer financed primary. They won’t be having a caucus next time because of the cost to their budget. It’s easier and cheaper for the taxpayers to pick up the tab.
Chafee: When a happier world beckoned
01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, May 7, 2009
James J. Rocha (“Lincoln Chafee’s fantasy world,†letter, April 25) ridiculed my assertion that “an age of lasting peace beckoned†prior to 9/11. Although I certainly felt that to be true, the quotation comes from right-leaning Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
In an address to a joint session of Congress that I attended he said: “In 2001, in the early days of my second government, I was called to chair the G8 summit in Genoa. After the conclusion of the summit’s official program, the final dinner became a dinner among friends. At one point in the evening, I sat back slightly from the table, almost an external observer, in order to enjoy the cordial discussion among the leaders of the largest industrial countries of the world. President Bush was chatting amiably with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan. Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima were but a distant memory. Prime Minister [Tony] Blair was joking with Chancellor [Gerhard] Schröder. And the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, was also talking with President Bush. The tragedy of the Second World War and the Cold War, which had lasted for so many years, was forgotten. I felt great pleasure inside. I thought the world had in fact changed, and how different and peaceful was the world we were handing to our children. An age of lasting peace beckoned.â€
Mr. Rocha accuses me of living in a “fantasy world.†I only wish the ruination of the world that Berlusconi described was a fantasy. I’ll always believe that through wisdom and strength we can hand our children lasting peace.
LINCOLN CHAFEE
Exeter
The writer is a former U.S. senator from Rhode Island.