RSSEmail letters, Aug. 29, 2012
Republicans will just make rich richer
This will be an exciting week. We’re going to hear all about how Republicans are going to concentrate heavily on dramatically reducing government regulations and being particularly aggressive on creating jobs. Can we expect to finally hear about which of those regulations are so onerous we must do without them?
Most regulations are meant to protect the public and businessmen from each other. Does this mean that we can no longer count on clean water and air? Will businessmen now be allowed to be predatory in their dealings with us on financial and ethical matters? Just wondering.
So far we haven’t heard much about how Romney will go about creating jobs. It’ll be difficult, because he has long said that government can’t create jobs; that’s the job of the hallowed “job creators.” Maybe he’ll offer up the programs presented by Obama that the Republicans turned down, much of which they previously preferred.
We’ve heard about the necessity to give job creators further tax reductions. I guess that’s to give them more money to work with. Funny, they’ve accumulated a greater percentage of the wealth of the country lately, and few jobs were forthcoming. Maybe they will only do their creation magic for a Republican president.
All reliable statistics conclusively show that lack of demand is our primary economic problem. Folks are deep in debt, earnings are dropping and they’re afraid of losing their jobs and medical insurance.
By far the largest part of our GDP is consumer spending. Romney wants to encourage businesses to invest and hire. If you ran a business, would you expand when customers are scarce and you already had excess capacity? Even if bribes are offered?
The Republican emphasis on jobs is a fraud. It’s just another scheme to make the rich richer. Surprised?
JOHN BORGEN
Grand Junction
Nisley Elementary teachers, students, also deserve kudos
The editorial in Tuesday’s paper praised Scenic Elementary for scoring the best reading gains in the state. It also mentioned that the program costs more and that Scenic students have access to assistance that other schools may not provide and that students come from families with two parents and stable incomes.
Unfortunately, no mention was made of Nisley Elementary; its math scores improved more than any school in the state, without special programs. Nisley students consistently shine, even though 90 percent of them qualify for free lunches and most live at or below the poverty line.
Their teachers and they strive for excellence in spite of the burdens of single-parent families, incarcerated or absent parents and little discretionary income for
tutors or other programs.
Good job, Bears! I’m proud of your teachers and you.
JAN WEEKS
Grand Junction
Tax credit for wind power simply propaganda
Sen. Udall makes some interesting points for electric utilities using wind generation. Unfortunately, the tax credit is just more false conservationist propaganda.
Plainly speaking, wind generation is much more expensive than coal, oil, natural gas or even solar. Let us look at how this tax credit works: The electric utility joins with a wind energy producer to build a wind farm. The utility will buy up to 100 percent of the production from the farm.
The utility then charges the retail customer an extra $2.50 to buy 100 kilowatts of generation from the wind farm. That is 2.5 cents extra, in addition to the 10 cents per kwh the customer is already paying for the electricity he or she is getting from the same source. After all, once the electricity is in the line, it makes no difference where it came from, as far as the meter is concerned.
I am not sure of this, but I believe the wind Production Tax Credit is about 30 percent. Sen. Udall did not mention this in his article. If this credit is dropped, electric utilities will try to justify passing the 30 percent increase on to the consumer. (Let’s see … the average customer uses about 650 kwh per month, 650 kwh at 10 cents per kwh equals $65 per month, plus 30 percent equals $84.50 per month for an electric bill.) Might be time for everyone to install solar panels. That way the 6,000 jobs the senator talks about will be able to go to work installing panels and still make good money.
I worked for an electric utility and listened to our engineers talk about wind power and the fact that unless the federal government paid the biggest part of the cost, wind would never pay for itself. In that regard, nothing has changed.
JOHN S. REID
Grand Junction
LWV to be at Farmers Markets, to hold forum first Tuesday in October
The League of Women Voters of Mesa County invites everyone to participate in our democracy and help keep our community fair, vibrant and strong.
We are announcing several upcoming events. The league will be at the Farmers Market Sept. 6, 13 and 20 to hand out information and register voters.
Look for the Vote411.org banner, a new website which will be open in September, with complete voter information on the election of 2012.
This site is designed to list all national, state and local candidate races, with information specific to Mesa County on ballot issues, as well. Our nonpartisan mission is to get election information out to the public. We encourage everyone who is qualified to vote this year.
Watch for the LWV Voter Guide to be published as an insert in The Daily Sentinel Friday, Oct. 12 with Kids Voting of Mesa County. We look forward to a fair and informative election season.
TANYA TRAVIS
President, LWV of Mesa County
Grand Junction
Talent show requires strict proof of ID, but voting officials cannot
“American Idol” was in town. How exciting!
I could not help noticing, however, how stringent its rules are for participants’ registration than our country’s rules for voters’ registration.
Contestants must have proof of citizenship or permanent residency. Two forms of identification are required; one must be a photo ID. Parents or guardians of younger contestants must also show a government-issued photo ID, as well as other legal papers.
Yet, with voter fraud being a huge problem, states are being sued for requiring proof of citizenship and a photo ID proving people are whom they say are.
Priorities are telling.
L.K. PRICHARD
Grand Junction
Uravan’s centennial picnic deserved more attention
I was very disappointed that The Daily Sentinel and the Colorado governor’s office did not attend the 100th anniversary picnic Saturday, Aug. 25 at Uravan.
I think this would have been the best human-interest story of the time for the Western Slope and the state of Colorado.
Uravan Company and its people went into the Manhattan Project in 1942 to give us the freedom we have today.
ROBERT FREEMAN
(past mayor of Nucla)
Grand Junction
FMS school buses have few riders
I have to agree with Fred Stroh, who wrote the letter to the editor published Sunday, Aug. 19, concerning the Mesa Valley Education Association president’s comment that there are consequences for the community voting against a property tax-raising ballot measure in November. It certainly does sound like a punishment for parents.
There were two different amounts of money saved by shortening bus routes, according to a news feature and the editorial. Which one is it?
I hope the MVEA president saw what I did as I watched buses leaving Fruita Middle School this week. Twelve buses pulled out; all of them were headed east on K Road and not one of the 12 was anywhere near full. The 65-70 passenger buses held 10-12 students or fewer. Surely some routes could have been combined.
To the person who wrote to the You Said It column in the same issue of the paper, parents are paying and paying dearly in taxes, school supplies, helping others with school supplies, fees, clothing, fundraisers and now driving children to school or risking having them walk.
Maybe parents should look into school a little more closely. A reliable source reported a cutback in cleaning all rooms every day. Doesn’t sound very clean to me.
KATHY HURT
Fruita
Political ads reach new lows
Every four years I get good, and fast, at muting political ads. By now it’s intuitive. The ads have always been tacky, but this year they’re not only tacky, but also condescending.
It’s hard to imagine any of us being stupid enough to believe that stuff. They’re mostly lies, and I mistrust them all. Both major parties are guilty.
Mistrust of political parties is nothing new. Even George Washington in his farewell letter warned of their destructive influence and urged his fellow citizens to avoid them.
So, here we are today, listening to tacky, condescending ads every few minutes. It’s obvious Washington’s advice was ignored.
His warning was true. It serves us right.
AL CARLEY
Grand Junction
What would Founding Fathers think of Kiss and Motley Crue?
David Goe’s article in Out and About published Aug. 23 on the “double debauchery” duo, Kiss and Motley Crue, reflects the depraved sense of values characterizing our present pop culture.
First, Goe warns fathers to “lock up your daughters because it’s getting dirty tonight.” We rightly alert whole neighborhoods about a sex offender who has moved in down the street, while glorifying sex offenders who parade their debauchery as entertainment.
Next, Goe suggests stocking up on penicillin before heading to Mack and warns about waking up with smeared face paint which “nobody wants, especially the person you ended up spending the night with” (who thought you were somebody else, anyway).
Finally, Goe encourages jammers to have a blast, or, as that sage Crue crew counsels, “get as rude as possible and don’t let anyone tell you how to live.” (But, Crue, you just told them!)
If George Washington and his contemporaries could have foreseen how today’s pop culture would so enthusiastically trash the meaning and value of the freedoms for which they and so many others have fought, suffered and died, might history be different?
Would Washington have even bothered to cross the Delaware? Might Paul Revere simply have kept his horse stabled? And, might Patrick Henry, rather than proclaiming, “Give me liberty or give me death,” to the Virginia Convention in 1775, instead upchucked on the floor of St. John’s Church in Richmond, wiped his mouth and requested, “Just give me death”?
BILL FORBES
Whitewater
Scott protected voters, Colorado Constitution
I was stunned by Ralph Hicks letter regarding Ray Scott.
I think Hicks believes his views trump the views of 66 percent of the voters in Mesa County and 55 percent of the voters statewide who rejected same sex marriage and civil unions in two separate ballot initiatives in 2006.
These are the voters Ray Scott protected. He also protected the Colorado Constitution, which states the marriage is between one man and one woman, the result of one of those ballot initiatives.
I wonder why Hicks was not so concerned from 2006-2010 when the Democrats controlled the entire state government. If this was so important, why was it not passed then?
Does Hicks realize that the “rights” he wanted in this year’s same sex marriage measure already exist due to the passage of the Designated Beneficiary Act of 2009? What purpose, then, does this past year’s bill serve, except for gotcha politics directed by the president and the governor?
Scott’s opponent has called Scott’s standing up for his constituents on this matter “grandstanding.” The only grandstanding here was by the Democrats. When you don’t have a record to run on and when you have destroyed the economy, the only way to win votes is to distract attention by contriving an end-run around the Colorado Constitution.
If Hicks and the Democrats really think the voters’ minds have changed on this issue, there is a solution. Put it on the ballot. Let the voters of Colorado decide. Only call it what it really is, same sex marriage, and not civil unions.
KEVIN MCCARNEY
Clifton
COMMENTS
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.L.K. Prichard’s on-line letter—“Talent show requires strict proof of ID but voting officials cannot”—betrays the woeful level of ignorance that permeates such offerings as a result of falsehoods disseminated by Republicans seeking to suppress the Democratic vote.
Thus, first, because citizens have no fundamental constitutional right to participate in “American Idol” or any other “talen show”, their commercial sponsors remain free in our capitalist system to impose any requirements they choose (except discriminatory requirements prohibited by Title VII) on would-be participants to protect themselves against fraud and/or potential legal liability.
Second, on the other hand, because citizens do have a fundamental right to vote, States cannot impose restrictions on the right to vote unless such restrictions are “narrowly tailored” to further a “legitimate state interest”.
Third, while preventing actual voter fraud is a “legitimate state interest”, contrary to Prichard’s assertion, there is no evidence that “voter fraud [is] a huge problem”. In fact, the evidence is that “voter fraud” is a virtually non-existent problem—such that the “interest” asserted by states is not “legitimate”.
Thus, “states are being sued”—not “for requiring proof of citizenship and a photo ID proving people are whom they say they are”—but because such requirements also disenfranchise (have a “disparate impact” on) many (particularly poor, elderly, and urban) citizens who do not have or cannot conveniently obtain the necessary documentation, but who still have a constitutional right to vote.
Thus, “voter ID” laws—and elaborate documentation procedures—are being challenged because they are not “narrowly tailored” to address even the fictitious voter fraud problem, but are rather an admitted Republican subterfuge to suppress the Democratic vote.
Bill Hugenberg
I was not surprised by Kevin McCarney’s response to Ralph Hicks letter regarding Ray Scott.
Apparently, McCarney and Scott are both stuck in the past, since McCarney apparently believes that electoral results from six years ago trump the views of a majority of Coloradans who today realize that same-sex couples deserves the same rights as other married citizens.
Thus, Ray Scott protected only those who would impose religious doctrine on the legal “privileges and immunities” that enure to all other marriages. The fact that bigotry is built-into our state constitution does not excuse “unequal protection under law”.
The fact that public opinion—and thus the political calculus—has changed over time gave Scott an opportunity to lead, but he did not—preserving anti-GLBT prejudice as a campaign issue.
Contrary to McCarney’s misinformed sarcasm, Colorado’s Designated Beneficiary Act of 2009 didd not convey all of the “rights” that either “civil inion” or same-sex marriage would—but it is a step in the right direction.
The depth of McCarney’s ignorance is confirmed by today’s news that the City of Pueblo is considering extending beneficiary status for city employment benefits to same-sex couples (which Colorado Springs will not). Why would Pueblo even be considering such a move if existing law was adequate?
McCarney also failed to disclose that he is the Vice-Chair of the Mesa County Republican Party. Recently, as a stand-in for Scott at a Fruita candidates forum (Scott was “too busy” to engage local voters directly),McCarney defended Scott’s non-existent “record” (for which he is widely regarded in the state legislature as a “buffoon”) by accusing long-time community leader and CMU trustee Dan Robinson (Scott’s Democratic opponent) of being Governor Hickenlooper’s “hand-picked lackey”.
So, when your are blinded by your own Republican bullshit—which really has “destroyed the economy” (at least temporarily)—and thus blame the state of the economy on Democrats rather than on Bush and Cheney (“Deficits don’t matter”), the only way to win votes is to rely on name-calling and proven “wedge issues.
With the “Personhood Amendment” failing to gather enough petition signatures to get on the ballot, Scott could have saved taxpayers the cost of another election on “civil unions” and/or “same sex marriage” simply by voting “Yes”.
John S. Reid’s on-line letter—“Tax credit for wind power simply propaganda”—is the “pot calling the kettle black”.
To assert that “wind power is much more expensive than coal, oil, natural gas, or even solar” merely begs the question. Until the total costs associated with each source of energy are included in the price of that alternative, Reid’s argument has little merit.
Because the health care costs of air polution and environmental costs of carbon dioxide (and other) emissions are not included in the price of coal, coal-fired electricity is “less expensive” to the direct consumer than is wind power. Had “cap and trade” or “cap and tax” been enacted, relative cost calculations would likely have made wind and solar power more cost-effective than they now appear to be.
Likewise with other “fossil fuels”. Because oil and gas have been subsidized for years, there would be no “level playing field” even if those subsidies ended tomorrow—because all “externalities” are not yet included in their costs (due to industry lobbying to preserve their unnecessary subsidies and campaign contributions which effectively distort the “free market”).
Thus, what Reid’s anecdotal “engineers” told him in the past may have been true then, but to conclude that “wind would never pay for itself” and/or that “nothing has changed” accentuates the problem, not the solution.
Bill Hugenberg
Let me be concise. Bill Hugenberg’s response to my letter is full of falsehoods.
#1 The majority of Colorado Voters support Same Sex Marriage. Wrong thanks for playing. The only poll I have seen show that this would fail by an even larger margin than in 2006. If they have such an overwhelming majority why is it not on the ballot? Because they would lose and they know it.
Notice Hugenberg will not answer the main point. If this was so important, why was this not passed by the Democrats when they completely controlled the State Government?
All you GLBT sheep who vote for the Dems,why don’t you ask them? Or don’t you have the courage to face the facts you are being used.
#2 That any State Representative has the right to subborn the will of the Voters by doing an end run around the Constitution.
Hugenberg shows the disdain The Democrats have for the State and Federal Constitution. They only follow it when they need to and ignore it when they can.
#3 That Dan Robinson is not the handpicked candidate of Governor Hickenlooper. I hit it right on the nose in Fruita. It is laughable for Dan to deny it. You would think he might be proud of the fact. He even went so far as to say he has not talked to the Governor in 11 months. Wasn’t that Dan I saw in May at the Ray Scott Bill Signing ceremony hanging with the Hick? Didn’t Dan have to get special dispensation from the Governor to remain on the Board of CMU when running for public office?
#4 The Ritter and Hickenlooper Administrations are directly responsible for the dead economy on the Western Slope. Anything else is a joke. The reason Robinson has popped up is because Ray Scott will not let the Governor shirk his duty to the Western Slope.
#5 Ray Scott is one of the most effective legislators in Denver. The only proof you need are the Dozens of State and Local Citizens and Business groups lining up to Endorse Scott’s re-election.
The choice could not be clearer. If you believe in the will of the Constitution and Voter, you will support Ray Scott. If you think the Constitution and the Voters don’t count you will vote for Dan Robinson.
Mr. McCarney, you puzzle me with your stance on this issue. It seems you are dead set against civil unions (same sex marriage) and defend Rep. Scott on one hand (in public) but behind the scenes as a board member of Western Slope Conservative Alliance you team up with Americans For Prosperity (AFP) for a faux tea party event on May 4 along with the GOP. AFP has in the past furnished insurance for the events sponsored by your group, there was even a board member working for AFP.
Kevin, you are doing the bidding of a group whose members dislike for gays and lesbians borders on hatred. They commonly use slurs and write inappropriate emails to try to influence elected officials on the gay marriage issue. David Koch is the Chairperson of that organization. If you are unaware of his stance you should google his bio and check this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._Koch. You will find he supports gay marriage and stem-cell research.
Because of their actions, Mr. McCarney and his group have brought politics and civil discourse to a new low in the Mesa County.
Which side of the fence are you and your group really on? Or is it all a matter of politics of the moment?