Email letters, December 26, 2011

By Bob Silbernagel
Monday, December 26, 2011

Downtown stores should
stay open later

On Thursday before Christmas my husband and I wanted to have an evening of dinner and shopping downtown. All the restaurants and bars were open, but no stores. We ended up at the mall of course.
How can we support local businesses if they won’t stay open when it is convenient for the customer?

Further, in a university town, do we really want to limit downtown evening activities to only bars? When the businesses get serious about business, we’ll get serious about supporting them.
Kathy Weaver
Grand Junction

Payroll tax holiday
is not a good idea

While I am in favor of letting the electorate keep more of the money they
earned in their pocket, and in this poor economic climate even small amounts
of money can provide minor benefit to struggling families, the “payroll tax
holiday,” a misleading term, is simply Keynesian superstition in disguise.
It’s “not ideal” - it’s just dumb.

Not all tax cuts are good. The litmus test Is whether or not the cut is
permanent and its effect on marginal tax rates. Permanent cuts that promote
investment and savings will increase economic growth. Growth will create
jobs. The payroll tax cut does neither, but does add more than $100 billion
per year to the deficit and debt.

The term “payroll tax holiday” is misleading and the accurate term is
“Social Security tax holiday.” Because Social Security benefits are paid
out of a fixed percentage of government revenues, it makes sense to fund
Social Security with a tax that does not impact growth. Because the Social
Security tax is capped at $106,800 it is such a tax. If the Social Security
tax is cut, the funding will have to be made up with other taxes, like
income taxes, which when increased have the side effect of reducing the rate
of economic growth.

In a year when we are running substantial deficits, this decrease in revenue
will result in increased borrowing, and exponentially increasing the long
term cost of this cut with interest payments.

Overlooking the sheer stupidity of enacting legislation that impacts the
operations of every business in America for a two-month period to create a
marginal gain in income on borrowed money, makes the “payroll tax cut”
more “stimulus” spending.

Democrats can’t do math, and wrongly believe that we can create wealth by
dividing it, and so we expect this kind of bad legislation from Obama, Reid
and Pelosi. But we sent you to Washington to implement real change. Change
that will bring about long term stability and prosperity. You let us down on
this one.
Alan Sage
Grand Junction

Politicians are deliberately
killing Social Security

After watching the silly process to extend the Social Security tax cut, I have decided that our country is on the road to failure.

Looking at the reason they feel we need the return of Social Security money when it is
going bankrupt for lack of funds is such a scam on the people. The reason politicians are giving back this money is because over 50 percent of Americans no longer pay income tax, but even now, more than 80 percent have jobs.

This means only 40 percent pay income tax but 80 percent pay Social Security tax. So if you want to buy votes, the only money left to give back is Social Security funds. How soon do we believe this vote-buying scam will ever be revoked in the future.

I bet my children will see very little of the money they paid in and my grandchildren will see no benefit. I also know that my small business will still pay it’s required 6.5 percent on our employees as long as we do business.

I believe that the politicians are deliberately killing Social Security to pay for
Clinton, Bush and Obama socialist programs, which will eventually collapse the
United States and take us to a dictatorial form of government such as China.
Ron Neal
Palisade

Science flourished before
Christianity came along

I strongly urge Professor Gary McCallister (“Religious inquiry the fountainhead of science”) to read, one among many sources, “The Swerve,” written by Stephen Greenblatt, the John Cogan University Professor at Harvard University.

Science flourished before the Christian era: (p. 87). “Starting as early as 300 BCE, the Ptolomaic kings who ruled Alexandria had the inspired idea of luring leading scholars, scientists, and poets to their city by offering them life appointments at the Museum, ...
The recipients of this largesse established remarkably high intellectual standards. Euclid developed his geometry in Alexandria; Archimedes discovered pi and laid the foundation for calculus; Eratosthenes posited that the earth was round and calculated its circumference to within 1 percent…” (and much, much more).

Quite the opposite from McCallister’s argument, the Dark Ages of Christianity impeded science for well over 1,000 years (Bruno was burned at the stake by the Christian establishment in 1600 for daring to suggest the possible existence of multi-universes).

Imagine where we might be today if those Dark Ages had not existed and instead free inquiry and the hallmark of modern science — skepticism — had been allowed to exist!

Tom LaFehr
retired professor of Geophysics
Colorado School of Mines
Grand Junction

Easter, not Christmas,
is the holiest day

I imagine Laura Cartwright is going to catch a lot of flak over her statement that, “There is no higher or holier day than the day Jesus came to Earth” which, of course, is an incorrect statement.

Easter is the highest and holiest day of all Christendom, because without the Resurrection, the birth of a baby in a stable would be just a ho-hum event of a person who grew up to be a radical preacher and rabble-rouser.

Hope I’m not the only one who caught this.
Clair Ledger
Montrose

Federal law is harming
taxpayers and District 51

I read with great interest the front page article regarding the unintended consequences of federal regulations for School District 51. The district cannot by law and regulation save over $14 million per year in its budget without destroying its accreditation. Another example of a federal mandate gone awry.

Please contact your U.S. senators and congressman, asking that they read this article, review the consequences for the taxpayers, and perhaps consider changing the law to provide we, the taxpayers, and the school district at least a choice.
L.W. Hunley
Grand Junction