RSSEmail letters, Sept. 4, 2012
Palisade receives empathy for sidewalk problems
I feel for Palisade Town administration’s problems building a safe sidewalk for its school kids. It’s really out of line for the feds to require hiring a staff grant manager, and a site supervisor for the entire length of the project. It appears as though the federal rules are intended to make it so difficult and costly to obtain a reasonable grant for the safety of children, that the only workable option may be private investment in these difficult financial times.
Investment and privatization sound good, but an odd thing is, that law was passed in 2005 - just a year before the questionable rules for the Post Office. In an effort to privatize our mail service, the previous administration chose to make it binding for the Post Office (not financed by any taxes or Federal moneys) to carry enough money to cover employees’ pensions for 75 years. That headed them toward job cuts, layoffs and bankruptcy thoughts the past few years. Sound reasonable? Doesn’t to me.
Is it our government’s job to force privatization at the cost of public safety? I keep hearing the government can’t create jobs, but the facts seem to show that our government is a job creator. Capco just landed a $35 million defense (government) contract. How many new jobs will that create, or at least, maintain jobs here in the Grand Valley?
It’s truly a shame when our federal government’s bad lawmaking six or seven years ago still haunts us locally.
They’re responsible for halting progress and stopping, slowing or reducing job creation by throwing outrageous funding responsibilities on only those directly influenced. It’s about more than money; it’s about our peace of mind and the safety of our children.
RALPH HICKS
Clifton
Navy SEAL should not be punished
The Pentagon warned on Thursday in a letter to a former U.S. Navy SEAL that he was in material breach of non-disclosure agreements with his book. “No Easy Day,” detailing his first-hand account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The letter, written by Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon’s top lawyer, said: “I write to formally advise you of your material breach and violation of your agreements, and to inform you that the (Pentagon) is considering pursuing against you, and all those acting in concert with you, all remedies legally available to us in light of this situation,”
I find it inexcusable to take such action on this former SEAL, when the White House and its staffers disgorged a ton of information to news outlets and movie producers.
Why is the Pentagon not pursuing, with all great vigor, those disclosures? Why pick on the SEAL? I suppose it’s because he is not a Democratic staffer, and thus is easy pickings.
CREIGHTON BRICKER
Grand Junction
Museum a treasure and asset to community
I am writing this letter in response to your article on Thursday about the Museum of Western Colorado. As a mother of two young boys, I value the educational experiences that the museum offers, and I want my boys to know what it was like for our ancestors. I also want my community’s heritage preserved.
And, how neat is it that my boys can see dinosaur bones that were found right in our back yard! I hope that the commissioner will continue to support the museum and see what a treasure it is to our community.
JENNIFER SCHMOLL
DeBeque
GOP Convention a travesty of untruth
Beyond the hails of “USA, USA”, the balloons and roar of unthinking supporters, the GOP convention represents the biggest single collection of lies that our political system has ever encountered. Lost in their hatred for a particular man, they cannot speak the truth.
It seems that if you tell a lie often enough it soon becomes the truth. They believe that the truth shouldn’t get in the way of removing the man they so despise. It is the GOP that has degraded our political system so severely that we may never know the truth again.
Paul Ryan has to evade his political history to muster even the slightest excitement. His convention speech was a garbage heap of lies that is an embarrassment to our country. He offers nothing of substance to our country because he cannot accept the truth. Mitt Romney also evades his voting record and crowning achievement in the Massachusetts health care laws. He evades his tax history and calls himself a patriot. He represents the ultra-rich, tax evading capitalist who is self-serving, and he wants to buy the presidency.
The Republican Congress has obstructed the Obama presidency from even before he took office. They should be ashamed of their dishonor for our elected president. This single man has faced, head on, the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression. He has rescued our economy from George Bush’s “asleep at the wheel “presidency. He has pulled this country out of the deepest recession and continues to do so.
But he has also done this while reforming health care, education, alternative energy and banking oversight and also has finished up the costly and unnecessary wars started by the GOP. He remains dedicated to middle class America, the true foundation of America’s success.
Wake up, America! We cannot afford to let the GOP take this country down again! Their rhetoric is filled with lies and unwillingness to compromise. They will sacrifice our nation for an election.
LAWRENCE STELMACH, MD
Grand Junction
COMMENTS
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.As perhaps first noted by Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic “Democracy in America” (1840), but as political scientists often suggest, our version of democracy rests on the most improbable of unstated assumptions – that regardless of race, intelligence, education, material success, upbringing, and/or religious convictions, the conglomeration of our citizens’ votes will end up making the “right choice” in any given election.
We make that entirely unrealistic assumption – not because we are convinced that it is true and/or or wholly reliable – but because we reject monarchy, oligarchy, plutocracy, theocracy, and all forms of totalitarianism, and conclude that history has produced no more fair and dependable way to make political decisions than “one (wo)man, one vote”.
Like some Founders before him, de Tocqueville predicted the consequences of extreme partisanship and feared that “the judgment of the wise would be subordinated to the prejudices of the ignorant”. While our representative form of governance was intended to leaven extreme partisanship – by electing responsible citizens willing to compromise to advance the common good – that check-and-balance is broken.
As George Romney wrote Barry Goldwater in 1968:
Dogmatic ideological parties tend to splinter the political and social fabric of a nation, lead to governmental crises and deadlocks, and stymie the compromises so often necessary to preserve freedom and achieve progress.
Unfortunately, the GOP has fulfilled the prophecies of both de Tocqueville and Romney.
While (by definition) almost 50% of the electorate has below-average “IQ”, Democrats trust that the innate common sense of even “low information” voters can sift through the cacaphony of conflicting information, allow for “spin”, and distinguish truth from fiction.
However, Republicans are spending millions to promulgate outright lies – repeated even though fact-checked and debunked – thereby subverting the entire electoral process.
De Tocqueville attributed the prosperity of America to the “superiority of its women”.
We’ll see.
Bill Hugenberg
543 Rim Drive
Grand Junction, CO 81507
257-1998