Printed letters, Oct. 5, 2011

By Staff
Tuesday, October 4, 2011

As a candidate for the School District 51 school board, I would like to express my appreciation for the diligent efforts of The Daily Sentinel to cover this important campaign. An article from Sept. 29, however, may have left readers with the impression that I have officially taken a position on Referred Measure 3B. I would like to state that I have not.

Measure 3B will be decided by the voters at the same time as my race. If elected, I will be expected to perform my duties, whatever the outcome of the 3B vote. If 3B passes, one of my primary tasks will be to ensure that the money entrusted to us is spent in the best, most efficient manner possible.

If it does not pass, I will need to work with the other members of the board to effectively manage the school district and deliver a quality education with the existing resources at our disposal.

Therefore, I feel it would be inappropriate for me to lobby for either side of this issue, when I will be expected to conscientiously handle either outcome. I will leave to the voters, my ultimate bosses, both decisions: That of whether to hire me and that of what resources to provide.

ANN TISUE

School Board Candidate

Grand Junction

General Electric is sending U.S. jobs to China

An article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek dated Sept. 29 states that GE is moving a 115-year-old X-ray division to Beijing. You know, China.

In addition to moving the headquarters, the company will invest $2 billion in China and train more than 65 engineers and create six research centers. This is the same GE that made $5.1 billion in the United States last year, but paid no taxes. The same company that employs more people overseas than it does in the United States.

So let us get this straight: President Obama appointed GE Chairman Jeff Immelt to head his commission on job creation (job czar). Immelt is supposed to help create jobs.

Obviously the president forgot to tell him in which country he was supposed to be creating those jobs. If this doesn’t show you the total lack of leadership of this president, I don’t know what does.

Of course, China is one of GE’s biggest customers. American companies like GE keep creating jobs there. The EPA has no say about what they do, and their regulations aren’t so ridiculous as to kill jobs — as they do here in the United States.

Please pass this information to others.

JUANITA R. WILLIAMS

Parachute

Environmental groups are killing region’s jobs

It’s a shame that every day I read in The Daily Sentinel that some environmental group is trying to keep companies from building and creating jobs in the Grand Valley and the Western Slope.

I have lived here for 46 years and I have seen companies come and go. But to try and keep jobs and industry out is just plain foolish. And yes, I work in the oil industry and I, for one, would like to thank them for their non-support.

I’ve done a lot of work in other occupations. If these groups want to do some real good, they should start looking real hard at what real destruction is being done to the mountainsides in the mountain towns around Colorado. Developments there are destroying more countryside than all of the oil industry combined, but we hear nothing about it.

I guess it’s called turning a blind eye, and, yes, the taxpayers of Telluride need to ask their city council how their tax dollars are being spent.

CURT CLAUSSEN

Grand Junction

Obamacare is raising insurance premiums

Having been reassured many times by our president that the health care bill would result in a reduction of health care insurance costs, I was surprised when I received a letter from my insurance company informing me that my rate was going up 18 percent and my wife’s rate was going up 19 percent.

I guess I should not have been surprised, since President Obama has rarely told the truth about anything I can recall since he was elected.

MICHAEL LOWENSTEIN

Grand Junction