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Post Independent
Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado

I’ve got to admit, this is the first time I have agreed with Hal Sundin about anything but he’s right on this point (“Defense Act sabotages our freedoms,” Jan. 5) even though we are on total opposite sides of the political spectrum.

The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act costing $662 billion (and you wonder why we’ve spent $5 trillion in the last three years) and signed by President Barack Obama is going to affect everybody, whether you’re a pot-smoking hippie or a gun-totin’ cowboy.

This is the worst federal law that could be passed.



The most controversial provisions to receive wide attention are contained in Title X, which deals with detention of persons that they claim to be hostile may be held indefinitely. This would include U.S. citizens without burden of proof to be arrested on American soil, including arrests by members of the armed forces or by presidential authority. This includes any person who has committed “belligerent acts” (What does that mean? Mooning someone on the highway? Shooting a tin can in the desert?) or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of enemy forces. (There are laws for being a traitor already on the books.)

Such persons may be detained under the law of war without trial or legal counsel until the end of the hostilities. In other words, indefinitely. So much for being innocent until proven guilty. So much for limited government.



This is just totally wrong. And this was passed by the Democrat-controlled Senate and a Democrat president.

Steven Elmore

Rifle

My family lived on the Bar Fork Ranch in the 1940s and 50s. I was pleased that Shorty and Patsy Pabst enabled John and Ann Holden to found the Colorado Rocky Mountain School in 1953.

My 60-plus years of interest in the ranch impels me to speak out on the proposed plans for the southeast 25 acres. That land comes with senior (1880s) water rights, and its proximity to Carbondale makes it an ideal location for community fruit orchards and vegetable gardens.

Highway 133 was never intended to be part of Carbondale: it is a state highway connecting Highway 82 to Paonia, and is controlled by the state Department of Transportation. Those who would like to see Highway 133 become a swishy suburban boulevard will be frustrated for several decades.

The City Market is a fine facility at its present location. The employees work hard, and are helpful and friendly. It is in the top 1 or 2 percent of all supermarkets on the planet. Access to town is via a traffic light and convenient distance.

The proposal to locate a new market further from town and away from a traffic signal makes no sense. A traffic circle is dumb and dangerous for non-motorized traffic, especially when one has groceries and small children.

Considering the economy, asking shoppers to subsidize a private development is an insult to their intelligence. I urge voters to not approve the destruction of that field.

Charles Moore

Satank

The VCR yes-men have been thick on the point of a 79 percent sales leakage from Carbondale. Thinking a repositioned grocery will recover a major portion of that loss is a failure to consider the nature of the loss to stores such as Costco and Sam’s that have significant savings or quality advantage.

Additionally we will be competing against a new Whole Foods in Willits that is likely to keep drawing the upper-incomers out of town. People like to shop around, it’s what we do.

Meanwhile the 1 percent PIF will take $231,000 a year from grocery shoppers to bring an additional $150,000 in grocery sales tax to the town, and likely at an expense of $70,000 a year for a new town government staff position to beautify and maintain the new real estate.

I support developer rights to build on their property. CDOT requires that developers build highway infrastructure to access new developments safely.

Defraying the expense of the highway infrastructure to the working families of the community is an unfair subsidy to the retailers. Let VCR build what the market will bear, just don’t put it on the backs of the little folk.

John Hoffmann

Carbondale

I’d like to thank Matthew Hamilton, Daniel Biggs and Terry Lott Richardson for their bold action with regard to Roaring School District Superintendent Judy Haptonstall’s contract.

Thanks to their bravery I can have a more positive response the next time out-of-state acquaintances ask me, “How are the schools around here?”

Last August, upon a chance meeting with a family from California, I’d lauded our teachers, but ruefully reported that at the school board and administrative level, they “have their heads in the sand.”

I now have high hopes for a school board and administration that is much less focused on cronyism and vendettas, and much more focused on taking bold and progressive steps to address the state of education in our valley in order to prepare our Roaring Fork Valley kids for the ever more complicated world that awaits them.

Huge thanks, also, to Debbie Bruell, the courageous former Re-1 School Board member, who appears to have been a bit ahead of her time.

Annie Hoghaug

Glenwood Springs


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