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Post Independent
Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado

I want to start by saying how sorry I am for the loss of a Colorado Mountain College student to a car accident. It is always sad that someone so young has passed.

After reading Eva M. Sion’s letter of Feb. 9, I felt there were several things that needed be addressed.

In my opinion, drugs, alcohol, the location on County Road 114 and presence of a guard rail have no bearing on this accident or most occurring previously or in the future. I assure you that speed did.



I have lived in Glenwood Springs for more than 30 years and have used that road to attend college for five years off and on, to access the back side of Lookout Mountain for hunting, and to visit friends living in Spring Valley.

Both as a driver, passenger and observer, I can state that speed is a serious issue on County Road 114. The sheriff patrols it all the time because it is easy pickings for issuing tickets.



It is not just the fault of young drivers, who insurance companies tell us with statistics are bad drivers. But over many years of my own driving experience, I feel young people are major violators. Slow down to the speed limit, and drive much slower in bad weather.

Many of the students living in the dorms are from out of town. Rather than get upset about a lack of a guardrail (which probably is needed, but is also needed in many other places in Garfield County), try to enjoy the scenery and the laws that have safely and successfully kept us from having accidents in that same spot for years.

P.S.: It gets worse when it’s icy.

Gregg T. McCorkle

Glenwood Springs

Yet again, certain members of Congress say they want to save money, but their poorly thought-out transportation bill, H.R. 7, would not only cause permanent damage to the environment, it would also be a cash cow to oil and gas industries at the expense of the average citizen.

If big business has its wish, they’ll be doing in Arctic coastal waters what BP did a couple of years ago in the Gulf of Mexico, with the same potential risks of disaster. Except this time, it will be to the fragile, irreplaceable home of polar bears and other Arctic wildlife.

The Congressional Budget Office said it “expects no significant royalty payments would be made until 2022” from Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling. Nonetheless, proponents are trying to sell the bill as a means of dealing with today’s transportation problems.

Today’s problems? It’s obvious this plan is too little too late to fix what’s going on now on our congested highways.

America’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a beautiful, pristine wilderness that polar bears, Arctic foxes and walruses call their home. It is also the nesting ground of hundreds of thousands of migratory birds.

Do we really want to throw it away, making it just a memory that our grandchildren will only read about in history books? Even the Competitive Enterprise Institute goes as far as to label this irresponsible plan “myopic political gimmickry.”

I can only hope U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton realizes the truth about this irresponsible plan, and votes “no” on H.R. 7.

Eris Brianna Caver

Westminster

There is so much crazy stuff going on right now, I hardly know where to begin. The insanity, it seems, knows no end. Consider this:

It seems there are now 65 million people living off the government via handouts and entitlements. Their average income from these entitlements, $32,724. In fact, these people actually have more disposable income than a family with an income of $60,000.

This of course doesn’t include the free cell phones they are getting. Yep, $1.6 billion taxpayer spent last year for free cell phones with 250 minutes of free talk time. And those who recommend a friend for this service get an extra 100 minutes.

How do you qualify for this? Get on food stamps and you’re in. And there are around 48 million people getting food stamps. Those in the program call it the “Obama phone.”

The Obama administration just instituted a $26 billion program to bail out folks who are underwater on their mortgages. Financial analyst Dick Bove calls it “the mortgage deal from hell.” A homeowner who took out a mortgage they couldn’t afford or has just stopped paying gets their principal balance reduced. Someone who is still paying their mortgage gets zero. Nothing.

Big banks that received taxpayer bailouts are giving this money back to the government, which in turn will hand it out to the nonpayers. If you are paying your mortgage on time, don’t you sort of feel like a fool?

Heck, lets all just stop paying. Notify your state attorney general that you are not paying anymore and get your principal reduced. In fact, if you are working for a living, why not just quit? Many people have. That is why the unemployment numbers are looking better. Some 15 million have just dropped out and therefore are not counted as unemployed anymore.

Is all this buying votes or just coincidence? It is insanity for sure. I think it is also criminal.

Mark Twain said, “There is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress.”

Bob Anderson

Glenwood Springs

Listed below are copied lines 13 through 17 of Senate Bill 88, now pending in the state Legislature.

“The regulation of oil and gas operations is a matter of statewide concern. The commission has exclusive jurisdiction to regulate oil and gas operations, and local regulation of oil and gas operations is pre-empted by state law.”

I hardly think this is maintaining the “status quo” and smaller government as per recent quotes by public servant John Martin of the Garfield Board of County Commissioners.

It is time to enforce term limits by voting for an independent candidate to replace Mr. Martin on the BOCC.

Garry Evenson

Battlement Mesa

In my Jan. 20 letter, I expressed concern over Garfield County’s spending $300,000 of taxpayer money on a study south of Silt that should have been completed last summer. On Feb. 9, I read that the BOCC has now approved another $90,000-odd on the study.

While I question the need to continue to sample groundwater when two rounds have already been collected (the data say what they say), I’m glad the BOCC is not burying this as some had feared.

But this raises questions: Why did it take someone like me to get the BOCC to take action? Why didn’t they ask, when the planning department head requested his budget, “What happened to the $300,000 we approved for the Phase III Study? We owe people an answer.”

Perhaps it is this failure of the BOCC and some staff to take seriously their accountability that has motivated a number of residents to ask me to run for commissioner.

Perhaps residents think that the county has run amok, with random, unexplained firings of the budget manager and the IT director, and junkets, which may suggest that some staff at higher levels are drunk on power.

The now-also-fired county manager told me in early 2011 that the outcome of the commissioners’ junket – I mean, “retreat” – in Gateway was that the county would be “open for business.” His goal (other than to bring an entourage to Florida to promote the county airport) was to do an oil and gas conference in the spring.

Shortly thereafter, another county called me asking what this conference was, why it conflicted with other events and why it was so “last minute.” I couldn’t explain, but said I’d pass his concerns up the line. Eventually a slick brochure was printed, but it was too late. The conference had to be canceled because only a handful of people had registered. More wasted time and money.

Maybe the citizens don’t feel that they’re being well served and that’s why even some Republicans want alternatives to sitting commissioners. Whoever does run should remember that the government is there to serve the citizens – something that leaders appear to have forgotten.

Judy Jordan

New Castle

In the usual two-faced public policy, it appears that while the federal government espouses jubilation at increasing momentum in the labor market, it undercuts future growth by limiting oil shale exploration and development.

The recently released programmatic environmental impact statement for oil shale will drastically cut the amount of lands available for energy development. Not only is this a step in the wrong direction in regards to energy independence, but it is in direct conflict with claims by President Obama of his support for domestic energy production.

Why did BLM Director Bob Abbey choose to take this supposed “fresh look” at oil shale development when it had already been taken care of two years prior?

I’m disgusted by this recent attempt to block energy development and stifle our Western economies. I’m also tired of the two-faced language of this administration: Either they are working in our interest or they aren’t.

Seamus Moore

Eagle


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