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Post Independent
Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado

Now that 2010 has thankfully past the torch to 2011, I am excited to see that while the usual deniers of most things provable are still denying, many new writers are appearing in the Letters to the Editor. I especially appreciate the input of new voices. It’s nice to see the playing field getting leveled. It’s also nice to know that there really are thinkers out there, willing to take some of the deniers to task. 2011 will be a fun time for this forum.

Speaking of fun, Bob Anderson wants us to enjoy a laugh with him concerning Al Gore and climate change. He sites the Bilderberg Society as his recent proof that global warming is a hoax. I want to make sure I understand this: An ultra-secretive group (that for decades has kept its membership, discussions, and itineraries secret) has announced that it is concerned about global cooling. Many conspiracy theorists believe the Bilderberg Society is the foundation of a new world order trying to bring forth a one-world government. Whether they are or not, it is certain that these titans of industry have a vested interest in reducing regulations that may affect their bottom lines. Regulations concerning the environment and carbon emissions would be near the top of their list. Personally, I am more inclined to believe NASA or NOAA or any of many other scientific groups that have documented that we are experiencing the warmest temperatures in recorded history. I doubt the deniers can understand that warmer temps yield more snow. It’s too scientific.

Here is another funny thing. Ken Kriz tells Hal Sundin that “God is in control” and that “man could not cause it” (global warming). Bill O’Reilly says the fact that the “tides come in and out every day proves God exists”. He doesn’t know anyone “who can tell him how the tides work”. Can you appreciate the gravity of that statement? Lunacy! Just kidding. Think about the “God is in control” idea. 99 percent of all life forms on earth have gone extinct. We are probably next, after polar bears.



Craig S. Chisesi

Rifle



In response to the letter saying Battlement Mesa Concerned Citizens do not speak for the majority of residents in opposing gas and oil drilling, I don’t believe an official survey has been taken of who supports and who opposes drilling WITHIN our community.

Battlement Mesa has been promoted and advertised as a great place to retire. That’s what brought many of our residents here. Even as few as six years ago, drilling rigs were not lining I-70 like they do now. There were none in close perimeter to Battlement Mesa’s boundaries.

Everyone that lives here has a legitimate concern that our air and water will not be contaminated by excessive gas drilling and frac’ing. We do not want the noise and light pollution either in close proximity. We are trying to protect our environment and our health.

Nina Hiatt and Paul Heiman

Battlement Mesa

I’m am writing today to give not only praise, but Kudos to Glenwood Springs newly opened Colorado Urgent Care facility in West Glenwood. I have lived in the valley for nearly six years and like everyone else in this area have had to deal with the big medical players available (e.g. GW Medical Associates, GRMC in Rifle and of course Mountain Family Practice. When I think of these medical businesses, and they are in it for profit, I remember having to wait extraordinary amount of time to see “my doctor” – even if this was for the smallest concern. The ultimate surprise of course, is when you receive the billing statement and see the very high cost of medical service that is offered. Now for me, coming from the customer relations field, I don’t see that these “businesses” are giving me the patient the respect and service that I am paying for, and this is a huge concern.

This brings me to my point! Now that urgent care of up and running, we have an affordable, service and schedule-friendly alternative to the options that have always been here. Do not think for one moment that the care you will receive is any less than what you might expect. The staff at Colorado Urgent Care is caring, respectful and completely accessible when those medical instances arise and your needing attention today, not in three weeks.

A big thanks and kudos to Dr. Wuerker and staff for finally bringing a modern, forwarding-thinking medical alternative to the Grand River and Two Forks area!

Respect and service are guaranteed!

Gregory Lee

Silt

Yesterday I wrote to our two U.S. Senators and the Representative for our district and asked them to support phasing out the U.S. Dept. of Education over the next five years. Please don’t immediately assume that I am against the best education for our young people, since the opposite is true. What I am against is intrusion by the feds into areas best managed by local and state authorities. School boards, monitored by a state agency, can best handle what is basically a local problem. Billions have been spent by the feds since the U.S. Dept. of Education was created with little or no improvement to our educational system. It is time to acknowledge that idea is a failure and should be abandoned.

Anyone agreeing with this proposition should contact our representatives in Congress. Making this happen will require a long hard fight, since once a federal agency is created, eliminating it is very difficult. Reducing the size of the federal government should have the support of all U.S. citizens.

Dick Prosence

Meeker

15 years ago when I moved to Battlement Mesa, the government allowed 1 well per square mile. Now they allow 64 wells per square mile. 15 years ago, I did not have to turn off my swamp cooler because it was sucking in the fumes made from the wells drilled near my home, nor did I have to tolerate the noise created by the number of wells allowed near my home.

I made the decision to live in Battlement Mesa because it was a safe, pleasant community to live in. This was based on the laws that were in effect at the time that I believed would continue to protect this community. 15 years later, my quality of life has deteriorated through no choice of mine. I must thank the Battlement Concerned Citizens for fighting the battle that I do not have the time to fight because of my obligations to my job. These folks are doing the things that the transient workers of the oil and gas industry cannot appreciate. Thank you, BCC.

Jeneane Schlotthauer

Battlement Mesa

Uncontrolled immigration may at anytime threaten the state structures and undermine the stability of a society. China had the great wall, the Romans had their Limes. At no time were the securing of the territory and regulation of immigration something trivial. The complications arising from these issues threatened states and societies to their core and penetrated them deeply. And each time they were accompanied by orgies of bloodletting and violence.

No, that is not a speech by former candidate for governor Tom Tancredo. It was written by Thilo Sarrazin, author of Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany Abolishes Itself).

He was speaking of the problems occurring not just in Germany, but all over Europe because of their turning a blind eye to the massive influx of immigrants from Islamic countries. He further states that the political elite lets its position on immigration be determined by the voices from the media and thus runs the risk of alienating itself from the people. Some of the issues: below average labor market integration; above average dependence on welfare; below average participation in education; above average fertility and so on. Sound familiar?

Of course the issues here are much different in many ways. At least our immigrants are mostly Christians. Not so with Europe. The so-called “religion of peace” in 2010 committed 1987 jihad attacks in 46 nations resulting in 9,175 deaths and 17.436 injuries. At a New Years Eve mass in Alexandria, Egypt a suicide bomber killed 21 and wounded 80 while they worshipped in the Coptic Christian church.

Most Moslems in the West do not seek to impose their religion on others by force. Although there are among them some who are eager to kill all who do not believe as they do. In the last two years 126 people in the U.S. were charged with terror-related crimes. 50 of those are American citizens.

Rep. Peter King R-NY will hold hearings on this issue soon. He hopes to give moderate Moslems the opportunity to distinguish themselves from the radicals. I think that is a good idea.

Bob Anderson

Glenwood Springs

The Civil Rights Movement, whose leader’s birthday we celebrate in the middle of every January, began in the spring of 1954 when the Supreme Court ruled segregation in public schools unconstitutional. A few weeks later, the “cruelty and recklessness” of a demagogue in the U.S. Senate was exposed on TV and Joe McCarthy was finished. Only in retrospect can we see the juxtaposition of these two events as a zeitgeist shift from fear to progress.

In Mississippi during the summer of 1955, a fourteen-year-old African-American male was lynched for supposedly whistling at a white woman. Emmett Till’s mother insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket. No one who saw the horrific photos of his mutilated corpse will ever forget them. An Alabama seamstress transformed her sorrow and revulsion into courageous activism and a few months later Rosa Parks took a seat in the whites-only section of a Montgomery bus, precipitating the boycott that catapulted a young minister named Martin Luther King into history.

Last month, Mississippi governor and presidential hopeful Haley Barbour, who was 16 in the summer of 1964 when three civil rights workers were murdered in his home state, said that he does not remember race relations back then “as being that bad.” At the same time as Haley was sharing his halcyon recollection, a Secessionist Ball honoring slavery’s defenders was held in Charleston; and Alaska’s Evita was ridiculing the efforts of a descendant of slaves to make Americans aware of childhood obesity.

What do these juxtaposed events from the last month of 2010 have to do with the distant spring of 1954? Sarah Palin’s popularity has plummeted since her snide mockery of Michelle Obama’s admirable initiative. Maybe the s’mores incident will turn out to have been one more in a series which will blow Palin into political oblivion. Perhaps recent distortions about the civil war and civil rights eras will make us more aware of the racism bubbling beneath rightist rage.

Judith King

Glenwood Springs

While reading the letters of Saturday, Jan. 8, 2011, I was really agreeing with Ken Kriz until he states that God created the world and its resources for man to use and enjoy.

It is thinking like that which is destroying this world. The earth was not created for man any more than it was created for field mice in the Dakotas, or alligators in the tropics. To think that this world belongs to man, and we can use and abuse it any way we want and then “God fixes it …”????

Man belongs to earth, as does every animal on earth. Just because we (we think) are at the top of the food chain, and the most developed species on earth, we do not have the right to destroy this earth and it’s resources. We as humans are stewards of the earth – I believe we have the same responsibility as all animals. If you “harvest” a crop, use it to your best advantage, and if you can, help other humans. If you harvest an animal, use all of it. Use it to survive and no more. Has anyone ever seen a bear den with all the heads of the animals it’s killed mounted on it’s walls. Has anyone every see a non-domesticated animal in the wild kill another animal and the not eat it completely? Natural resources are not strictly for the benefit and use of man. Thinking that way will surely be the demise of the human race.

Do you really think God gave us all this to destroy. Have enough respect for God to take care of what he has given us. He has no obligation to fix what we destroy … that one, he put on us. You sound like a spoiled 16-year-old child. “If I destroy this gift, Dad will get me another?” Maybe if God were a human parent capable of mistakes – and the earth he “gave us” was not a living organism – yeah, maybe he’d just buy us a new one. Dream on. If we destroy what he gave us, we go extinct.

Brad Gates

New Castle


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