Thanks, firefighters
I was writing to support those fighting the fires and the people who have been affected by them and lost their homes because of them.
I lived in Boulder from 1978 to 1981 and keep in touch with a former classmate and some teachers. I was back in 1999 last, and it is still beautiful, although it has grown and changed over the years.
I am 40 and work for the U.S. Postal Service in Pennsylvania. Someday I would like to move out West or down South as it is generally less hectic and more cordial than the Northeast and parts of the Mid-Atlantic. I wish you and your staff the best of luck and hope all your goals and dreams come true.
Russell Landau/Lancaster, Pa.
Stop the wildfires with supertankers
By any objective study of the disastrous history of the U.S. Forest Service, it becomes obvious that they have deliberately refused to stop wildfires for over 17 years by deliberately refusing to use any supertanker waterbombing aircraft (see “evergreen supertanker” on Internet). They have never, ever used a jumbo jet supertanker on any wildfire to this day, even when the Russian supertanker fleet (waterbomber.org) always offered to come in, and the Boeing-747 was under contract to U.S. Forest Service, as it is now!
Hundreds of lives and thousands of homes have been horribly lost because of this criminal negligence, and it’s still going on, as the Station Fire investigation is exposing, I feel. I certainly hope the Station Fire investigation in California will not be white-washed by the fire officials involved, as they’ve tried to do already, and I urge the congressmen and senators involved to continue the investigation to a conclusion, and stop the destruction and killing of firefighters.
Meanwhile, let’s call in the supertankers and save Colorado and our country, and investigate why the supertankers were not used at the get-go. We’re being sold out by our own so-called fire officials for the profits of the fire industrial complex.
Ed Nemechek/ Adelanto. Calif.
Weekly missed some facts
The informative Boulder Weekly cover article on county mismanagement of Eldorado Springs Sewer LID project failed to accurately explain the basis for a $1.8 million maximum election ballot cost. The casual description of a neighborly meeting straw poll did occur, but it is far from the accurate cost explanation. Not mentioned are the several professional experts involved with establishing this number.
The county’s sewer project engineering consultants developed the sewer project scope and $1.8 million cost. County attorneys wrote the 2004 election ballot language, before internal staff review and ultimate commissioner approval. A county request-for proposals stated this maximum cost.
The county’s selected project team proposed the same number. The county’s design-build construction contract contains a line-item construction cost estimate within the $1.8 million cost. All of these decision points occurred between mid- 2004 and mid-2005. Project intentions were good, but the process got corrupted along the way.
I am troubled that Boulder County would try to discredit their own election ballot language after the fact.
Alan Brown/Eldorado Springs
Beware global warming
A recent Associated Press story outlining the so-called “plan” to attack the pine beetle epidemic is spouting nothing but pure lies and state propaganda.
The pine beetle epidemic is not caused by “natural cycles,” it is a direct result of global climate change and the warming of our biosphere. Just take a trip up to Alaska and Canada and you will see millions of acres of dead forest land devastated by the bark beetle.
Every 1 degree increase in temperature at the equator translates into a 10-degree increase at the poles brought on by global warming — that is why the forest destruction is greater the farther north you go.
The epidemic will not be stopped by cutting down more trees and exterminating whole tracts of our beautiful and precious forestland. Just witness the human environmental eco-destruction and clear-cutting of forested areas on the Frisco peninsula and around the county commons area. The perpetrators and politicians responsible for this act of environmental terrorism have literally annihilated precious bike path and recreational hiking areas that will never be repaired. Those responsible for this attack on our environment (the U.S. Forest Service and the Summit County Open Space Department) need to be arrested, fined, prosecuted and jailed for their crimes. As well, all future plans to exterminate whole tracts of forest land in and around Summit County need to be scrapped and stopped immediately. The destruction must come to an end, now.
Spending millions cutting down dead trees is not only a complete waste of taxpayers dollars, it will not solve the pine beetle epidemic because it does not address the root cause of the problem: an excessive, wasteful, decadent and environmentally destructive American fossil-fuel economy spewing massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which has led to the global warming responsible for this devastation. New young trees that grow after clear-cuts will only face the bark beetle again in their short lifetimes, killing all hope of reforesting already devastated areas.
Time to evolve and use some intelligence, folks.
We need to educate the masses about the supreme threat of global climate change and immediately create a “Manhattan Project”-type of global campaign that reduces and eventually eliminates our collective carbon footprint as a nation and as a species — otherwise, expect more devastation and destruction of our environment.
Steve Jonah/Breckenridge
Global warming is causing species to disappear all over the poles.
If we do not act now, they could be threatened by extinction.
Please, please, please help end global warming and save these animals.
Marika Sullivan/Boulder
Get your facts straight
The banner page of MSN.com (Sept. 9) contained an article titled, “Stocks jump as joblessness eases.”
This article is based on the fact that reported initial jobless claims for last week was less than expected.
Now, the key word in that last sentence is “reported.” You see, nine out of the 50 states did not report initial jobless claims for last week to the Department of Labor, due to the Labor Day holiday (a fact verified by checking with the Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Those nine states included the states of California and Virginia … two very heavy hitters … but this fact was (conveniently or otherwise) omitted.
At what point will the federal government and its minions in the mass media recognize the fact that the people of the United States need the truth in order to plan, prepare and adjust? I understand that it serves no purpose to run around screaming that the sky is falling, but providing an honest reporting of where we are is key to plotting what we need to do in order to reach where we want to be.
After all of the failed attempts to jump-start the economy over the last two years (at the taxpayers’ expense), one would think that the least the government owes us is the truth about where we are (economically speaking).
We have reached a point where we must understand that everyone falls back on their individual comfort zones, i.e. “doing what they do best” … proving once again we can only rely on factual research from the informed citizen/taxpayer and cleverly crafted lies from the politicians … but that is just my opinion!
Robert M. Collinsworth/Harrisville, N.H.
The choice is clear: Control or freedom?
They’re making precision medical equipment in Mexico now. The new health care bill imposes a tax on medical equipment and supplies. “Rare earth” metals vital for the production of computer chips are no longer mined in this country. Environmental regulations forced mining and, in effect, production, to China. Fifty years ago America produced televisions, refrigerators and almost all our consumer products, but not any more.
First, these politicians closed down the steel mills in the Northeast, then limited soft-coal mining in the Appalachian East; curtailed pesticide use and water run-off on Midwest and Southeast farms; and cut off water in California, the Southwest and Great Plains states. Now, they are stopping oil drilling not just in Alaska and California, but in the Gulf.
It’s not just regulation; it’s stupid union rules that add to the cost of production.
So you hear, “Tax the Rich”!
These are the people who own or invest in mining, farming, drilling and manufacturing and make (gross) more than $200,000 per year. The farm land itself is worth millions of dollars, and when the inheritance tax goes to 55 percent, the children will have to sell the farm!
Yes, lawyers can manipulate the loopholes, but the results are the same: going out of business!
Without investment capital and employer profits, there will be no real and permanent jobs!
The choice: government control or free enterprise?
Michael McCarthy/Hayward, Calif.
Are you people journalists or Marxists?
It seems to most of us that you all are fronting and covering for these Marxists and their takover of America. Prove otherwise, or print this.
David Cook/Loveland
Obama sat on a wall and had a great fall
There is an old nursery rhyme that reads, “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumbty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.”
With the continuing appointment of far-left ideologues, increasing awareness of his agenda, as well as dropping poll numbers, the “hope and change” that Barack Obama promised is no longer believed by a growing majority to be anything but a cloaked series of illusory deceptions in order to get elected.
Why the deception? Obama knew, as did his advisors, campaign managers and friends in the liberal media, that if he were candid about his background and intentions, he would never be elected.
The handwriting is on the wall for this president. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men will not put the Obama administration back together again.
His campaign lies about “transparency” and “bi-partisanship;” his Saul Alinsky-style of manipulating the system and using the media for his own ends; his disdain for America’s Judeo- Christian heritage and Israel; his use of our military to pay off a political debt and satisfy special interest groups; and his foolish deprecation of America before our worst enemies has garnered the disillusionment and disgust of the nation, our allies, and worse, those in service to the country.
M.E. Goodwin/Los Angeles, Calif.
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