Energy, politics, news media and the newspaper

By Published by The Editorial Board

Published: August 3, 2008

Merricks, Marshall stood up for us

To the editor:

Your editorial, “A ‘no’ vote for all reasons,” (July 20, page A8) read as though it was written by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine himself. I cannot understand why you slammed the Republicans in the House of Delegates the way you did.

You were less than honest when you failed to point out the vote in the House of Delegates. Not only did all Republicans vote against Gov. Kaine’s proposal, all of the Democrats did, too. In fact, the vote was 98-0 against Kaine’s wishes. Not one single member of the House was willing to vote for Kaine’s tax increases. More than that, the Democrat who carried the bill for the governor, Ward Armstrong of Martinsville, voted against his own bill! Would you care to explain that?

Kaine needs to learn that Virginia’s government must live within its means. Higher taxes are not the answer. If he had paid any attention to the public during the town hall meetings, he would know that higher taxes are not coveted by most Virginians. Anybody who desires higher taxes always has the option of sending a check for more than required to the treasurer of Virginia. I suggest the editorialist write his own personal check today and mail it right away. Make it a good one, since you believe so strongly in higher taxes.

When Kaine was running for governor, he made it very plain when he said he would not raise the gasoline tax.

He also said plainly that he would see to it that capital punishment was administered when the justice system called for it. Folks in Danville know he was not being honest then, either.

Kaine has let Virginia down on many fronts, and you should stop defending his dishonesty and raise a cheer for Delegates Don Merricks and Danny Marshall for standing up for taxpayers — and denying this tax-hungry governor his tax increases.

BRUCE HUDSON

To the editor:

Has the price of gasoline really gone up?

Back in the mid-1950s, when my employment required a lot of travel, I used to buy a little more than four and one-half gallons of gasoline for $1. That was a silver dollar — or a paper dollar that was convertible to silver dollars. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson pulled silver out from under the dollar and left it with only paper and ink!

Today, with silver trading at $17.50 per ounce and gas at $4 per gallon, a silver dollar will buy four and a little more than one-third gallons of gasoline ($17.50/4 = 4.375) — not a significant difference from those 1955 gas prices!

The difference is the government has robbed your dollar of its silver backing and polluted your gasoline with 10 percent ethanol that requires more fuel in its production than is available from it. Also, you pay for the ethanol more than twice — once at the pump in taxes as a subsidy to the pirates producing ethanol, and in higher food prices because ethanol producers are running up the price of food grains!

Most automobile owners manuals warn you of the damages ethanol does to your engine, but there is no warning of the damage it does to your pocket book!

FRANK B. TURBERVILLE

To the editor:

I don’t understand the mentality of people sometimes. For example, the constant glorification of a convicted murderer.

On Tuesday’s Opinion page (July 29, page A6), the quote of the day was deemed to be Christopher Scott Emmett’s last words. It was bad enough to see it across the front page the day after his execution, but for it to be newsworthy — and the quote of the day almost a week later — is ridiculous. If he was so intent to “get out of here,” why did he file appeals to protest the method of execution, tying up tax dollars for court hearings?

I don’t believe his victim was given a choice of how to die, or when, or even if it was humane.

Betty Gallagher, a spokesperson for Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, “Three views on the Emmett case,” (July 26, page A8), wrote that she didn’t understand why he was given the death penalty. She went on to state that it wasn’t a particularly violent crime, and he only stole about $100.

Beating someone to death with a lamp goes beyond violent, it is senseless and brutal. It also wouldn’t have mattered if it had been $1 or $1,000, a man lost his life and Emmett was the one that took it. If anyone doesn’t consider that violent, then I would love to hear what they actually do consider violence to be — probably a cartoon anvil falling on a cartoon coyote’s head.

Why not just execute these people with little or no fanfare, and stop giving them a news media outlet to make outrageous statements bringing more attention to themselves?

Murdered people are never given a last chance to make a public statement, so why should convicted killers be allowed a public forum to make asinine statements?

JODY HARDISON

To the editor:

In recent days, Sen. John McCain’s campaign has launched false attacks on Sen. Barack Obama’s recent trip abroad. Republicans and Democrats alike have condemned these attacks, acknowledging just how misleading they are. Obama met with wounded troops when he was in Iraq, and he did it without cameras, just as he has done numerous times in the past — including a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center earlier this month.

The truth is McCain knows full well that Obama strongly supports and honors our troops, which is what makes these attacks so disingenuous.

In the Senate, Obama led a bipartisan effort to respond to the Walter Reed crisis.

The Senate passed legislation based on several Obama proposals, including measures to improve medical outpatient facilities, slash red tape, reform the disability review process, strengthen mental health care support and add needed health care benefits for family members caring for loved ones.

Obama also was an early, vocal supporter of Sen. Jim Webb’s GI Bill, while Sen. McCain was initially an ardent opponent.

In elections, it’s easy to hurl empty accusations — something the McCain campaign has spared no effort doing.

What’s harder, and what Obama has spent this entire campaign as well as his entire career doing, is providing clear, achievable plans to help our troops and make our country safer by focusing on the enemies who attacked us — al-Qaida in Afghanistan. He’s also shown a refreshing willingness to be honest with us about the challenges we face.

I’m ready for a leader who is not afraid to take on the serious challenges facing us today. I’m ready for a leader who’s trying to appeal to what brings us together as Americans, instead of one playing all the old political games that have stood in the way of progress. That’s why I’m supporting Barack Obama in November. Join me!

SHEILA BAYNES

To the editor:

The Danville Register & Bee needs to return to its “old look.”

Your so-called local news is so scattered over the paper with state and national news that it takes forever to read.

The obituary section is awful, with the small print and bigger pictures you are now using.

I usually read my paper at 6:30 a.m., but now that it is printed in Lynchburg, it doesn’t arrive at my home until 7:30 a.m. when I am leaving for work.

So I read your news at night, after 7 p.m. Maybe you should have a chartered plane to deliver the papers so Danville residents can get their papers like we are used to.

Your editorials always talked about shopping and keeping your money in Danville, but it doesn’t appear that is what your paper is now doing.

Who cares about your color pages when 12 local people lost their jobs over your “new look.”

It appears from reading your paper that you should have kept two people on staff — the person who does the typing and the one who does your proof reading, as I have never seen so many errors.

I can assure you, I for one am certainly not impressed, and I intend to cancel my subscription when it comes up for renewal.

REBECCA PRUITT

To the editor:

America now imports 70 percent of its oil from OPEC, which includes Saudi Arabia and that Marxist puppet, Hugo Chavez.

America is currently being looted by these OPEC countries to the tune of $700 billion each year. This looting makes them fabulously wealthy while financing a terror war against us.

Finding alternative fuels is paramount to our economy, but most importantly, our national security.

We must invest huge amount of taxpayer monies to utilize wind, geothermal, hydro, nuclear and solar energy to become energy independent from our enemies.

The availability of “liquid fuels” is key.

We can do this by taking the world off the oil standard and putting it on an alcohol standard.

The alcohol standard can be methanol or ethanol, which can be easily made from our resources.

Methanol can be made from any biomass, natural gas or coal.

We have enough coal in America to power our needs for 250 years.

Ethanol is made from agricultural products such as sugar cane, sugar beets, corn, etc.

By greatly increasing the planting of these — especially corn — we can markedly decrease the cost of going to the grocery store as corn syrup is used in many food products. Air pollution will also be reduced as plants absorb carbon dioxide, which would also reduce lung disease from pollution.

This will reduce our trade deficit, improve Third World conditions and generate a global shift of economic power in favor of the West.

We can now make this fast transfer to high-alcohol fuels possible due to dangerously high gasoline prices from OPEC, thereby, allowing methanol and ethanol to become feasible.

Technological innovations being made in America, Canada and South America now allows the necessary sensors to be put on cars to regulate the air-fuel mixture on flex-fuel vehicles.

Brazil has been successfully doing this for years. Availability of FFV gas stations can be accomplished through tax laws, as Brazil did, to get the program off and running.

If methanol or ethanol had been the fuel being shipped by the Exxon Valdez, the spill damage would have been insignificant due to methanol and ethanol being both water soluble and biogradeable.

We must contact our political leaders and inform them we will no longer tolerate their do-nothing attitude in Washington toward the goal of oil independence.

DAVID W. GRAY SR.

To the editor:

The high cost of gasoline appears to have rudely awakened Congress.

Having ignored our deepening dependence on foreign oil for the past decade or more, they may be ready to act.

Both Democrats and Republicans agree that we need to drastically lessen or eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, but here is the rub: While watching the Senate’s energy debates on C-Span, it became clear to me why nothing has been done about the problem so far, and why nothing is likely to be done if Congress is left to its own devices.

Republican speakers blamed the Democrats for our energy dilemma, and Democrats blamed the Republicans.

Neither side showed any indication that they would get together to actually do something about the problem. For years, we have watched them play their partisan games while doing little or nothing about much of the nation’s serious problems.

Our dependence on foreign oil is too serious a problem to let them get away with doing nothing about this one.

The high jump in the price of gasoline has played havoc with our economy, our transportation system and our peoples’ means to pay for food, housing and other necessities of life — so we the people must act.

We are not powerless.

We have influence and we must use it, especially in this election year.

Think back to an event that took place during the Reagan administration, when an important bill needed to be passed, and Tip O’Neill, the opposition leader in Congress, was preventing the bill’s passage.

President Reagan wisely decided to take his case directly to the people. He explained the need to the people in a television speech and asked them to let O’Neill know how they felt about it.

The people spoke in no uncertain terms and the legislation was promptly passed.

We must let our legislators know that we need to set a goal of ending our dependence on foreign oil, and we need a plan to accomplish that goal in a reasonable length of time.

Partisan politics must not be allowed to stand in the way.

We have enormous resources for achieving such a goal in record time, and we need to utilize every possible means to that end.

Let’s start today by asking our senators and congressmen to put their partisan politics on the back burner, and to get together to help end our dependence on foreign oil as soon as possible.

RALPH DORR

Danville