LETTERS

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Kids safer in home countries

You write, “These are real kids with real names and real families and real hopes and dreams and fears who are literally dying for a chance at a better life in this country.” [Re: “In the real world, playing politics on immigration is a lot like murder,” DyerTimes, July 10.] Really? Toddlers and very small children have “real hopes and dreams” … for a better life in this country?

These wee ones have a greater chance of survival staying where they are with their families than being unaccompanied atop a moving train traveling day and night.

Joan A. Campbell/Boulder

Rate hike for ‘Camera’ subscription not well received

Having read the Weekly over the years, I look forward to each issue and even recommend it to both tourists and Boulderinos — my own phrase, which has yet to replace “Boulderites” which sounds so Biblical. Several months back, your lead article explored Prairie Mountain, the owner of the Camera, back, and many local papers as well [Re: “What’s next?: Analysts predict Digital First Media is preparing to sell its newspapers. What this could mean for Boulder County and Beyond.” Cover story, April 10]. You predicted a dimmer future for the Camera than was the popular view, speculating on staff reductions, rate hikes, falling demand, even a sale, or the dissolution, of the Camera.

My recent renewal invoice, which I have included, seems a vindication of your judgment. I have subscribed to the Camera, formerly the Daily Camera — since 2005 or so, when it cost ten dollars per month, delivered, which seemed a good deal, and my current rate, thirteen dollars, is manageable for a senior owning my own condo.

My new rate, eighteen a month, I feel is excessive, and, like many readers, may surprise Prairie Mountain by calling their bluff — canceling, or allowing to lapse, my subscription.

Like many locally, I finally got fed up with Comcast, paying more each month for less and less. The Journal estimates Comcast loses 199,000 accounts annually, explaining the frantic war of cable and dish companies to sign up new accounts. Similar to cable, the demand for a paper is elastic, not inelastic, and consumers will reach a point when we cancel. I feel the Camera is both arrogant, as a local monopoly, as well as both provincial and overstaffed.

The sale of their building — now being dramatically razed — the bidding out of former printing, the demise of TV booklets, and moving to a smaller office would all reduce costs, not increase them. Moving to Boulder nearly 40 years ago, I recall the Camera and Post as evening papers, the Daily as independent, the Rocky — a better paper — still in print.

I feel Prairie Mountain — note the Denver, not Boulder, address — may have taken monopoly for granted, and may be surprised how many readers, like myself, will reject a 50 percent hike, cancel the Camera for the Post, or simply see a daily paper as no longer necessary.

I feel I am not the only Camera reader to feel I am asked to pay more and more for less and less, and feel the Camera may have made a poor, if not fatal error in boosting rates so much so rapidly, and sense that Boulder Weekly may have accurately forecast the future.

Mike Reade/Boulder

Control your own bug bites 

DEET-containing insect repellents designed for direct application to the skin of adults and children are safe and effective when used according to label instructions (EPA 2014 Interim Review – EPA.gov) [Re: “Mosquito control,” Boulderganic, July 10].

These products might ensure an additional measure of safety against disease where there are gaps in city control.

Joan A. Campbell/Boulder

Help needed behind bars 

OK, so I wanted to write the forum the last time I was here (in jail) and [ask] when you also can [write] an article on the overcrowded conditions of Boulder

County Jail. I wanted to share with you why [the jail is crowded], from trumped up charges to petty offenses. Petty offenses trumped up to felonies to get more time out of each person. Now I would like to talk with you about the aftermath. This is what happens when the jail is overcrowded. Let me just say the last time I was in jail I wrote my Public Defender numerous times. My point was always the same stating “I need help.” I voluntarily wanted to take a fairly new drug called “Vivatrol.” This is for alcoholics or problem drinkers. It blocks the receptors similar to suboxone for opiate withdrawal or addition. I also pointed out that I have untreated C.P.T.S.D. on P.T.S.D. and need help. This comes with other mental health issues such as depression, anxiety etc. In every letter and phone call I stressed this matter. It was never brought up. I was staying with my mother, helping her out and relapsed. The courts sought fit that I should not be allowed to go there. This despite many talks my mother had with the D.A., victims advocate, and directly to the judge. Everything I own is there. So in that moment I was made homeless. No treatment, no home, no help, just two years probation. Every word or plea asking for help went unnoticed. So another reason for the overcrowding is the fact they plan on you failing. It keeps things moving and money coming in. Hopefully this with bring some awareness to the public on what’s really going on.

Thank you sincerely, Untreated 

Kenneth Paul Cline/Boulder County Jail

Boulder’s dying treecover 

Boulder is losing 10 percent of its tree cover this year, both from tree death and branch death. Through a broad range of species, many trees are dying branch by branch from the top down. Conifer (pine) species are being hard hit perhaps because they have a lack of resources because they make the soil acid and impoverished, and because they do not lose their leaves. Last year I noticed the Thuja’s going first, now many species of conifers are in their death throws. Juniper is still holding out because its leaves are fatter and more waxy. The deciduous trees are fairing better because they get new leaves each year with a fresh resistance to radiation. Even leguminous nitrogen fixing trees are suffering from branch dieback and truncated yellowing leaf growth.

The loss of atmospheric ozone and the radiation from Fukushima is killing the trees in Boulder and indeed in much of the USA exposed to rainfall/snowfall, high altitude, high UV and drought. The trees most vulnerable are those whose roots are covered with concrete, those with little soil organic matter or humus, demineralized soil, with little mycorrhizae and soil biota and exposed to vehicle exhaust. There is a sense that the trees immune systems are collapsing from a broad range of environmental stressors including drought, loss of water table, pollution, EMF pollution, radiation, excess solar radiation, demineralization, loss of soil organic matter and compromised soil biota.

With the tree branch die off, I assume it is a dieback of the root mass, forcing the tree to do a self-pruning of the upper branches. This tree dieoff is definitely caused by a radiation reduction in the ozone layer, combined with radiation in precipitation destroying the microbial foundations of the tree roots starving certain more vulnerable trees.

Certain trees not in idea conditions or compromised by human structural interference such as concrete are dying first.

I estimate that within 10 years only the radiation resistant genres and those in ideal growing conditions will be alive. The city could save the trees by mulching with compost, inoculating with mycorrhizae and soil biota and remineralizing, compost tea and green cropping under trees with legume groundcovers. And reworking surface runoff into sinks to build up the water table throughout the city.

Jana Dixon/via Internet

Ballot initiatives give the people a veto over corporate polluters 

Who suffers from the consequences of fracking — the polluted water, air, and land? Who gets sick and dies?

Who should make the decisions about whether the oil and gas industry fracks in our towns, cities and counties?

In the last couple of years, the people of Longmont, Broomfield, Lafayette, Fort Collins and Boulder have voted to ban or place a moratorium on fracking in their communities.

They have sent a clear message that they have the inalienable right to stop corporate activities that will harm them.

The state and the oil and gas industry claim they have state preemption.

They tell local communities that they can drill for oil and gas 350 feet from school yards, playgrounds and the tender lungs of 3-year-olds.

The notion of our inalienable rights not to be poisoned by corporate pollution is at the heart of two ballot initiatives headed for the ballot. Ballot Initiative 75 is a statewide ballot initiative that says that “all political power is vested in and derived from the people” and that the people have “without limitation the power to enact local laws protecting health, safety, and welfare” (http://www.cocrn.org/colorado-community-rights-amendment-2/).

The second ballot initiative asks “Shall Boulder County establish a Home Rule Charter Commission?” This petition is the first step to create a home rule county. The voters will also select twenty-one charter commission members, who will write and propose a charter. The proposed charter will be voted on in a future election.

Both of these initiatives will give “we the people” more power over fracking, the growing of GMOs and corporate polluters.

You are needed to help gather signatures or donate money. To help, go towww.cocrn.org or www.bccrn.org.

Carolyn Bninski/Louisville Editor’s note: See page 11 for a story on the latest news about Ballot Initiative 75 being withdrawn.

Community rights initiatives to give local control over fracking 

You really have to wonder why a national organization is sticking their noses in Jared Polis’ business in a Boulder publication. A full-page ad appeared in the June 30, 2014 Daily Camera that insults Polis by insinuating he is a whining cry baby, and then it shows a photo of a tiny fracking “Christmas Tree” (a natural gas piping apparatus), but, it does not show photos of the giant fortresses and fracking towers with their 24/7 lights, and noxious vapors that are more typical of a heavy industrial fracking operation. Where are the photos of the tanks used for the produced water? The VOC burners? (aka Volatile Organic Compounds — “poisonous”). Where are the photos of hundreds of large semi trucks toting water and fracking chemicals and the destruction of the roadbeds? Is it true Erie’s air has more propane and ethane than Houston or Pasadena? (Yes.)

The real issue is the degradation of the quality of our lives including: poisoning of the air we breath; the waste and “destruction” of water necessary for all life; the devastating impacts to our health, especially to the young and the elderly; and turning our beautiful Colorado into a sacrifice zone. Did you know that Wunderkind, Congressman Cory Gardner voted to allow the natural gas floodgates to open to Asia and beyond? (By the way, he is running for Udall’s seat.) Get ready, Coloradans, to be fracked to hell.

But you do have a choice! You can sign petitions for two Community Rights Initiatives that will give us the power over our own destiny: #75 at the state level (Colorado Community Rights Network — www.cocrn.org); and Home Rule for Boulder County (www.bccrn.org — Boulder County Community Rights Network).

Let’s bring the power back to the people. 

Teresa Foster/Longmont