Climate change power plot

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CORRECTION: There were two Jeff Buckley tribute bands that played this week in Boulder. The photo accompanying the Nov. 12 article, “To honor a legacy,” depicted another Jeff Buckley tribute band, Your Sweet Return. The opening acts for the show at the Laughing Goat were incorrect.

Guess what? We have climate change. Guess what? We’ve always had climate change. Guess what? Never before have we had powerful people want to control every person, business and country because of climate change. Now a multitude of scientists say the global warming propaganda is a hoax. This includes the science and climate advisor to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The treaty in Copenhagen in December is designed to penalize and tear down America with extreme taxes and regulation. Call your senators to vote against the 1,990-page government health bill, cap and trade and, scariest of all, the climate change bill.

Lorraine Moulton/Longmont

Reform capitalism

Companies have laid off so many, no wonder the “productivity” statistic is up 9.5 percent! Variable business costs have been trimmed to the bone (partly through lower fuel and interest charges), and then some. So what to do if sales don’t improve? Perhaps business will look at “fixed” costs — insurance, taxes and executive compensation. Businesses don’t pay taxes anyway, so that’s out (their customers pay the taxes, just ask). Staying insured is very important, because you never know when a customer is going to discover a frog in his burrito. That leaves executive compensation, which, thanks to stock options, is taking from stockholders, just as layoffs take from consumers (maybe the company’s own customers are getting pink slips). What is needed more than anything is not more stimulus, not more Texan tax cuts, and not more bureaucracy. It’s acceptance of a lower return for shareholders and a significant reduction in executive pay. If there’s to be no hiring and no wage hikes, maybe it’s time for a strike not just by workers, but also by investors and consumers. Without work, who consumes anyway?

Gregory Iwan/Longmont

Health care for all

Do we care about each other? Do we care about the least of our brethren, the ones who have the least resources? Do we care that all of us have health care? Then we can do it. It really is that clear-cut. If every other technologically advanced nation in the world can do it (and they do), we can, too. However, the pending legislation, if not changed, could be a massive windfall for certain corporations and a huge loss for everyone else.

The good news: There is a way to have good coverage for all, spend less than our country is spending now for health care, and have better outcomes. We can only do this by taking the profit out of the financing of health care. (No other country uses for-profit health insurance companies.)

This could be a publicly determined transparent system of private not-forprofit insurance companies that all play by the same rules.

Contact your local and national representatives (Congress.org and type in your zip code).  At least tell them to allow individual states to create their own health care system. Colorado could then be a vanguard (perhaps with some other states) to show the rest of the country that it can be done. See HealthCareforAllColorado.org.

Beth Williamson/Boulder

Let our justice shine

Are the American people
really as hysterically frightened and rattled by the prospect of trying
the 9/11 Muslim radicals in New York, as some would have us believe? I
certainly don’t believe it. And now it has been argued that this would
be far too much attention, as well as a platform for extreme Muslim
philosophy. I would counter by saying that, yes, an awful lot of
attention will be involved, in addition to one of the biggest platforms
in the world, but it is our platform, not theirs, and an
opportunity to show the world that we are who we say we are and mean
what we say we mean in terms of our unique and enviable system of
American jurisprudence. And still I believe, too, that in the event
these kinds of hard-core Muslims were to be put in solitary at Supermax
and other serious U.S. prisons, it is their health authorities
had better be worried about. They say convicts despise child molesters,
and I’ve also heard that patriotism, however oddly or violently
expressed, sometimes

prudence. And still I
believe, too, that in the event these kinds of hard-core Muslims were
to be put in solitary at Supermax and other serious U.S. prisons, it is
their health authorities had better be worried about. They say
convicts despise child molesters, and I’ve also heard that patriotism,
however oddly or violently expressed, sometimes is right up there in
the top 10 criminal code of principles and values. I wouldn’t worry
about them or us.

Grant D. Cyrus/Boulder

So that others may live

I served in the
U.S. Navy from 1986 through 1989. I had the honor and privilege of
serving as a helicopter air crewman and rescue swimmer. I would like to
tell you about the Navy frogmen whose motto I used to title this
article. This group of unassuming men — not the usual suspects you
would think of — face excruciating training, along with an attrition
rate of 99 percent among the 1 percent of the nation that are in the
military. What makes these guys stand apart is their fearlessness,
their drive to not give up, their willingness to stare fear in the face
and to jump into an abyss, not knowing if they are coming home, but
knowing for sure that if anyone can save that life, they can.

During my tour of duty, we were sent
to the Persian Gulf. Our squadron received the Armed Forces
Expeditionary Medal for being the first in the region to have combat
duty. During this time, I was assigned as an enlisted SAR officer. I
saw daily the dedication of the 20 men I was responsible for who risked
their lives to protect more than 7,000 lives in the fleet. It did not
matter if it was under fire or in the dark, moonless nights in a Gulf
full of unknown danger, all the men and women serving knew that the
helicopter was there.

The best way to honor our troops is through tolerance. We all serve to protect the Constitution, and that means all people.

Melvin Hayden/Longmont

Blog: Pamela White on Shaniya Davis’ disapperance in North Carolina

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