Published: July 14, 2008 07:51 am         

Letters for July 14, 2008

Don’t be blind to the positive

The world’s a mess: The unnecessary and costly war goes on and on, gas costs have gone skyward _ it’s surely true the glass is half-empty indeed! However, let’s remember a few things to maintain a healthy balance in our outlook. For example:

1. Our evolving Foothills Performing Arts Center has begun construction, thanks to our reps in Albany, key skilled voluntary personnel and a modest hard-working staff. 2. A number of Sen.

Seward’s member items have been of exceptional local help to worthy causes _ every one of them.

3. Excellent local road repairs _ Dietz, Center, Chestnut, Walnut _ done efficiently and on time.

4. Three new pastors and two college presidents in place, all women. Where’s the glass ceiling?

5. Minor league baseball and Oneonta are partnered, at least for a while.

6. The beauty of God’s summer creation is all around us or a few minutes away with several children’s, youth and family activities functioning. 7. Fellowship of all major faiths _ liberal and conservative _ are available, alive and well. Share in one!

8. Two fine hospitals and their clinics are within a half hour’s travel for all.

Take time to take a stroll, visit a park, watch the Tigers play, smell the roses, and enjoy every day, mon amis and neighbors.

The Rev. Kenneth R. Baldwin
Oneonta

Conservatives not foes of change

A 2007 Laurens High School graduate wrote to The Daily Star to outline his thoughts on global warming and the importance of conservation. It is indeed heartening that such a young man has acquired so vast a store of knowledge that he feels competent to lecture us about our wasteful ways. But conservatives do not resist all changes, as he said. Conservatives accept change that is based on the accepted values of the past. Had the writer a little more knowledge of the past, he would have known that since the first oil well was found in Pennsylvania in 1859, skeptics have been saying there is only so much oil in the world and we will soon run out of it.

Conservatives are not opposed to finding an alternative to polluting vehicles, but until that alternative is found, what is his or Barack Hussein Obama’s solution? Isn’t getting more oil by drilling offshore and in Alaska where we know it exists in huge quantities a better solution than paying higher and higher prices for gasoline or doing without? Our young friend said that global climate change is happening and we are contributing to it, and that it is not up for debate. Even if a majority of professional has agreed that is our situation, a dubious claim at best, the fact that a minority disagrees is proof that it is up for debate.

Greenhouse gasses are less than 1 percent man-made. A scientist, James Hansen, who just 10 years ago started the concern over global warming, has since restated his concern and said that there are factors driving long-term climate changes that are not known with accuracy. He is now studying other factors, such as solar activity that has accurately tracked world temperatures for at least the last 200 years.

Robert C. Beckman
Otego

Congress blamed for housing crisis

How important is the fact that Roger Clemens may have lied about using performanceenhancing drugs during his Major League Baseball career? Does it rate with the lies our political leaders have used so many times to build enthusiasm for going to war? In recent times, President Kennedy involved the U.S. military in Vietnam without our public knowledge. President Johnson used the phony Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify greatly expanding our involvement. President Reagan used minimum problems for two little wars in the Caribbean. President Bush used trumped-up charges against the Iraq government to involve us in an ongoing war in the Islamic Middle East. We need to establish priorities about what is important.

Sen. Schumer has introduced legislation to throw federal money at a non-existent housing problem in New York state. The housing crisis was caused when Congress put pressure on lenders to make housing loans available to more risky borrowers. When this was compounded in areas already in a housing boom, $200,000 homes were soon selling for $300,000.

The result is now well known. If these loans would have been called “high risk” instead of “sub-prime,” would the results have been the same?

Gerard Bourgeois
Morris

New energy strategy needed

My recollection as to when oil prices began to soar was shortly after Bush’s ill-planned invasion of Iraq in 2003. We all remember his famously foolish pronouncement under a banner saying, “Mission accomplished” _ “Major combat operations have ended,” on board the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003.

While the real tragedy has been that more than 4,000 Americans have lost their lives in a truly questionable war, another unintended outcome was that Iraq, which holds more than 112 billion barrels of oil _ the world’s second-largest proven reserves _ would soon see its output plummet due to sabotage by real terrorists (as opposed to the “eco-terrorists, the environmental radicals and the anti-capitalist crowd” for whom columnist Tom Sears has such fondness).

However, I actually do agree with some of Tom Sears’ points. Suing Saudi Arabia to increase its oil output seems absurd, and a windfall profits tax on oil companies may be politically popular but accomplishes little in terms of lowering our reliance on oil.

Perhaps one of the few statements that President Bush made that I completely agree with was his assertion that “we are addicted to oil” in his February 2006 State of the Union address. Ultimately, the U.S. has to lower that addiction, and that means using less of it, as well as finding alternatives.

When Congress and the next president tackle our energy crisis on the ‘demand’ side, as opposed to the supply side by increasing oil supplies, the energy crisis will be transformed into more of an opportunity to improve our economy and enable us to be more competitive with our industrialized competitors. It is not an accident that the Honda Civic is the best-selling vehicle in America and the Ford F-150 has dropped to fifth after other Honda and Toyota small and mid-sized gas sippers.

Irvin Dawid
Palo Alto, Calif.