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editorial@boulderweekly.com
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• Uncensored
An invasion of privacy
(Re: “Under the influence,” cover story, Feb. 12.) Thank you for presenting a nicely balanced article that, on the one hand, underscores the dangers of drinking and driving, and, on the other, denounces the ridiculous measures taken to prevent such dangers. While she focuses on technological remedies, Ms. Grossman also takes into account the various legal, stopgap measures used by the courts to curb drunk driving.
The ignition interlock devices (IID) should only be used to prevent known offenders from operating their vehicles. Using them to try to limit the general populous can only lead to frustration on the part of law-abiding drivers. I have felt similarly vexed when my debit card was deactivated (due to my financial institution’s vigilance — a blessing and a curse) and I was left stranded, with a nearly empty tank and with no cash or checkbook, at a gas station. Imagine the road rage (parking lot rage?) induced by multiplying this ludicrous situation by thousands and tens of thousands!
I greatly enjoyed reading Ms. Grossman’s article, as I do when I read any good exposé of institutional invasion of privacy. When we criminalize the public, we show how faulty our legal system really is when it comes to crime prevention. Another area in need of further exposure is the privatization of criminal matters, as touched on in this article. I would love to see an extension of this theme and would encourage Ms. Grossman to focus on the privatized probation system, already in place in Colorado.
Jack Slavin/Longmont
More moderate voices
(Re: “What’s God got to do with it?” cover story, Jan. 29.) I want to thank Jim Lillie for his article, “What’s God got to do with it?” I enjoyed getting a chance to hear from several clergy perspectives in one article. I particularly appreciated an interfaith survey.
However, I wasn’t clear on what was religiously distinctive about the two Jewish voices — what made each different that added to the breadth of the article. It would have been helpful to know the movements from which they came in Judaism.
One piece of feedback is that, like most media presentations these days, the historic Protestant voices are left out — the moderate and especially the progressive ones. That seemed to be the case here. The “mainline” denominations, the United Methodist, American Baptist, Presbyterian USA, Lutheran ELCA, Christian Church-Disciples of Christ, the United Church of Christ (not Church of Christ), and even the Episcopal Church are often left out while the Roman Catholic and the conservative so-called evangelical churches are given voice. These voices, most specifically the UCC and UMC ones in Boulder, can often offer a significantly different Christian identified perspective than the Catholic or evangelical ones.
Todd Smiedendorf/Laramie, Wyo.
Ditch Danish
(Re: “Fight unemployment like FDR,” Danish Plan, Feb. 12.) Paul Danish’s prescription for healing the nation via preparation for mass murder/suicide gives me the queasies, but please exclude me from the rebuttal category. This is strictly to the publisher: You ought to be ashamed that you choose to print this war-mongering jerk.
You claim to be an independent news source. Why is his voice considered “diverse” when I can find something similar on FOX News or right-wing talk radio any time of day or night?
Sorry, I don’t get it. The next time I have fish to wrap, I know which paper to choose.
Rob Smoke/Boulder
Paul Danish is crazy. Why do you pay him for his murderous ideas like ramping up for war to stimulate the economy? I say fire that thoughtless impostor. He’ll probably get another job writing nationalist pro-war crap for some other country.
Peace is the way.
Gonzalo Cabeza/Boulder
In Paul Danish’s Feb.12 Danish Plan column, Danish makes the absurd claim that an enormous increase in military spending can somehow stimulate the economy out of the recession. If enormous spending on the military actually worked, the old Soviet Union’s economy would have been a smashing success instead of the colossal failure it actually was. Too, more than a decade of enormous government spending by the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations failed to end the Great Depression, and the best they could manage before the start of World War II was a still painfully high unemployment rate of 9.9 percent — nothing to crow about.
While it’s true that unemployment reached an all-time low of 1.2 percent in 1944 due to the war effort, it came at the expense of severe hardship for the American people. Due to rationing and shortages caused by the need to shift resources to the war effort, most Americans had little to spend their earnings on other than the basic necessities of life.
Keynesian theories (interventionist government economic policies) have been thoroughly discredited. Common sense should tell anyone that government spending money on Keynesian projects, such as digging and filling holes for no purpose other than to make work, cannot possibly lead to prosperity. Instead they lead to the destruction of wealth, as resources must be forcibly transferred from where they’re needed most in the economy to digging and filling worthless holes. If not for government interference, those resources expended on digging and filling worthless holes would have instead been applied to generating wealth.
Libertarians correctly point out that the road to prosperity is not paved with government deficit spending on the military, digging and filling worthless holes, or increased political control over the economy. Instead, the road to prosperity is paved with increased individual economic liberty and less political control over the economy.
Chuck Wright/Westminster
Feed them peanut butter
With the recent revelation that the CEO of Peanut Corp. knowingly let contaminated products go out to the market, perhaps we should take a lesson from the Chinese.
When the CEOs of certain corporations were caught duping the public for the sake of profit, they were sentenced to death.
In some cases, when confronted with the knowledge that their company did something to put the public at risk, many CEOs chose the honorable way to resolve the matter — they took themselves out by suicide.
Now, I really don’t see that happening in this country, especially with the non-regulation and profit-driven greed that has become all too common these past eight years. That and the fact that men like that have no honor.
But wouldn’t that be a righteous, and appropriate, end to this travesty?
Perhaps more appropriate would be for the culprits to be forced to consume their own tainted products… without medical treatment.
Tommy Holeman/Longmont
Punish Bush and Cheney
The crimes of the Bush administration need to be fully investigated and prosecuted wherever the law has been broken, otherwise the next time the Republicans are in the White House (there will be a next time), they will again abuse their authority with assumed impunity citing that Bush and Cheney got away with it.
Tom Lopez/Longmont
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