Letters | Cry me a river

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Cry me a river

(Re: “Hidden in plain sight,” cover story, June 10.) Plight? There’s a process, and laws to move to any country.

Come here legally — no problem. Break the law, suffer the consequences. How many Indians, Eastern Block Euros, Africans, Australians (must I go on?) come here legally from the other side of the ocean with visas, permits, legally — work, pay taxes, contribute to the health care system, so on and so forth? A lot. Legally.

I am so tired of hearing about the “plight” of illegals. Cry me a river. You broke into my house. You can’t live here. Get out. I’m weary of having my tax dollars support “undocumented” issues. I travel internationally frequently. Always have to have documentation on me. If anyone actually reads SB 1070 — reads it — there’s no racial profiling. It’s simply enforcing the law. But you liberal, sympathetic douche bags who are protecting the illegals, concerned with the “plight” of people who are breaking the law, have probably not read the bill. For some reason, you feel illegals don’t need to carry proper identification in this country, or any other for that matter.

Scenario: I was pulled over for a speeding ticket. While waiting to discuss my options with the assistant D.A., a non-English-speaking traffic violator was placed in front of the magistrate with a taxpayer appointed “interpreter.”

Magistrate: “Why did you not have a license when you were pulled over?” Non-English Speaker: “I don’t have a social security number.”

Magistrate: “Fifty dollar fine. Please make alternative arrangements for transportation. Next case.”

Wow. I got nailed $150 on my legal license, dropped two points, and, to rub salt in the wound, I saw the violator get in her car and drive away. How many times a week does this happen in how many counties in how many states? Oh, by the way, I pay the magistrate’s salary and the interpreter’s, too, with my taxes.

I don’t care where the illegals come from — just get here legally and follow the direction of the law or suffer your “plight.” Waaaannnnhhhh! Their “rights”? What rights would that be? What rights would you have if you

went to another country
illegally? You would have the right to sit your ass in jail. These
people get jobs, free health care (that I pay for), free education(that I
pay for), driver’s licenses, and then have the audacity to bitch? Are
you kidding?

Ask
Chavez what happens to an American if he/she goes to Venezuela and is
undocumented.

Derek
Blood/via Internet

Editor’s note: As a point of fact, many undocumented
immigrants pay taxes, too.

Dysfunctional city policy

Bravo for publishing Jon
Miller’s editorial, “How to be smarter about SmartRegs” (Perspectives,
June, 10). This program is yet another example of Boulder’s
dysfunctional policy-making, at both city and county levels, which
invariably puts the financial burden of social objectives on a small
minority of residents, without sufficient (or any) analysis of whether
the programs actually work. We steal from homeowners, waste tax dollars
and rarely have anything except smugness to show for it.

Our whole ClimateSmart
program is a depressing example. Last I checked we are paying seven
full-time employees to reduce Boulder County’s energy consumption. Their
effectiveness? Approximately zero, according to a mocking Wall Street
Journal article a few months ago. Last winter, I called the department
to help me with my drafty old house. The only assistance I got was the
telephone number of Xcel Energy. We pay them for what, exactly? Is their
job security based on any sort of measurable goals? (The group
is interviewing for additional hires, by the way.)

Mr. Miller writes, “The
energy savings measures of SmartRegs are untested. It involves
conjecture.” That pretty much sums up the Boulder Way. We throw taxpayer
money at whimsical schemes that are neither founded in sober research
nor subject to objective metrics. We put these programs in place and
just keep pouring (other people’s) money into them. I’m not sure whether
it’s arrogance or stupidity, but Boulder planners seem to think they
can solve complex problems with simplistic solutions, and then they
ignore the damage wrought by unintended consequences:

Despite the fact that the
entire planet uses a standard set of traffic signs and signals, we
invent our own type of crosswalk and then seem surprised by all the
accidents.

In order
to protect affordable housing, we drastically limit new building, which
wiped out an entire industry (construction and related services) that
employed the kind of people who need affordable housing.

We pour massive subsidies
into solar panels, but the steep environmental cost of the panels’
manufacture is not factored into HERS ratings. (Same thing goes for the
battery in that Prius, by the way.)

We pass draconian energy-efficiency requirements that
add huge costs to remodels so homeowners just leave their old, leaky
houses the way they are.

We let Councilman Macon Cowles talk us into building restrictions
that, perversely, hurt owners of smaller homes, while benefiting owners
of existing, larger homes… including, curiously enough, Mr. Cowles
himself. (Mr. Cowles likes to blame Wall Street for hurting Boulder
homeowners. Oh, the irony.)

Do Boulderites even realize
that electric cars around here are powered by burning coal, not by
magic unicorns?

Boulderites
who truly ascribe to the bleeding-edge of environmentalism should be
willing to pay for it out of their own pockets. Instead of voting
onerous mandates onto a few people, we should be encouraging compliance
through tax incentives, with all of us voting ourselves higher taxes (or
reduced spending) to make up for the lost revenues. We are more likely
to both participate and demand accountability when our own money is
being spent.

The
ultimate unintended consequence is yet to come. Boulder County
Commissioner Will Toor believes in both limiting growth and keeping
housing affordable. This contradiction is only possible, particularly in
a desirable area like Boulder, by intentionally reducing property
values, which seems to be his strategy. Anybody who has attended a
recent public hearing on these issues knows how furious homeowners are
about what a handful of activists have done to them. Let’s hope that the
coming backlash (Tovarish Toor is term limited in 2012) doesn’t swing
Boulder so far the other way that we end up looking like just another
Denver suburb.

David
Rea/Boulder

Kudos
to South Africa

A hearty and healthy
congratulations to resilient, vibrant and musical South Africa — Soweto,
no less — in its hosting of the beautiful games World Cup this summer.
And it’s amazing that they will have an audience of at least 10 to 15
times that of the Super Bowl. There’s nothing else like this platform
and spectacle on Earth! I just love being alive for it. It occurs to me
rather facetiously that if we accept the consensus of scientists
worldwide that humankind originated in Africa, then doesn’t it follow
that we’re all African-Americans, Afro-Canadians, Afro-Europeans,
Afro-Australians, Afro-Brasilians, etc.? It seems an appropriate and
timely enough question though, eh? In any case, welcome back, World Cup,
you glorious thing, you.

Grant D.
Cyrus/Boulder

Obama
went AWOL

As a Navy veteran, I am
appalled President Obama, our Commander-In- Chief, did not lay a wreath
at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery on
Memorial Day 2010. Instead, he went on vacation and was rained out at a
presentation at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Illinois.

The Commander-In-Chief
has an obligation to fulfill his responsibilities to our deceased
soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen who gave their lives to keep this
country free. He has a duty to respect our veterans and support our
military forces that are currently fighting two wars.

If a military member did
not show up for duty, he or she would be punished, including the
possible loss of pay, a reprimand, a demotion, or in a theater of war
operations, the potential exists for incarceration. Our Commander-In-
Chief deserves to be punished, and the punishment is to make him a
one-term president.

President
Obama is not the first president to miss laying the wreath at Arlington
National Cemetery. Ronald Reagan was caught up in a prolonged economic
summit in 1983. George H. W. Bush was campaigning in 1992, and George W.
Bush was vacationing in Texas on Memorial Day 2007. Prior miscues by
presidents cannot justify Obama’s dereliction of duty. He should have
changed his vacation plans or taken time out to be at Arlington National
Cemetery.

Our
Commander-In-Chief went AWOL on Memorial Day 2010.

Donald A.
Moskowitz/Londonderry, N.H.

Piling on Thomas

(Re: “Open mouth, insert
career,” In Case You Missed It, June 10.) I find it strictly Bush
League the way media people are so gleefully joining the dogpile on
Helen Thomas. Stating the simple truth that Israel has been built on a
heavily recruited immigration from all over the world intended to force
Palestinians from their ancestral homes and, in essence, asking the
integral question of why are Palestinians paying the price for
Christianity’s guilt over centuries of persecution of Jews that reached
its horrendous culmination in Hitler’s “final solution” was apparently
too hot for our politically correct, milquetoast media minds to handle.
Perhaps Ms. Thomas could be given a certain forbearance for her age, but
her statements were strictly to the point. This public shunning of a
person for speaking one’s mind is only cowardly scapegoatism.

Robert
Porath/Boulder

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