Letters to the editor

Thanks for lunch

Members of the Flathead Lakers want to thank Janice and Jim Bassett, owners of the East Shore Smokehouse for their gracious and generous support of the Lakers’ highway clean-up efforts! A small group of Flathead Lakers met Friday morning, July 29, to clean-up our “adopted” section of Hwy. 35 between mile markers six and eight. Following clean-up, Janice and Jim treated us to a complimentary lunch — yes, treated all 10 of us to a tasty, wholesome lunch from the Smokehouse menu!

Thanks again, Janice and Jim! Your support is greatly appreciated.

Greg McCormick

Vice President,

Flathead Lakers

Murdoch empire

Once again, my neighbor Bob McClellan challenges my determination to follow Jesus’ command and love my neighbor.

Bob’s description of the “Murdoch empire” as “collapsing” (July 28) is both hyperbolic and untrue. An important part of human progress is the uncovering of corruption, and I for one am grateful when this happens. Certainly, it is good when journalists who misuse the tools technology affords them are held accountable. As with any uncovering of corruption, the next step is moving forward in a better way.

I have often asked myself why liberals and pseudo-intellectuals, including our current president, love to bash Fox News. The only answer that I see is that these people assume a superiority to the rest of us — working class people who do their best to do the right thing for themselves, their families, and their communities. Fox News threatens them with its down-to-earth coverage of current events that presents more than one side of an issue. Quite rightly, the Bob McClellans of our world realize that thinking is the real power. Anything that promotes thoughtful consideration of what’s going on is a threat to people who yearn to control other people’s thinking.

Carol Cummings

Polson

Enough already!

…With the posturing and recriminations over the U.S. deficit! What is it about a balanced budget amendment that so upsets the Democrats and some old time Republicans? That’s what we do in Montana — and we responsible people do in our households!

Now that the Conservatives have raised the prospect of serious action (in Cut, Cap and Balance), we find all sorts of folks on Capital Hill and in the White House who don’t really care for fiscal responsibility. It might result in them losing their supporters in corporate America, the so-called ‘disenfranchised’ (e.g., welfare cheats and illegals) and, of course, the powerful and moneyed unions!

Stop with the phony scare tactics – between the White House and the Democrat leaders in Congress, no one should believe what is being spewed out. On the Democrats side, I see nothing wrong with greatly simplifying the IRS tax code and closing the loopholes that enable a company like GE to make billions while paying no tax. While we’re at it, lets’ rescind all those ‘exemptions’ that have been given to corporations and unions when they complained about financial hardship caused by Obamacare! Let’s just enact a ‘flat tax’ that everyone pays!

We have representatives who are not watching out for the interests of independent voters.

Jon, you have been a complete non-entity when it comes to critical national issues. Voting for stimulus and Obamacare may have helped you to gain some purchase on good Senate committee assignments, but your seat on the Banking Committee hasn’t helped your constituents one bit! Max remains a lost cause for this independent. Denny Rehberg, withdraw all legal action against the City of Billings and theirfirefighters! That’s just plain shabby.

Bob Hanson

Dayton

EPA train wreck

While we focus on the debt crisis, the EPA has been quietly implementing the most radical and costly policies of Obama’s administration. Since the failure of cap-and-trade, they’ve been completing and finalizing 30 major regulations and 170 major policy rules that would impose hundreds of billions of dollars of compliance costs on an already fragile economy, a train wreck in the making.

The train wreck is a series of sweeping new regulations many that target the coal industry. If all proposed regulations are finalized, an estimated 22 percent of coal fired plants would be forced out of business, eliminating enough electricity to power 50 million homes of coal produced electricity.

The train has left the station and is hurtling toward an economic derailing. In July, the EPA finalized the Cross State Air Pollution Rule, the first of many in the newest wave of regulation. It regulates emissions from coal fired power plants in 27 states, imposing unrealistic cuts on emissions of sulfur dioxide and ozone. The new rules will go into effect January 1, 2012, allowing almost no time to adapt to new regulations.

The EPA plans to continue its onslaught of regulation with new Maximum Achievable Control Technology rules expected in November. These rules also target coal fired power plants, calling for huge reductions in mercury, particulate matter, and other common emissions.

To reduce asthma rates, the EPA is revising its National Ambient Air Quality Standards for industrial ozone emissions. Tighter standards could conservatively cost as much as $90 billion a year, and according to MAPI/Manufacturers Alliance, could result in the loss of as many as 7 million jobs by 2020.

Additionally, the EPA is developing a slew of new anti-energy rules forcing unnecessary regulations on everything from greenhouse gas emissions to cooling water intake at electricity generating facilities. Although it’s difficult to measure costs, some estimates indicate that proposed regulations could cost as much as $920 billion in the next few years and more in the future.

Power plants will have to invest in expensive new capital to comply with new regulations. These costs will inevitably be passed to consumers in the form of higher electricity prices. Other plants will be forced out of business, resulting in job losses and even higher energy prices. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity estimates that these rules will result in the net loss of 1.44 million job-years. Electricity prices are estimated to grow by 12 -24 percent across the nation.

Increasing the prices of traditional fossil-fuel energy sources has been a long time goal of the left. President Obama openly admitted that under his proposed cap-and-trade program “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

It’s not too late to stop the wreck. A House bill sponsored by Rep. John Sullivan would delay enactment of these regulations, and calls for the creation of a committee to investigate the economic consequences of these regulations before they go into effect. The House appropriations committee passed a bill cutting EPA’s budget by 18 percent and defunding its ability enact regulations such as greenhouse gas rules and regulations defining coal ash as a hazardous waste. If passed, it will slow the EPA’s regulatory agenda, allowing a more careful assessment of the costs of these new regulations.

At a time when the economy is struggling, regulations that increase energy prices and destroy jobs are the last thing the nation needs.

Robert Starks

Saint Ignatius

Elected ones

Doesn’t anyone in congress but Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich see the total overhaul and new thinking that must take place in our national political system if we, as the nation we would like to love and support, is to survive?

Why, in the name of common sense, do our “Elected Ones” continue acting out of fear, greed, short-sighted thinking, and utter lack of vision in dealing with our bloated, inefficient, and out of touch political system?

And the very people among us out here in the hinterlands who are pushing for many of these present ideas for fixing our fiscal crisis, just to name one issue, are going to really get badly hurt if these half-way and compromise measures are put into effect.

This is a fact. This will happen. This is serious. This affects all of us!

Wake up, America. Any by “America” I mean “We the people” who vote these “Elected Ones” into office.

We must wake up and get informed. And this goes for both Republicans and Democrats. I, personally, have surely missed the boat on many issues over the years, so I’m speaking to myself here, too.

The time is now!

Bob McClellan

Polson