Letters to the Editor for Tuesday, March 2, 2010

State's top lawyer wrong on warming
At a time when budgets are being cut, people are losing jobs, and services are being limited, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli announces that his office has filed a petition with the Environmental Protection Agency asking them to reconsider their finding that carbon dioxide emissions are pollution and constitute a threat to human health. This is a frivolous suit that could cost taxpayers hundreds of thousand of dollars. Meanwhile, the state is forced to make cuts to the budget in education, agriculture and other programs that affect the well being of our citizens.

The public is already tired of the political maneuvering in order to have personal agendas met. The Attorney General asserts that climate science in general is being misused as part of a broader political agenda so intends to use his office to stop important environmental legislation.

That is his personal agenda.

Yet research from one of our own higher institutions of learning, the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences released a report on their research demonstrating that storms and the resulting flooding will be more severe due to climate change. This has affected our agricultural industry in crop losses.

Along with the cost of the lawsuit to push the present administration’s agenda, there is consideration in the General Assembly to cut programs that help conserve land, protect our water from being polluted and assist farmers in their efforts to do both of these things. A program that helps farmers to preserve their working farmland from development is under the axe. At what cost to the environment will these decisions ensure?

Development brings in the money. It carries a lot of baggage along with it if not done in a “sustainable” way. At what point are the lawmakers going to give up their personal agendas and make decisions that ensure a safe and healthy environment for their grandchildren?
DONNA B. MEEKS
Amherst

A lethal mixture
In an effort to supplement my meager salary as adjunct professor of psychology at the community college — adjunct being a Latin phrase for minimum wage — I also work in a closely related field; bartending, at the Peaks of Otter Lodge on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Thus, two newly proposed laws allowing patrons to carry concealed weapons in restaurants and in national forests concern me. Actually, carrying any weapon, concealed or not, in a barroom with only a waist-high, 2-foot-wide piece of fake wood separating me from Wild Bill or Calamity Jane concerns me.

While I may be considered by many to be a Dionysian savant, some disgruntled, inebriated, unsophisticated imbiber may take offense with the taste of said dispensed spirits.

As the band Little Feat propounds, that low-down Southern whiskey began to fog his mind.

As a result, guns are drawn, shots ring out,and screaming is heard, mixed with the sound of breaking glass, shattered mirrors, and curses, as the self-medicating hedonist registers his complaint with an assault rifle or an automatic weapon.
DAVID GOODE
Bedford