Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Goodlatte puts big business ahead of Virginia citizens
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Goodlatte puts big business ahead of Virginia citizens
For anyone thinking of voting for Rep. Bob Goodlatte, please remember that in the early 1990s he refused to support the citizens of Botetourt County who were fighting for the survival of Daleville.
A foreign company was attempting to purchase the local cement plant for the purpose of burning hazardous waste. This scenario included having medical waste from New York City transported by truck past the high school, through Daleville neighborhoods and dangerously close to one of Roanoke's main water reservoirs.
If that ill-conceived plan had succeeded, Daleville home prices would have plummeted and the area would not be enjoying the tremendous progress it enjoys.
After a long and hard fight, Valley Concerned Citizens prevented Goodlatte and others who shared his shortsighted vision from turning Botetourt into a hazardous waste dumping ground.
I have often wondered what Daleville would look like today if Goodlatte had gotten what he wanted. Now Goodlatte has gone outside his congressional district to champion the Elliston Norfolk Southern intermodal site. The people of Montgomery County have spoken clearly and eloquently: They do not want this facility forced upon them.
Once again, Goodlatte has put the special interests of big business ahead of the citizens of Virginia.
How else to explain the quality of letters?
For years, a continuing chorus of Roanoke Times readers have chastised this newspaper for what they believe is its liberal bias. Sad to say, any regular reader of your letters column would be forced to agree with these critics.
Only the existence of such a bias seems capable of explaining the fact that the vast majority of published letters representing liberal or Democratic points of view are well-written, informed and factually accurate; whereas letters supportive of conservative perspectives are invariably idiotic and reeking of the ignorance, illogic and mean-spiritedness of their writers.
Can there be any explanation for this phenomenon other than the selective bias of the Times' editorial staff?
Don't let 'greed warriors' go unchecked
The current condition of our economy offers a critical lesson in consequences of blind loyalty to free market economics. Our worst economic conditions since the 1930s are, in large measure, due to this blind loyalty that has resulted in predatory, greed-driven practices in financial institutions that have lost all sense of integrity and responsibility regarding credit and lending practices.
While the "buyer beware" principle needs to be heeded, a reciprocal responsibility with clearly identified conditions of borrowing and credit administered with transparency and integrity has also been missing.
An insistence that the consumer's failure to read and fully understand the implications of a transaction creates the results we are experiencing is false and fails to accept that the transaction is one of mutual responsibility. The culprit is greed, and one of the saddest results is that taxpayers will have to pay the bill like they did during the savings and loan scandal.
Anyone who believes that, in our contemporary economic landscape, an unmonitored and unregulated free market economy doesn't provide "greed warriors" with the opportunity to prey on their customers is very naïve. A "survival of the fittest" philosophy may work in the animal kingdom, but it is deadly and grim in economic practices of contemporary economic systems.
McCain's judgment has been poor on war
What's wrong with this picture? Here we have hawkish Sen. John McCain who supported President Bush in the costly blunder in Iraq claiming strength in foreign affairs -- a claim oddly backed up by various surveys -- while Sen. Barack Obama opposed the Iraq fiasco from the start, showing that wisdom and judgment are more important than years of experience.
Iraq is costing us $10 billion a month, or roughly twice the total annual budget of the National Science Foundation. The true and lasting costs of the Iraq mistake are scary, as discussed in the recent book "The Three Trillion Dollar War," by Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Soldiers and their families have already paid and are paying the price, but who will pay for the other costs incurred?
They won't admit it but, according to Bush and the "spend and borrow, no new tax" Republicans, it will be up to our grandchildren and future generations to shoulder the burden. This is morally wrong. Imagine what would happen if one month's cost of Iraq -- $10 billion -- were to go for energy research and development, sort of a Manhattan project for energy.
The press is giving McCain a free pass
I am continually amazed at the audacity of John McCain to denigrate, with little or no analysis by the mainstream media, his opponent, Barack Obama. Only when the press turns a blind eye could Obama be branded as an elitist by someone who has seven to 10 houses, wears $520 shoes, is worth multiple millions and thinks only those making $5 million a year are rich.
Only when the media are not doing their job could McCain still be called a maverick, even though he has voted with George Bush 95 percent of the time. Some maverick.
McCain has long courted the press with barbecues and special treatment; apparently, free meals and entertainment are more important to the members of the press than honest analysis and reporting.
Is it fear of not being invited to the next shindig that drives the press to treat McCain with kid gloves? Does being a POW provide a free pass for every failure? Maybe the press finds it hard to type the truth when their fingers are covered in barbecue sauce. Or maybe they have abdicated the position they should occupy in a free and open society.
Davis takes a poor shot at Obama
U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Fairfax County, said of Barack Obama's trip to Southwest Virginia, "It doesn't take a lot of courage to go to Martinsville and talk about trade" ("Obama to stump in 2 Va. cities," Aug. 20 Virginia section).
Why would he say that? It's simple: high rate of unemployment, some of the highest in the state. To challenge Obama to make the same speech to his part of the state just doesn't make sense, since there are 362 foreign-owned companies in Fairfax County.
Davis is retiring from Congress, and not a minute too soon. I wish he would come to Southwest Virginia to retire, if he has the courage. Hell, I wish he'd go to a foreign-owned county or city to retire.
The taxpayers (including poor Martinsville) have paid his salary for those stupid statements for years. If he has the courage to respond or make a statement, I'd like to hear it -- that is, if we the taxpayers don't have to pay for it.
Obama's promise shone through
My fiancée and I went to the Barack Obama rally in Lynchburg and heard the young man speak. He is truly the best orator I have heard since Bill Clinton, and I think he is better than Clinton.
Maybe I was caught up in the energy coming from the crowd shouting Obama's name and pledging support, but I believed him.
We were privileged to sit behind the platform, so we were close enough to observe his face. I tried to close out the noise and listen carefully to his words and to observe his face as he delivered them. What I saw was youthful, clean sincerity.
Refreshing as it is, his young exuberance does not indicate lack of experience or inability to do the job of president. His brilliance shows he can be a great president.
JFK was young, untested, exuberant, brilliant and filled with hope, as Obama is. Kennedy served two years and 10 months in the Senate, and was undoubtedly one of the best presidents we've had.
Let's go with Obama. Let's cleanse our country with fresh air. Let the windows be opened as the "torch is passed to a new generation of Americans."
