Is Roan area really accessible for recreation?
Re: “BLM’s plan for drilling on the Roan Plateau,” Sept. 19 Open Forum.
Having performed geological field work all over the southern rim of the Piceance Creek Basin, now referred to as the Roan Plateau, I feel I qualify as one of those Coloradans fortunate enough to have visited there. Unlike letter-writer Bob Crifasi, I found the area back from the cliffs, which slopes regionally into the interior of the basin, to be nothing more than typically Western landscape, forested at higher elevations giving way to sagebrush on down towards Piceance Creek. To describe it as a “world-class recreational, scenic and ecological resource” is pure hyperbole from what I imagine to be an Interstate 70 drive-by critic. Since it is not readily accessible, I would be interested to know how many people actually recreate up there outside of deer-hunting season anyway. Unlike the other Coloradans for whom the writer claims to speak, I think the Bureau of Land Management’s plan for the top is quite reasonable.
George Whitney, Centennial
Colo. elections: Governor’s race and 3rd, 5th CDs
Oil is an absolutely essential part of our lives, because we use it for driving, heating, asphalt roads, and a myriad of products derived from oil, e.g. shoes, plastics and fabrics. Ethanol, biomass and solar are valuable, but represent Band-Aids. A shortage of oil would ruin our livelihood and way of life.
Chevron just announced it has found enough oil in the Gulf of Mexico to increase our present supply by 50 percent. There is more sitting in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. ANWR occupies way less than 1 percent of the state, and no one ever goes there. In addition, experts in the oil industry tell us that Colorado sits on oil shales containing more oil than there is in Saudi Arabia.
Rep. John Salazar, whose re-election in the 3rd Congressional District is being contested by Scott Tipton, opposes prospecting for more oil. He opposed drilling offshore and he opposed drilling in Colorado. He believes that ethanol and biofuel are the answer. He’s dead wrong and represents the type of thinking that has left our nation dependent on foreign oil. In contrast, Scott Tipton is calling for a “new national commitment to be 75 percent energy independent.” I believe that the crisis in oil requires new thinking and a change of representative.
G. Graham Murray, Durango
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I come from a military family. My father was in the Army’s 4th Division Infantry and made the D-Day invasion – first wave, Utah Beach. My nephew is a major in the Air Force. In Colorado’s 5th Congressional District, with its heavy concentration of military veterans, there is a great feeling of betrayal from President Bush and his rubber-stamp Congress, which extends beyond health care into all matters impacting the lives of our country’s military veterans. We have an opportunity to send a pro-military candidate to Congress: Jay Fawcett.
It is time we elect more candidates with military experience. There are too many men and women in power today who have never served in our armed forces. Neither have their sons or daughters. These are the people making decisions that affect our military families and they simply cannot relate.
Jay Fawcett has served at or worked in each of the five bases in the district. When he retired, as a lieutenant colonel from the Air Force in 1998, he had seen 20 years of military service, including as an air liaison officer for the Army in Operation Desert Storm.
I am a patriotic American and support Jay Fawcett for Congress.
Arlene Horenovsky, Colorado Springs
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Re: “Ritter fundraising lead now at half a million; Bush coming to bolster Beauprez,” Sept. 21 news story.
Let me get this straight. Republican leaders in the state are calling Bob Beauprez’s gubernatorial campaign one of the worst-run campaigns ever. So what does Bob do to turn it around? He has President Bush come to Denver to stump for him – the same President Bush who so many Republicans are cutting and running from as quickly as possible. What’s next? Inviting Jack Abramoff to endorse him?
Steve Feld, Englewood
Failure of government to collect oil royalties
Re: “Interior program failed to collect oil firms’ royalties, 4 lawsuits allege,” Sept. 22 news story.
Reading this article turns my stomach. What depths of deceit and greed have our business and government “leaders” come to? Is this how money we pay in taxes to support a democratic society’s needs is instead siphoned off for the benefit of the most politically connected individuals in the most profitable companies of our times?
Though it has yet to be played out in courts and congressional hearings, the allegations of whistle-blower Randy Little ring true enough to be the basis for another of Michael Moore’s documentary movies: “Conscientious Interior Department employee finds evidence of large-scale fraud, is rewarded not by praise, but rebuke from superiors.”
Something dramatic like this needs to be done before ordinary citizens realize what monstrous forces have been shaping “acceptable behavior” in business/government dealings. Now is when a brave soul who discovers the captain is way off course should stand up and object, even if he does rock the boat.
Robert Johnson, Denver
9/11 conspiracy theory
Re: “Sept. 11 conspiracy?” Sept. 22 Open Forum.
I read with amazement Gerald E. Anderson’s letter to the editor. His and other conspiracy theorists’ contention that the Twin Towers were brought down by explosives, presumably by our own government, is so silly and naïve as to defy common sense. Does he deny that two commercial jetliners flew into the towers? I saw them do it. Does he deny that the planes were commandeered by Arab terrorists? Passengers on the plane described what was happening in cellphone calls to people on the ground. The terrorists have even been identified. Does he believe the terrorists were in league with our government and clued them in as to when they should set off the explosives? And what about the concurrent terrorist attacks on the planes that flew into the Pentagon and into the field in Pennsylvania? Does Anderson realize how stupid he sounds? Please, sir, use your mind.
Carol Hoffman, Littleton
Spirituality and science
Re: “Spirituality and science converge,” Sept. 21 Pius Kamau column.
Pius Kamau, in his column on the “science and spirituality” conference at the Iliff School of Theology, seemed to be quite comfortable bashing religion and dogma while deifying science and abstract spirituality. The main point of the conference (as though it was a completely novel idea) was to “learn how to respect one another” and apply our spirituality and science “toward healing the Earth and its occupants.”
Wow! Or, as in the plea of Rodney King, “Can we all get along?”
Kamau writes, “In Christianity, as in Islam, adherents are continually at war with one another.” Perhaps, but surely he recognizes the differences between our “shouting matches” and beheadings and suicide bombings. I haven’t read of Presbyterians setting fire to Baptist churches or suicidal evangelicals incinerating the crowded fellowship hall of liberal church luncheons.
Kamau opines that science, unlike religion, will heal the Earth and the self “if used ethically and humanely.” Sorry, Pius, science is exactly like religion in that neither are any more “honest, scrupulous, and unprejudiced” than their devotees and users. Thus, Jesus teaches, “By their fruits you shall know them.”
Bill Forbes, Whitewater
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