Friday letters: library board appointment, electric vehicles, health care

‘Blatant hypocrisy of the Garfield County commissioners’

The blatant hypocrisy of the Garfield County commissioners never ceases to amaze me. They’re conservatives, right? Perhaps even libertarians. Conservatives support small government and low taxes. Get the government out of my life. As another phony conservative, Ronald Reagan, put it, “Government is the problem” as he ran up record deficits with his tax cuts with no commensurate spending cuts.

The commissioners have usurped the previously held authority of the Garfield County Public Library District Board of Trustees. In the past, the library board always appointed its own trustees and the BOCC gave only tacit approval.

By breaking with this tradition, the BOCC has fully politicized the process. The library board chose Hanna Arauza to be their new trustee and the BOCC rejected her. Arauza is the wife of Steven Arauza, who is running against Mike Samson for the Garfield County District 3 seat.

The BOCC choice for the library board is Myrna Fletchell, a known supporter of Tony May, the Re-2 school board member who’s currently facing a recall for his extremist political positions such as advocating for the American Birthright social studies curriculum, which skips over slavery and the genocide of the Native Americans, claiming this country has never done anything wrong.

No doubt Fletchell will be an enthusiastic book banner, protecting our children from parental control over what they read. When I was a boy, I would go over to a friend’s house to ogle a Playboy magazine because his parents didn’t mind if he brought one home. If I got caught peering at a centerfold in my house, that periodical would’ve been immediately deposited in the incinerator, but if somebody else’s parents allowed it, that was their business.

This November, Garfield County voters will have the opportunity to replace these phonies with young, progressive candidates. In addition to the Samson/Arauza matchup, Caitlin Carey is running against current state senator Perry Will in District 2. It’s time for these so-called conservatives to check into the old folks’ home.

Fred Malo Jr., Carbondale

Too soon for electric vehicles

I am a scientist with degrees in Chemistry and Mathematics, 36 years of experience in coal fired electric power generation and 26 years as a firefighter. I thought, for a long time, that alternative methods of power, in all facets of life, are good ideas. Politics are rushing electric vehicles without first establishing a plan for mining our own precious metals, building our own batteries, computer chips, ensuring that we have enough electrical generation, distribution to power all our growing electrical needs including the addition of electric vehicles. 

Electric vehicles are better for cleaning up the atmosphere because they don’t burn fossil fuels but are they really? In researching the percentage of renewable energy to charge these electric vehicles, it is only averaged at 20% not 50%. Google it.

The US Energy Information Administration states that the renewable energy total is 21.4%, Nuclear is 18.6% and fossil fuels are 60%. A study would find whether the amount of vehicle emissions saved by using electric vehicles are lost in the increased amount of fossil fuels being burned to create the electricity needed to charge all electric vehicles that some are pushing too fast. Do we really have the electric generation and distribution to charge all the vehicles that would be in service if the extremists met their goal of 10 years? No is the answer. 

When these cars reach their end of usefulness has anyone considered how we are going to dispose of the used batteries, electric motors? Won’t this have an impact on our environment? 

I support a group of knowledgeable people to develop a long-range plan for introducing the electric vehicle into our society. The idea that we must do something fast instead of reasonable is being pushed by people with an agenda other than the environment. Climate change — yes, it’s real but no, it’s not such an emergency that we can’t make logical, reasonable choices that would last for the life of the planet. All inhabitants must be in it together or it’s a waste of time and money. We can be the leaders in getting together with humanity and making global plans. 

Bill Johnston, New Castle

American health care in crisis

There is a crisis in American health care. 

What is to be done?

First, we must institute Medicare for all, including coverage for psychiatric care.

Second, we must ban for-profit health care.

Third, we must nationalize the pharmaceutical industry. 

I see no other long term solution to the crisis that threatens to close the only psychiatric hospital between Denver and Salt Lake City.

The private sector has had their chance, and they have failed. 

The evidence could not be more clear, as printed on the front page of the Wednesday edition.

It will probably require sustained acts of mass civil disobedience, given that both political parties have sold out to the greedy ruling class, consisting of corporate CEO’s, Wall Street CEO’s, banksters and wealthy individuals of all political persuasions. 

Let us go forward together.

Steve McQuiston, Carbondale