Snobby anti-truck editorial shows how out of touch Gazette is
The Gazette’s June 20 editorial response to the trucker rally in Albany the previous day [“Truckers honk up wrong tree”] only proves that even editors and owners of small-time local newspapers are totally out of touch with most Americans and their daily lives. Whether they and their fellow naysayers of the liberal-left and mainstream media want to admit it or not, this country’s, as well as the world’s, economy runs on petroleum and will for the foreseeable future. It’s imperative that we, as Americans, lead the world in developing new energy technologies and alternative energy sources, while conserving and using wisely our current resources. However, until someone discovers or invents an abundant, cheap, efficient, reliable, clean replacement for oil, we need to do our utmost to be self-sufficient for our present and future energy requirements. Poorly researched and implemented programs, such as the ethanol scam, benefit only the big agriculture lobby and their political allies. Conservation alone will not solve our energy needs. To pompously posture that we all need to walk, ride our bikes and use mass transit more is foolishness. The use of our automobiles, for most of us, is a necessity — not a luxury. I don’t believe that getting to work and providing for our families each day is something that can be accomplished on a bicycle when you live in rural Saratoga County. I would be willing to bet that the condescending snob who penned the editorial doesn’t ride mass transit to the Gazette offices on Maxon Road each day. The real rub, however, is that this editor, who preaches this nonsense to us on a daily basis, doesn’t have a clue to life in the real world. It’s the majority of us — driving our gas-guzzling pickup trucks and vans loaded full of tools, equipment and parts that make sure he has clean drinking water, flushing toilets, functional electricity, heat in the winter, AC in the summer and all those other things that he and those of his ilk take for granted every day. TIMOTHY M. DEVINE Ballston Spa
Re June 16 letter, “State should cut tax on heat and electricity”: I propose that in addition to the elimination of the 3 percent tax charged by New York state on home fuel and electricity, as suggested by the author, Schenectady County should likewise eliminate the 4 percent sales tax charged on heating fuel purchased by county residents. Because heat is a necessity for those who reside in the Northeast (http://www. tax.state.ny.us/pdf/publications/sales/ pub718r_1107.pdf), our elected representatives must act in the interests of all constituents who will encounter hardship this coming heating season because of considerable increases in fuel costs. Government-sponsored programs like those recently proposed by Assemblyman James Tedisco, the Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP) and the (Schenectady) County Home Energy Fuel Tax Rebate Program for Seniors provide limited assistance to targeted groups. The administrative costs decrease the benefi ts realized by the public. They promote political pandering to targeted demographic groups and voter blocs. If all levels of government would reduce or eliminate the sales taxes on heating fuel, there would be no need for rebates, incentives, allowances, etc. The loss in sales tax revenues must be offset by reductions in government spending. BRAD LITTLEFIELD Delanson
Interesting that the Editor at the Daily Gazette would delete what I believe to be one of the most important points in my letter (above). This is how the second paragraph of my letter was submitted:
Quoted Text
Because heat is a necessity for those who reside in the Northeast and considering that Schenectady County is among a few counties statewide that charge tax on heating fuel( http://www.tax.state.ny.us/pdf/publications/sales/pub718r_1107.pdf ) our elected representatives must act in the interests of all constituents who will encounter hardship this coming heating season because of considerable increases in fuel costs.
The staff at SchenectadyToday.com printed my letter in unedited format. What reason could the Daily Gazette have for omitting the statement that Schenectady county is among only a few statewide that tax heating fuel? After all, the source of this information (the URL) was provided by me.
Brad, do you really need to ask such a silly question? We are dealing with the bias Gazette here.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
My husband and I just purchased a pellet boiler to be attached to our baseboard hot water system. It wasn't cheap at $5,675 but should pay for itself in two to three years. My husband will do the installation. We don't go on vacations or spend frivolously and I REFUSE to be cold in my own home. My home is my oasis. I should be able to keep the heat at 70 this year rather than turning it down and being cold. Last year we did just that. Estimated cost to heat for this year is $5,000 or more with fuel oil. Cost of eight tons of pellets will be $1,800.....for now, but I think the cost of all sources will even out in the end just because they can. We thought about other alternatives and chose this one for ease, simplicity, and relatively lower cost. Most wood boilers are more and after spending seventeen years of "getting wood in" that wasn't my preference. When we heated the house with wood it took forever cutting, splitting, and stacking wood. We used to physically go up into the woods and cut it down, haul it out, cut, split, stack. It was indeed the summer project when you consider we did it for us, my parents, and my brothers house. It was a real freaking family affair!!! We also considered a wind turbine but with an average electric bill of $120 per month it would probably take us longer to recoup the cost then we will be alive and according to NYSERDA's site the wind where we live may or may not sustain it.
You Can't Fuel All of the People All of the Time by Ann Coulter (more by this author) Posted 06/25/2008 ET Updated 06/25/2008 ET
Liberals dismiss studies that show a link between abortion and breast cancer, claiming they are biased because the people promoting the studies are "anti-choice."
For the same reason, no one should believe the Democrats' "energy" policies.
Democrats couldn't care less about high gas prices. The consistent policy of the Democratic Party, going back at least to Jimmy Carter, has been to jack up gas prices so we can all start pedaling around on tricycles.
Environmentalists are constantly clamoring for higher gas taxes as the cure-all to their insane global warming theory. Clinton proposed a 26-cent tax on gas. John Kerry said it should be 50 cents. Gore endorsed the Malthusian proposal of Paul and Anne Ehrlich in "The Population Explosion" that gas taxes be raised gradually to match prices in Europe and Japan.
The result is consumers now pay about 46 cents per gallon in gasoline taxes. That's not including taxes paid directly to the government by the oil companies and passed onto consumers. As the inestimable economist John Lott has pointed out, in the past 25 years oil companies have paid more than three times in taxes what they have made in profits.
B. Hussein Obama's response to soaring gas prices is to have the oil companies collect even more money from us at the pump, proposing a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies. "Corporate taxes" sound like taxes on rich people, but all they do is force corporations to collect taxes on behalf of the government.
Democrats have worked hard to ensure that Americans pay as much for gas as Europeans do. After a quarter-century of gas tax hikes, a ban on drilling for oil and a complete destruction of the nuclear power industry in America, I guess liberals can declare: Mission accomplished!
In response to skyrocketing gas prices, liberals say, practically in unison, "We can't drill our way out of this crisis."
What does that mean? This is like telling a starving man, "You can't eat your way out of being hungry!" "You can't water your way out of drought!" "You can't sleep your way out of tiredness!" "You can't drink yourself out of dehydration!"
Seriously, what does it mean? Finding more oil isn't going to increase the supply of oil?
It is the typical Democratic strategy to babble meaningless slogans, as if they have a plan. Their plan is: the permanent twilight of the human race. It's the only solution they can think of to deal with the beastly traffic on the LIE (Long Island Expressway).
How do liberals propose we acquire the energy required for the economic activity and production that results in light appearing when they flick a switch? The larger enterprise involved in producing that little miracle eludes them.
Liberals complain that -- as B. Hussein Obama put it -- there's "no way that allowing offshore drilling would lower gas prices right now. At best you are looking at five years or more down the road."
This is as opposed to airplanes that run on woodchips, which should be up and running any moment now.
Moreover, what was going on five years ago? Why didn't anyone propose drilling back then?
Say, you know what we need? We need a class of people paid to anticipate national crises and plan solutions in advance. It would be such an important job, the taxpayers would pay them salaries so they wouldn't have to worry about making a living and could just sit around anticipating crises.
If only we had had such a group -- let's call them "elected representatives" -- they could have proposed drilling five years ago!
But of course we do pay people to anticipate national problems and propose solutions. Some of them -- we'll call them Republicans -- did anticipate high gas prices and propose solutions.
Six long years ago President Bush had the foresight to demand that Congress allow drilling in a minuscule portion of the Alaska's barren, uninhabitable Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In 2002, Bush, Tom DeLay and the entire Republican Party were screaming from the rooftops: Drill! Drill! Drill!
We'd be gushing oil now -- except the Democrats stopped us from drilling.
Drilling on only 0.01 percent of ANWR's 19 million acres was projected to produce about 10 billion barrels of oil. From all domestic sources combined, we currently produce about 1.8 billion barrels of oil per year. To a layperson like myself, 10 billion barrels seems like a lot of oil.
The other party -- plus John McCain -- ferociously opposed drilling in ANWR, drilling offshore or drilling anyplace else. Instead of Drill! Drill! Drill!, their motto could be: Kill! Kill! Kill!
They refuse to believe our abortion studies? I refuse to believe they care about Americans having to pay high gas prices.
There was a legal notice like thing in the paper today (june 24) for a rate increase for Nat Grid. Go read it, it references a 10% increase.
ROFLMAO 10% increase ROFLMAO
Then you see proposed rates for residential, a chart
First 3 therms Current cost is $14.71 Proposed cost $20 10% increase ROFLMAO Where did the employee who wrote this learn math?
Then there is some number of therms showing the current and proposed cost and I'd like for someone to explain how the amount of the increase equals 10%, no matter how I do the math, I come up with 22% increase. That goes ditto for the next group of therms used
Optimists close their eyes and pretend problems are non existent. Better to have open eyes, see the truths, acknowledge the negatives, and speak up for the people rather than the politicos and their rich cronies.
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