Page 10 - the Noise October 2016

Our Letters to the Editor the last few months bristled with Electric Company schemes, the budgeting of the Military Industrial Complex, and President Obama’s commitment to maintaining the nation’s nuclear arsenal, among other topics. Herein we rifle with a new set of letters from readers like you ... Whether you agree or disagree, please write in!
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In this state, we currently have an energy monopoly ironically named Arizona Public Service which has sought and succeeded in “buying out” the very regulatory body that oversees it through“dark money”campaign contributions. In the last 5 years, the Arizo- na Corporation Commission has regularly voted to increase electricity rates and make it difficult for Arizona citizens to invest in solar technology, all while APS/Pinnacle West chalk up record profits from uranium-based power production, the mining of which threatens not only Grand Canyon’s autonomy but has caused irreparable harm to the indigenous people who call the land home. How can we “flip the switch” on uranium power production (the waste of which we still aren’t handling) and move to the truly clean power technologies of wind, solar, and wave?
Dear Editor
Brandi Laing
Flagstaff
I am in agreement with your most recent set of letters. Shame on Mr. Obama, and shame on our elected government for giving the green light to committing one tril- lion of our tax dollars to the military industrial complex to “maintain” a stockpile of archaic nuclear weaponry capable of decimating Mother Earth 15,000 times over. Are we ever really going to use these things? Do we ever really need to? In my mind’s eye, this money would be better committed to the projects we need done here in the homeland ... There’s a lot we could do to solve the water crisis in the West with one trillion dollars, never mind places who immediately need infrastructure improvement, like Flint, Michigan or Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Lucy Vasquerez
Cottonwood, Ariz.
I lost all respect for John McCain after learning he was spearheading plans to priva- tize Arizona’s Tonto National Forest to turn it into North America’s largest gold mine, at the request of Australia’s Rio Tinto Mining DBA Resolution Mining. This land, Oak Flat, is sacred to the San Carlos Apaches. That McCain would treacherously and indifferently abandon all of the principles of the Republican Party (at its historic best with the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt, and the stalwart defenders of the pristine American wilderness) for me dooms his re-election.
He snuck this into the Defense Appropriation Act, and only Bernie Sanders’ Save Oak Flat Act (S2242) stands in its way, cosponsored by New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich and Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin. (There is a companion House bill sponsored by two AZ Reps, which is opposed by Rep. Grijalva’s bill). In the Senate, McCain is well known as a bully, and often shouts to get his way. He has my respect for his sacrifices in Vietnam, although I almost never agree with him legislatively, but now, even the occasional re- spect is gone.
Dearest NEditor:
Good Day NEd
One thing about living in the town named for a billionaire who bought his seat in the Senate for $1 a vote among the citizens he already employed — is the Supreme Court’s Citizens’ United decision that governs this election cycle rings a little starker here. Here, in the aftermath of an entire valley devastated by clear cut timbering and dirty mining to make the products folks on the East Coast always thought they needed a century ago — lights, pine wood floors, furniture, and any number of resource-extraction-in- tensive products sold the American public by Madison Avenue paper pulpers — there is a vacant soul that rustles with the hot dry desert wind, one that speaks of the rich life that existed here — and still exists in rare, sought-after pockets — way before Grand- father Industry set foot off the iron horse. This election, let’s separate the corporations from “We the People.”
Mark Irvine
Stephen Fox
Santa Fe, NM
You’ve got to be kidding me. The military industrial complex receives $6 TRILLION to wage destruction on life in foreign lands over the last decade, and when it comes to improving water resources for every American, the Senate votes to budget a measly $9 billion to the cause (NYT, 9/16/16, p18). Our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling, our people need fresh water and free energy, and at every step in the way, our elected officials are bought and sold by corporations who already profit in the trillions by utiliz- ing the funds in our Treasury guaranteed to every single American for the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We can have neither of these things without real movement in the budgetary priorities of this country. Nine in 10 Americans do not want to see another war in our time, and an even greater majority do not want to see death rained down on women and children in other countries.
There is no logical reason why superpowers like the US and Russia continue to spend their people’s money on maintaining a nuclear arsenal, much less fueling civil unrest by providing munitions to already unstable nations like Syria. It is a disgrace that in the second millennia of civilized humanity, we still have not figured out how to al- locate resources appropriately so every inhabitant of the Earth has food, shelter, and fresh water — and instead spend our nations’ profits on bombs, death, and military-led resource thievery.
If Presidents Obama and Putin wish to continue sending the people of the Earth into harm’s way for stupid egotistical reasons, maybe we should set up a Thunderdome for the two of them, and let them have their way with each other in a method they seem to have no problem ordering others to engage in. Let it be televised on international TV, and whatever general or admiral wants to continue waging war, let them enter the Thunderdome too. We the people of the Earth are tired of news of destruction in foreign lands accomplished by the funds we send into our nation’s capitol every paycheck! And desire our moneys to go to peaceful projects that benefit the whole!
We seek reparations for the breach of 4th Amendment rights guaranteed by the US Constitution by the actions of the National Security Administration, the Central Intel- ligence Agency, and the Executive Branch. We seek damages of no less than $7 trillion — the same amount budgeted to the Military Industrial Complex for the Wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. These funds should go into a separate Treasury account, the Department of Peace, and should be allocated for projects that accomplish greater prosperity and longevity to the peoples of this nation and the world, and include an incubator for new science and technologies that will enable access to food, water, transportation, health and energy for all.
Finally, Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, should be tried for mak- ing false statements about the collection of private data during his tenure, and ought to be subject to the same sentencing as a soldier who commits treason. He lied during testimony in March 2013, and sought to discredit the revelations of Edward Snowden, who should be honored for his selfless service to the American people.
Live long and prosper,
Jimmy Delgato
Clarkdale, AZ
Prescott, Arizona