Published: December 16, 2007 03:58 pm      

12/16/2007 Letters to the Editor

Don’t support Senate Bill 2332



Editor’s note: Senate Bill 2332 would postpone a Tuesday vote at the Federal Communications Commission that would relax the ban on the ownership of newspapers and TV stations in the same local market.



It has become increasingly difficult to find news reporting that is unbiased. The mass media now controls 90 percent of all outlets, and they seem to be in lockstep; further consolidation of control to a few is reprehensible, un-American, and not in the public’s best interest. Please oppose Senate Bill 2332.

Thank you for your support of Americans.



Al Gearing

Burleson



Remembering infamous days



Many will remember the calamitous day Dec. 7, 1941, and certainly we will recall the more recent but also infamous event that occurred Sept. 11, 2001. Both were dates of sneak attacks on the United States of America and in both cases the attackers were under directives from articulate but disturbed leaders of misguided people.

The attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese naval forces shocked this nation into perhaps the greatest organized defensive and offensive efforts of all time. This American nation of liberty, justice, laws, churches and democratic views and a blend of all world cultures and nationalities came together in a cohesive force which, because of its patriotic coordination within and its collaboration with other nations, defeated the Axis powers of Japan and Germany.

World War II was long, terrible, brutal and monstrous in its wideness and its gross destructiveness, including the human toll. The loss of lives might have been less had the Allied powers rolled over and surrendered to Germany and Japan without firing a shot or when the odds seemed insurmountable, yet, in addition to the then ongoing genocides, it is more likely that losses would have been greater plus the loss of liberty, justice, laws, churches and democratic views.

The world’s cultures and nations would have been altered or eliminated. Retaining our liberties has cost so much. Are we willing to give an all out continuous effort to save those benefits?

The suicide attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11 were also surprising and shocking to us. The public responded tremendously for a short time with feelings of betrayal and anger. What had we done to bring forth such hatred that people would die to kill many Americans and make a declaration of their intent and ability to hurt us as a nation?

The evidence pointed to their intentions for years, as many attacks had been made on American citizens and property abroad by violent Islamic groups. Our feelings were that we shouldn’t tolerate such unfriendly action but should react in a big way. Intelligence and plain facts indicated that fanatical Islamists were behind this terrible action.

We reacted with military force into Iraq, but with the enemy hard to identify and widely decimated, this unusually difficult war was entered into. With public and international support wavering and increasingly poor media and political support, our determined president and other leaders have activated more energy and troops into the fray. Success appears possible in Iraq, militarily and politically, even with threats to the area from Iran.

If entered into, our wars should be won to gain and maintain stability in the future. The American public should pay attention to local and world events to realize why America must destroy those bent on our demise and do it in their yards rather than fight them or slowly but surely cede to them in our yard.

Regardless of the horrors of this war and the tremendous expense of the American people we must come together as we have done before, shelve some differences and demand that our Congress quit posturing and look at the long term. I have a U.S. Marine grandson in Fallujah, Iraq; hopefully, he’s not there in vain.



Monte Swatzell

Cleburne



We cannot help ourselves

Mankind cannot leave well enough alone. He gets an idea, and he cannot help himself. He takes it up clumsily, as he would a new wrench. Then he begins twisting it, hammering it, stretching it, sharpening it until he can use it to cut his own throat.

Every innovation turns against him. His television brings him reality shows. His automobile leads him into traffic jams. And barely a generation after he invented them, his airplanes were dropping bombs on London. He cannot resist the illusion that he isn’t able to solve all problems. He introduced rabbits into Australia and then spent millions to build a fence to unsuccessfully attempt to restrain them. He introduced the “cane toad” in Florida and again the results were disastrous. No matter the problem, our solutions usually end in disarray.

Thirty odd years ago a group of scientists predicted we were entering a period with a dramatic drop in the world’s temperature, and we would all freeze to death. Now a group of scientists (practicing bad science) have decided that mankind is the source of global warming, and we must conform to their views if we are to live life here planet. Rubbish.

A report just published in a prestigious scientific journal insists the evidence shows climate warming is both natural and unstoppable and carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. In the last 300 years, which include the industrial revolution and the burning and clearing of millions of acres of tropical rain forests, mankind has only increased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by less than 1 percent. The earth has been warming the last 300 years (since the little ice age) and yet we are not nearly as warm as we were 7,000 years ago.

A recent NASA report indicates the current condition of sun spots and flares is warming the entire solar system, and there are no SUVs on Mars, Venus or Jupiter. Professor emeritus Reid Bryson at the University of Wisconsin, who has the title “The Father of Climatology Science,” recently gave a TV interview and his conclusions were: 1. There are not enough weather stations to measure the global climate; 2. The human effect on climate is negligible; 3. We don’t know if the earth is warming since you can put any constant you want into climate modeling programs and cause anything you want to be the main effect; 4. carbon dioxide has only 1/800th the effect water vapor has as a greenhouse gas; 5. Al Gore is neither a scientist nor a climatologist, and his book is not worth reading; 6. “When did consensus become the basis for science — Copernicus was in the minority when he stated that the earth revolved around the sun not the sun around the earth, which science thought at that time. And if we believed the consensus then, then we have the sun revolving around the earth today, which of course it doesn’t.”

There are roughly 2,500 scientists supporting the theory that mankind is responsible for the warming of the earth, yet 19,000 other scientists signed a petition sent to President Bush stating the alarmist group was practicing bad science. When the Berlin wall came down somebody (I cannot recall who) stated that now that Socialism and Communism had been proven to be wrong, their advocates would become environments in an attempt to maintain their control over mankind, and it looks like he or she was correct.



W.V. Bonds

Cleburne



Beware of energy companies

I am Henry Rayburn, the son of former mayor Jim Rayburne of Alvarado. My father was the county commissioner for Precinct 3 in the l960s as well.

I am writing you with the hope that somehow you will publish our experience to help others in Johnson County in dealing with the gas industry now in Johnson County and surrounding counties and exploring the Barnett Shale.

In February, our family discovered that our lease on a particular property had been traded to another energy company without our knowledge. We had a lease expiring on March 15 and assumed that we would be able to renegotiate a new and better lease in March since there was no activity on that site. We did not know also that we had signed a lease that would not protect the surfaced land or the 30 acres of pristine post oaks, majestic at 50 feet or more in height, overlooking Turkey Creek. We had bought this land to develop as country estates.

A few days before the end of the lease, and we believe in an attempt to save the company half a million dollars in renewing the lease, bulldozers moved in as did a rig and destroyed 10 to 12 acres of beautiful wooded land. They threw up a vertical well we believe to secure the lease and then left. Since the land was hilly they removed part of a hill to level off the property and fill in making their pad level and removing tons of hillside in the process. They also pushed trees into other parts of the woods later causing the removal of those woods as well. To us, they were sloppy, careless and thoughtless, inconsiderate and wasteful. Later we were told, “Trees have no value to us whatsoever. If you lose crops, then we can pay you.”

Our response from them was patronizing. We were told that with our lease we could not expect any damages whatsoever. Nor were we offered a penny for the pad. Also, tons of soil were removed from our land and used to build the pad. My brother, Byron Rayburne, who is in the sand business, says the value of the soil they took from us to build the pad is roughly $165,000 in value. They offered us nothing.

Now our property has no value as a development. The rig is placed in the heart of our project, and natural gas officials have told us bluntly that they have bent over backwards to please us and that they really can’t image why we are so upset over a few trees. My nephew did a tabulation of the lost trees, and it totals 24,000 trees. Most of these are post oaks with 50 to 60 foot heights and over 22-inch trunks. Our beautiful property has been destroyed. Our family oral history includes the story of a Caddo Indian burial ground on this property.

I am sending this letter to hopefully warn other land and mineral owners in Johnson County to have a no-drill policy in your lease, especially if you have trees and any type of valuable landscape. There is always open space in the pool for drilling. The natural gas officials have belittled every question we have had, and as they put it, “We can do pretty much whatever we wish.”



Henry Rayburn

San Antonio