Letters to the Editor

If President Joe Biden doesn’t like walls, why is he currently building one?

Is very first day in office, President Joe Biden made it clear he is idealogically opposed to building walls. He doesn’t like them, they’re unfriendly, and they don’t work, are among the reasons he and his administration have cited for halting construction on the wall along the Mexican border.

So guess who is building a wall now? Joe Biden!

The Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged that it began construction of a $456,584 “security fence” around the president’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware in September – just as DHS was wrapping up a fiscal year which set a new record for the number of illegal border crossers.

The news begs some obvious questions, like, why are they spending nearly half a million bucks on construction of security fencing around the president’s beach home if security fencing doesn’t work? Or, why is the security of the president’s beach house more important than the security of our borders and the safety of the people who live along the border? And why has President Biden spent 70 days in Delaware since taking office, but claims to not have had time to personally visit the border?

I guess we can call these the $456,548 question.

Ray Waldhauser

We will still be dependent on fossil fuels for a while says a Times reader

I at least agree in part of Ms. CJ Stevens PVT letter of Oct. 29, why anyone would dump their trash in the desert when the local trash dump is free, even if in some cases it’s a mile or two farther. When I explored the desert around here in my ATV with a box on it I would stop and pick up trash then at some point take it to our free dump. There were times when rangers would organize trash pickup days for volunteers and have a dumpster there for trash and about 20 or so of us would go on trash pickup for those days.

But that’s about the extent of the agreement. For example, when I built my house I looked into solar and wind energy. The wind was very unreliable and sporadic, “off-grid” solar was not cost-effective due to maintenance and battery life and replacement. I did invest in an “on-grid” solar system that did eventually pay for itself after years, but I have now found as the panels age they become less efficient and will fail at some point. Depending on the price of power vs. price of any solar system, this area of the country can save money and power for others’ use mostly due to having a great number of sunny days here.

When one thinks they are saving the plant going “green” with anything like wind, solar, electric vehicles, and etc. before investing and pinning a good deed metal on yourself, read Michael Schellenberger’s book, “Apocalypse Never”. Michael is a hardcore environmentalist but is someone who looks at things that work and things that don’t and why with the relationship of humans and the environment. He takes everything into account from things that affect the environment from the beginning of mining for raw materials to processing them, to assembling various components to the finished “green” product, to its life expectancy to disposal or recycle, which in the development stage we’re in today, recycling is not feasible and the natural breakdown of these no longer usable products takes many centuries to break down.

Sorry, but until there are some gigantic new breakthroughs in the green development, we will be dependent on fossil fuels for some time yet, or we can choose nuclear energy which so much of the public is petrified of, or move back to horse and buggy transportation and chopping wood for cooking and heating. But the reality is if we went back to these things on a mass scale the environment would become much dirtier for everyone.

I grew up in the Midwest where sometimes the sky was a dingy brown, the river was polluted and people died at an earlier age due to many factors. Today those same skies are clearer, people fish that river and eat the fish from it. Some has to do with the loss of part of the manufacturing base but some has to do with improvements now implemented to clean the air, the water, and the earth itself. There are still some coal-fired power-producing plants that you no longer see black sooty smoke coming out of their stacks due to innovations like “scrubbers”.

We can and should continue to work toward a cleaner and cheaper reliable energy to fill today and tomorrow’s needs but we shouldn’t throw the “baby out with the bathwater”. As a nation, we have cleaned up our part of the world beyond what most other developed countries have done and the reality is, if you don’t have the major polluters of the earth, China and India, just to name a few, it won’t matter much if you have the nicest house in the worst neighborhood.

We were energy independent for the first time in over 60 years, yet today we are OPEC beggers, “please sell us more oil!” We’ve given Russia a great deal of power over our allies by OKing their pipeline to Europe. There are ways to improve things but those in power today are either ignorant or have ulterior motives to lessen our innovation and influence on the rest of the world.

David Jaronik

Lack of information on vaccine in letter angers reader

Once again, Mr. Jaronik blatantly left out information to make his “story” work for him. He stated that “fully-vaxxed Colin Powell” passed “from Covid-19 complications” and was a “most glaring example” to support his stance that the vax didn’t keep him from dying. But what he left out was that Mr. Powell was seriously compromised. His immune system had been compromised by multiple myeloma, for which he was being treated. That is a cancer that affects plasma cells, a key component of the IMMUNE system. So, Mr. J, please do not use Mr. Powell as an example of your misguided opinions.

Jaronik goes on to state “natural immunity, which seems to hold much greater defense than anything else” (except Colin Powell?) but does not back that up with facts. Well, here’s some facts:

■ During June, every person who died of COVID-19 in Maryland (130) were UNvaccinated, according to a spokesperson for the governor’s office.

■ In Alabama, which has the lowest vaccination rate in the country, 94% of current COVID-19 hospitalized patients are UNvaccinated according to state statistics.

■ In a study, several hospitals contacted reported that often vaccinated COVID-19 patients in the ICU are being hospitalized FOR REASONS OTHER THAN COVID-19.

■ Nevada reports UNvaccinated COVID-19 patients are contributing to overcrowding and staffing shortages in state hospitals.

■ The Clark County Health District reported that out of every 100,000 people, there were eight deaths of vaccinated and 562 deaths of UNvaccinated people. That’s 70 times more deaths of the UNvaccinated.

I can go on and on with the same stats around the county. So, Mr. J, PLEASE give us ALL the facts, not just the ones that serve your agenda. People who do not vax have a much higher rate of hospitalizations and deaths than those vaccinated. Some call it nature’s way of culling the herd.

CJ Stevens