Letters for November 19, 2015

Credit to anti-frackers

Re “The drought’s silver lining” (Guest comment, by Robert Speer, Nov. 12):

Thank you, Robert Speer, for asking, “Who … is working to protect our groundwater?”

Please don’t forget to also mention that Frack-Free Butte County is protecting our groundwater. No, fracking in Butte won’t drain North State water south. It would leave it right here, but only after that pure water was turned into a highly toxic witches’ brew.

Frackers typically pump their poisonous wastewater back into the ground where it threatens the groundwater quality. They can leave it on the surface in huge, vile open pits or in sealed steel tanks that require regular safety monitoring. The industry would like to recycle their fracking fluid to use in another frack-attack, but it is too hard to handle it safely and economically. It’s cheaper and easier to use more freshwater (on average about a million gallons) for each new frack-attack.

North State water sent south may be used for fracking there. Fracking is active in the south state where aquifers are documented as threatened by waste fracking fluid. Do we want to export our water to help support groundwater-destructive activities, particularly during a major drought?

There are gas and oil alternatives. There are no water alternatives.

Doug Fogel

Chico

A stinky proposition

Re “Preparing for pot legalization” (Editorial, Nov. 12):

Last week the CN&R once again stunk up its pages with pro-pot propaganda. That is, with arguments that since people are going to smoke recreational marijuana whether it’s legal or not, it might as well be legal so it’s “safe” and so government can tax it.

This author and the CN&R will have blood on their hands if recreational marijuana’s legalized in California. That is, for minimizing the seriousness of the drug’s effect on human health, the environment and public safety.

Alcohol already destroys marriages, families and careers. It also causes 10,076 deaths and $59 billion in property damage and medical costs annually—just from motor vehicle crashes alone. In so doing it swells everyone’s insurance premiums and causes many to incur astronomical legal fees. Do we really want to throw marijuana into this mix?

Like alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, marijuana’s harmful and isn’t necessary for either pleasure or pain relief. Rather, these substances are traps for those with more money than awareness, compassion and self-respect.

Nathan Esplanade

Tehama County

Not worth warring for

Re “Commentary criticism” (Let- ters, by Maurice Picard, Nov. 12):

I would like to thank Maurice Picard for his enlistment, coming to the aid of our nation under attack in 1941. That was nearly 74 years ago and situations have escalated to a far more offensive role.

Today’s complexities and invasions and encroachments into sovereign nations, to secure governance favorable to our best interests, translate, more than not, to exclusive access to resources and cheap labor. Economic coercion to struggling nations usually is sufficient to meet this goal, but if necessary the backing of a coup or assassination plot to overthrow any resistance is the trump card backed by covert CIA actions or military force.

The military-industrial complex is a for-profit business and money-laundering endeavor consuming over half of tax revenue collected, proliferating the world’s weaponry and allowing private contractors to have virtually unregulated opportunity to [inflate the costs of] security and services, all at the taxpayers’ expense. The recruitment of a steady flow of personnel to enforce this scenario is necessary and banners lining the streets of Chico near schools are promoting that goal.

Wars of profiteering and resource acquisition have nothing to do with anyone’s freedom and are surely not worthy of sacrificing our children for them.

Jimi Gomez

Chico

No Hillary, please

I’m a life-long Democrat, and it hurts to write this letter. I don’t think Hillary Clinton should be the Democratic choice for president in 2016.

As secretary of state between 2009-13, Clinton had a heavy hand in the destruction of Libya and Syria, bringing on today’s misery and tragic deaths of Libyan and Syrian refugees forced to leave their ruined homelands. Clinton’s shown no signs of regret for this. News sources in 2013 revealed that, against Obama’s stated position, Clinton’s hand was strangely heavy, too, in the 2009 Honduran military coup that replaced the elected, leftist President Manuel Zelaya with a right-wing military Junta. Do you remember when newspapers reported that the spell of large numbers of desperate children in terrible circumstances being smuggled not long ago across Mexican borders were actually from Honduras? No regrets about Honduras from Clinton then or since.

I don’t see how it can be denied that, as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was carrying out the neo-conservative, Bush foreign policy of regime change for those who weren’t “with us.” I don’t know exactly which dark powers influenced Clinton, but I strongly feel that she shouldn’t be the 2016 Democratic choice for president.

Linda Furr

Chico

Wolf delisting anti- science

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) voted to remove gray wolves from the endangered species list on Nov. 9. In so doing, the agency just added the right to kill to the state’s right-to-die law. What a mistake. Why are we allowing humans to take out their vengeance on this animal?

There are only 81 gray wolves in the state. By ignoring the input from over a dozen scientists and scores of concerned conservationists, ODFW has diminished its credibility as a wildlife manager and broken the trust of the citizenry.

Knuckling under to the moneyed interests of the bloodthirsty hunting and livestock industries showed a lack of concern for ecological balance. Has there been any measurable threat to humans or livestock by the gray wolf? If so, wildlife conservationists should be willing to provide compensation. That is, if these claims are to be trusted.

Gray wolves, such as OR-7 (also called Journey), have crossed and will continue to cross state lines. Will California Fish and Wildlife follow Oregon’s lead?

Dick Cory

Chico

Nurturing nature

On behalf of the Chico Creek Nature Center, I would like to thank the Chico community for making our recent fundraising efforts successful. We are so pleased that in our time of need the community has rallied and shown that it values our work and the direction we are headed.

This summer we received tremendous financial support through the Nurturing Nature Drive. We also received lots of moral support through the comments left by our donors. Comments like this one from Emily Alma: “Gotta keep the Nature Center going! This place has enriched the lives of Chicoans for so many years—and helped countless children fall in love with nature!” And this one from Carole Swain: “Your work is so important for the Chico community and especially for the children’s life-giving relationship to nature.”

This fall we have had two more great successes through the North Valley Community Foundation—the Annie B’s Community Drive and our very own fourth annual Hunter’s Moon Dinner. These successes would not be possible without our dedicated volunteers and the generous support of many local businesses and community members.

Thank you, Chico, for your outpouring of support!

Caitlin Reilly

Chico

Editor’s note: Ms. Reilly is executive director of the Chico Creek Nature Center.

The Fed’s a fraud

If you are middle class, poor or dependent upon Social Security, I suggest the Federal Reserve is stealing money from you. It is encouraging you to borrow with its low interest rates and to gamble in the stock market. Its low rates also discourage savings as you are actually losing money on any money you have in banks. By printing unlimited amounts of money, it has decreased the value of the money you have and made it harder to sell U.S. treasuries.

It has redefined the CPI (consumer price index) to make inflation look less than it is for you and me. They thus allow the government not to provide an increase in Social Security payments because they are based on CPI. It has redefined unemployment rates, making them less than they actually are and this gives them an excuse to keep interest rates low and benefit banks and large financial corporations. Low rates also create bubbles in investments, which eventually burst. I suggest we abolish the Fed!

Norm Dillinger

Chico