Rise above the parties … and think
To the editor,
As I listen to the President and his numerous mouthpieces preach that “He’s for strengthening middle class families,” I can’t help but ask myself “Really, which ones?” I will pause here to say that if you think I’m writing this to simply criticize President Obama and praise his Republican counterparts, you’re wrong. I’m only interested in facts and truth. Regardless, of whom they make look bad (Democrat, Republican or anyone in beween).

As I travel the nation weekly in multiple metropolitan areas, I find a common thread amongst people, they are hurting. Specifically middle class families who have seen food costs skyrocket along with everything else as the purchasing power of our dollars is decimated by the massive government spending and subsequent Federal Reserve (which is a private bank!) actions to print more money. With respect to people hurting, there is one major exception, government workers (city, state, federal). The majority of these folks are doing quite well; in fact, they have never done better.
 
Moreover, the big banks are doing phenomenal! Just last month, JPMorgan announced record profits, helped by – you guessed it – Federal Reserve money. At the same time, small, local regional banks are being forced to shut their doors, you know, the kind we like in Durango (but despised by President Obama).

So here we have it, government workers are doing great, and big banks and the like are recording record profits but what about the middle class? This is where we need to set aside the R (Republican) or D (Democrat) alliances and focus on the H (Humans). There are nearly 50 million people on food stamps (relying on government to feed them) and nearly 24 million people unemployed. To me, this is truly devastating. We were told Obama would fix the economy, right? He would create jobs, correct? Well, look around, actually talk to people (like I do), most are worse off than ever (with the exceptions noted above). We’re being told that if you tax the “wealthy” that will fix everything and create jobs. Really, how? I’ve never 4 received a job from a poor person or higher taxes being enacted, have you? Remember the “Stimulus” funding, just this week the Feds announced 1,900 cases of fraud being investigated.  

When hiring people, typically past performance is a predictor of future success (or lack thereof). Well, let’s examine the facts. We were told by President Obama that the unemployment rate wouldn’t go above 8 percent if we passed the stimulus, it did. We were told that he would cut the federal deficit (you know that all of us and our children and grandchildren have to pay for) in half, he didn’t. In fact, it was just announced that the yearly deficit topped $1 trillion again this year for the fourth year in a row; I think you can see where this is going.

In conclusion, you can clearly see what our future here in the U.S. will be by just looking at what’s going on in Greece and Spain where unemployment is 25.1 percent and 25 percent respectively. On a personal level, I’ve seen relatives in my own family go from full-time employment, to unemployed and collecting food stamps, enrolled in Medicaid and on disability during the last four years. I ask that we rise above the parties and think. At our current rate the future doesn’t look very bright at all.

– Mattie Snow (Individual), Durango

 Is the death penalty worth it?
(Editors note: The following is one in a series of op-ed pieces written by Animas High School students that will run over the next few weeks.)
To the editor,
California is known for being a progressive state, but in the recent vote on Proposition 34, which would ban the death penalty, 53 percent of voters abandoned their moral judgment. Perhaps, like many misled proponents of the death penalty, these voters believe that the death penalty is cheaper, appropriate and an effective form of justice. But there is significant proof that the death penalty has far more faults than benefits.

Proponents of the death penalty argue that putting criminals to death is cheaper than keeping them in prison for life. However, the death penalty ends up being a financial drain on taxpayers.  According to the Death Penalty Information Center, enforcing the death penalty costs Florida $51 million a year above what it would cost to punish all first-degree murderers with life in prison without parole. These kinds of shocking numbers are not just seen in Florida, but in states such as California, which has one of the most populated death rows. Despite the excessive amount of money that taxpayers have to pay, the death penalty is rarely carried out because of all of the appeals and legal processes, ultimately creating an economic burden.

One of the reasons the death penalty still exists is because some people believe it deters crimes. But to think this is naïve.  A recent report by the National Research Council called studies claiming that the death penalty deters murders are “fundamentally flawed.” There are many other studies supporting this viewpoint that the death penalty does nothing to protect our security. In a survey performed on presidents of the country’s top criminological societies, 88 percent of these presidents denied that the death penalty had any sort of deterrence to murders (Radelet & Lacock). In theory, this system is effective, but in today’s society there is a different reality.

This reality that I speak of is shown, in part, by the inequality that riddles the system. With the way our “justice” system operates today, far more minorities are sentenced to death than whites. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) states, “Despite the fact that African Americans make up only 13 percent of the nation’s population, almost 50 percent of those currently on the federal death row are African American.” These numbers certainly don’t reflect an equal system. Another study from Pierce & Radelet found that in Louisiana, the odds of a death sentence were 97 percent higher for those whose victim was white than for those whose victim was black. If we are a country that strives for equality, then we must prevent laws that continue this harsh cycle of prejudice and discrimination.

Perhaps most importantly is the fact that the death penalty violates the Constitution. Amendment Eight of the Constitution of the United States says, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Would you not agree that being strapped down to a table, knowing the exact second you are going to die, and not knowing whether you are going to feel pain or not, is a form of cruel or unusual punishment? And this way of putting people to death, known as lethal injection, has just been recently introduced as the more “humane” death penalty.  In the past, and still to this day, the electrical chair was used, which is clearly a form of torture. By disregarding the Eighth Amendment, the government is acting unjustly. We should not abide by a law that completely disregards the rules and rights that our nation has agreed to protect.

The death penalty was practiced hundreds of years ago when slavery was still considered conventional, but for some reason it has yet to be abolished. Times have changed, and the laws should reflect current societal norms.  It is not as though the abolishment of the death penalty will set criminals free. Instead, they would be imprisoned for life and have to live with what they have done.  In this day and age, the death penalty is discriminatory, expensive and unacceptable. The death penalty is not the answer to protecting our unalienable rights to security and equality, nor is it the answer to a just society.

– Helen Thomson, Animas High School

Warm piles of political excrement
To the Editor:
Well, the election is over, and Republicans are licking their mostly self-inflicted wounds. Hopefully, they learned that (while it might have made them feel good in a juvenile, playground-word-war sort of way) wasting $380 million on dishonest, divisive and insulting campaign-spam cannot buy them a presidential election. In the first place, it was stupid of the party PAC-rats to think that minorities, women and the American young are impressionable enough to be swayed by their crap. Secondly, it was foolish of the party to think that Karl Rove or Fox News has ever produced anything other than steaming piles of such political excrement. The problem for Republicans, however, is that learning is not their strong suit – especially when learning something may confront them with experiences that contradict their sacred self-serving myths of moral superiority and self-importance or deprive them of their perennial need to demonize, bully and demean others.  

So, it seems unlikely that Republicans will learn anything constructive from this election. As always, they’ll find ways to spin the truth to bolster their myths. They’ll continue to project their own lowest natures onto others, use these projections to rationalize their own bad behavior and pander to the lowest common denominator – the T.P.ers, extremists and other sociopaths who comprise the swollen underbelly of Red State America. They’ll buy more guns, threaten to assassinate, threaten to secede, threaten to do everything they can to undermine and thwart the government. They’ll stamp, shout, posture and pout. They’ll do everything – except stand up, lead by positive example, honor our democratic system, actually create jobs rather than simply brag about it, and demonstrate the dignity and generosity of spirit that would make them worthy of America’s esteem.  

Man, if Republican strategy is somehow a manifestation of what they call “intelligent design,” it sure doesn’t seem very intelligent. Rather, it seems self-marginalizing and self-defeating – which makes me think that, perhaps, this Republican resistance to evolution is not merely a by-product of misguided religious ideology, but a self-destructive and atavistic determinism encoded into their very DNA and expressed as delusional thinking and political incompetence. Or, maybe God just doesn’t like them anymore.

– Bob Kimmick, Durango

Braving the streets of Durango
To the editor,
A motorcycle driven by a maniac screams by between I and the other car on my left. Directly in front, a woman slams on her brakes as the maniac passes her, and she yells an obscenity out the window. That same car to my left makes an abrupt and perhaps less than advisable left turn ahead of oncoming traffic, which slows down not in the least, and my hands, white from the grip on my steering wheel, shake from the chaos. I pray for a steady stream of greens and a quick escape to safer, less populated and insane streets.

I have driven a Uhaul across this grand country to the grand city of New York, N.Y., and been lost in the maze of Jersey caverns for hours. I have navigated a tank of a GMC Yukon in the up and downs and expensive meter tolls of San Francisco. I have sat hours on end in endless rivers of cars and tumult of dark alleys in Chicago, braved interstate construction doubled with hundreds of thousands of folks rushing home at the same hour in Denver, and waited patiently behind herds of cattle and their drivers in Idalia, Colo. None of this, however, has prepared me or can compare with the terror waiting on the streets of Durango.

From the looks of vehicles populating Durango’s streets, it would seem a very eclectic place. And judging from the bumper stickers and people I have met in my two months as a resident, that would seem an accurate impression. Enormous, gas-guzzling, bile-spitting pick-ups match the men in cowboy hats and Texas attitudes, and the adorable, self-righteous and economical, I hope, little cars match the earth-toned environmentally conscious driver inside. Appearances and political as well as perhaps social philosophies may separate the wonderful array of bodies (save color) but there is one very distinct quality everyone in Durango seems to share to an abundant degree. And it is a hard-charging, willfully oblivious, always impetuous and thoroughly dangerous quality indeed.

In my two months in Durango, I have seen shattered telephone poles and heard of struck bikers as well as witnessed many a hazardous, but I suppose bold, move in turning lanes. I must say I am well impressed that the devastation has been so limited. I have told those I know that when I dare the streets of Durango, I am sure to have a copy of the Holy Bible, Torah, Quran, and several feet of various small animals on my lap. I close my eyes and, as they say, let Jesus take the wheel. It seems to have paid dividends for I am, knock on something composite of oak, still alive. I have developed a similar strategy for navigating the roads as every other lunatic, for in a world of insanity it is the sane man who is most insane. My advice to you is the same advice you will find everywhere else. Do not text and drive, get off the phone, be courteous as much as possible and aggressive when necessary, and most importantly of all, take the bus.

– Kaleb Rittenhouse, Durango
 

    

 

 

In this week's issue...

January 25, 2024
Bagging it

State plastic bag ban is in full effect, but enforcement varies

January 26, 2024
Paper chase

The Sneer is back – and no we’re not talking about Billy Idol’s comeback tour.

January 11, 2024
High and dry

New state climate report projects continued warming, declining streamflows