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Our mailbag runneth over

In an effort to get our large volume of election letters printed in a timely fashion, letters pertaining to the Nov. 4 election must be received no later than noon on Mon., Oct. 20. The Telegraph will make every attempt to run letters received by the deadline, but cannot guarantee all letters will get in due to space constraints and unforeseen acts of god.

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Morrissey will lead as treasurer

To the editor,

In this era of rising costs and stagnant revenues, the county needs strong fiscal leadership. By virtue of her education, training and fiscally conservative values, Allison Morrissey is well-qualified to bring such leadership to the Treasurer’s office. Her qualifications include accounting and business degrees. Her experience covers 25 years’ service in Fortune 50 companies including bank auditing, sales process, software design and process improvement for a large utility company. In these jobs, she has worked to improve systems that transcend functional and geographic boundaries. In short, she knows how to eliminate unnecessary spending in big enterprises.

On the revenue side, from her experience in the oil and gas industry she knows the drivers of declining gas production which will help in planning budgets. She is Treasurer of Durango Friends of the Arts, which awarded more than $32,000 in grants last year to performing and visual artists and groups in our community. She is a member of the Board of the Community Foundation and an IRS-certified tax preparer for the local VITA chapter. I know Allison Morrissey, and she is the right leader for the Treasurer’s Office in these challenging fiscal times.

– R. Graham Smith, Durango

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Moderation is not just for monks

To the editor,

The Montezuma County commissioners recently asked that the state block a private landowner from selling his property to Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. The reasoning was a thinly veiled concern about the 4

Monument’s ability to manage the additional acreage.  The more likely reason – given the position of the BOCC in the past – they opposed the creation of the Monument and now they are denying an individual his property rights in their vendetta against the federal government. This action speaks to the slippery slope when elected officials operate from extreme positions. 

Let this be a cautionary tale for us here in La Plata County. Our commissioner race offers a clear choice to avoid extreme positions. As example, both candidates note the difficulties in gaining approval for projects. 

Brad Blake has stated that he will do his best to keep the EPA and CDOT out of the County. He has stated that the County is not business friendly. As a conservative, he believes in smaller government and has offered no solution to what he perceives to be the County’s anti-business stance.

Cynthia Roebuck has spent 15 years as a planning consultant and she knows in order to deal with these issues we need a clear, predictable process. Cynthia will work to adopt the Land Use Code and support the Planning Commission in amending the Comprehensive Plan. 

La Plata County needs a commissioner who will act on real issues with real solutions – I am casting my vote for Cynthia Roebuck and encourage you to vote for a rational moderate!

– Julie Cooley, Durango

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Vote McLachlan for education

Dear Editor,

As a student at Western State Colorado University, I want a state representative who will fight for my school, my friends, and I in the State Legislature. That is why I will be supporting Representative Mike McLachlan for re-election this November.

I recently met Mr. McLachlan while he was registering voters on campus. He seemed like a smart person who was in touch with the issues important to those who spoke with him.  I did my research and liked what I saw, but what swung my vote for Mr. McLachlan was when I found out that he was able to help secure $25 million in funding for the renovation of Quigley Hall at Western State. This is an improvement project that is long overdue and I am proud that my school is finally getting the recognition it deserves.

Another reason I am supporting Representative McLachlan is on the same day it was announced that our school would be receiving the funding my friend received a mailing from the J. Paul Brown campaign stating that he would say no to state funding. I was left wondering if he had been my state representative would he have said “no” to provide funding to renovate a building in desperate need of repair? Would he say no to providing the funding to a school that I love? This stance of a blanket “no” against funding is out of touch with reality and out of touch with what is important to me.

We need a leader who will stand up for all of us, not one who will put his Tea Party ideology ahead of what is best for my school and our community. Please join me in supporting Representative McLachlan this November.

– Kortney Perschbacher, a politically active junior, Western State Colorado University

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Smith would carry out the law

To the editor,

Two years ago, much of southern Colorado was on fire. Residents worked with fire departments to save homes and the lives of people and animals. After this, people who live in fear of their rights being taken from them returned to separating themselves from the government, clinging to the notion that it is run by people unlike themselves, which is not true. This is unfortunately not true when it comes to sheriffs and other locally elected officials, who refuse to work with anyone who has a different point of view and the sheriffs refuse to carry out the laws of the land.

This was recently witnessed in the previously burned area of the Black Forest, where 14 skeletal remains of horses, covered by tarps, were found in a barn. Manure was several feet deep. Among this horror, were 10 horses in various stages of neglect. Dual Peppy, a renowned quarter horse stallion, was one of the survivors, found starving with ribs and hip bones clearly visible.

Initially, the local sheriff’s office did not remove the horses and no veterinarian was called to evaluate the horses! The released statement justifying their decision read: “Had any of the animals been in imminent jeopardy, they would have been removed from the location.” This lack of action is all too common throughout America for horses in abusive situations. Animal cruelty laws remain weak and those not enforced. It is unacceptable and inexcusable for the sheriff to have left these suffering horses to remain in horrific conditions, where their abusers remained as their caretakers. Another example of a sheriff who refused to follow common sense, common justice and the law.

Our current La Plata County Sheriff refuses to enforce background checks on purchases of guns. He has set himself above the law by not enforcing the law, which is his job. I personally have an ex who could not pass the background check to buy a gun and I fight to keep that protection in place, for my own safety. Please, vote for Sean Smith to be our sheriff, for the protection of animals, children, women, men and me!

– Cherry Miloe, Forest Lakes

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Thank Sen. Udall for Obamacare

To the editor,

The “Affordable Health Care Act,” now commonly known as “Obamacare,” is a massive piece of legislation, 2,700 pages of turgid legalese that now defines the healthcare rights of every American. Visualize a pile of paper 11½ inches thick weighing more than 27 pounds. 

Coloradans can thank Sen. Mark Udall for the passage of Obamacare. He was one of the 60 Democratic senators who rammed through the passage of Obamacare in a straight party-line vote on Christmas Eve 2009. Udall cast the crucial vote for a 2,700 page bill he cannot even seriously pretend that he read before voting for it. Sen. Udall evidently followed Nancy Pelosi’s infamous advice, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it … .”

Udall promised Coloradans “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your plan. …. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” More than 350,000 privately insured Coloradans have discovered they were misled by Udall’s promises. Hundreds of thousands more with employer provided healthcare insurance coverage will soon discover the falsity of these promises as employers begin dropping employee healthcare coverage because of skyrocketing premium costs as Obamacare becomes effective for these plans.

Obamacare as it exists today is only a waypoint on the road to total government control of the nation’s healthcare dollars and total control of life and death decisions regarding the way these healthcare dollars are spent. Leftist advocacy groups have been working for years behind the scenes on plans to “fundamentally transform” our nation’s healthcare system into their vision of a Utopian socialized medical program where all medical decisions regarding who is to be treated and how will be made by central planners for the benefit of the “collective.” The long range plan is for all of the nation’s healthcare dollars to be routed through Washington and spent according to a government master plan.

 Barack Obama is on record stating that the ultimate goal is a “single payer plan” and that employer provided coverage will be “phased out.” (See:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvg8qVKZYuM)     The plan is for every American to be forced into a “V.A. style” health care system where faceless bureaucrats will decide which patients are eligible for treatment, what treatments and medications will be permitted and what maximum medical costs can be spent on each patient.

The nation’s largest insurance companies were induced to support Obamacare believing that universal healthcare coverage presented a golden opportunity to expand their business and profitability as all American citizens would be compelled by law to find Obamacare-compliant health coverage in the private market or qualify for Medicaid. Insurers were further lured in by a government promise buried deep in Obamacare to hold them harmless from cost overruns in the first years arising from inability to accurately calculate premiums due to unpredictability of costs.  The insurance companies failed to fully understand that the private insurance market feature of Obamacare was designed to fail.

The long term plan has always been to phase out all private carriers in favor of the “single payer plan” under which Washington will collect all of the costs of the healthcare program through higher taxes, regulate all aspects of the doctor-patient relationship and dispense healthcare dollars according to government’s own priorities. This will include choosing who merits treatment and who does not. Rationing and “death panels” are already subtly intimated in Obamacare’s provisions.

 Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects of Obamacare, just published an article in The Atlantic entitled “Why I Hope to Die at 75.” He is not really talking about himself, but about you and your family. The idea is to make us feel guilty for wanting to cling to life beyond what he considers our “useful” age. Dr. Emanuel has long advocated denying care to the elderly. “I think this manic desperation to endlessly extend life is misguided and potentially destructive,” says Dr. Emanuel.

There is one way, and one way only, that Coloradans can break the grip of Obama and his leftist Senate allies who are dedicated to destroying what has been the best healthcare system in the world. The one way is to elect a senator who will represent us. A vote for Cory Gardner for Senate will help clean up the mess in Washington. Sen. Cory Gardner will be a responsible representative for the citizens of Colorado, not just be another rubber stamp for the Obama/Reid socialist agenda.

– Sincerely, Virgil R. Pulliam, Durango