LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

A Letter to my 'Representatives (?)"

SOUTH DAKOTA - Flashing a smile, Joyce Bortscheller briefly hugged Hyperion Energy Center executive Preston Phillips as she greeted him in the backyard of her home here.

By a solid 58 percent to 42 percent margin, county voters approved Hyperion's request to rezone 3,292 acres of farm land for a new classification, Energy Center Planned Development. (In case you don't understand (An 'oil refinery').

The response from an environmentalist, the group you in congress totally support was: "We have strategies in place to slow or delay all the permit processes," Ed Cable, chairman of the anti-Hyperion group Save Union County, said after the vote. The environmentalists are using your laws to raise prices in this country.

Thank God we have people like South Dakotans who have the brains and guts to take on you people. They are taking steps to ease the energy crisis and stratospheric gas prices brought on by your stupid attachment to a strategy drawn up by environmentalists trying to strangle this country into a crisis we can't handle by normal means.

You have barred means to allay the problems you created! You are oppressing this country and people faster than the Japanese or Nazis could have.

You've prohibited the building of nuclear power plants. You've prohibited the mining of shale deposits in our western states. You've created a substitute fuel program that is the dumbest maneuver I've seen - subsidizing corn production to create demand for corn to produce ethanol. Now farmers are taking food crops out of production to grow the higher priced corn crops to increase their profits.

Then you have the gall to prevent cheaper (cost to produce $1.64 a gallon.) Brazilian ethanol from helping to reduce prices in this country (Cost to produce $2.70 a gallon.) by putting a $0.54/gallon tariff on it! Are you people on Bin Laden's payroll?

You are now considering a bill (Lieberman/Warner) that will add $2.10 to the price of gas. When will you quit? Is it your plan to kill the transportation industry in this country?

You've over regulated every segment of our economy and delayed, by decades, the development of alternate fuel technologies.

You've limited drilling off our coasts, in Alaska, and anywhere there is a bug, bird, fish, or plant that might be inconvenienced. Better that our people suffer!

To alleviate your pain at these higher prices you then pass a bill giving you a $5,000 a year raise and a total salary of $170,000. The salary increase that I and all the rest of us slobs you are criminalizing will probably amount to $300 annually!

Lincoln's address ended with the words "...we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." I hope he was right.

You are in Congress to serve the people of this country. Do you remember the story of what it was that led the French Queen to say "let them eat cake?"

Now, what are you going to do to reduce gas prices for those who sent you to Washington?

Donald W. Plezia

Spring Hill

Question Regarding

Global Warming

I just wanted to confront all of our enviro-whackos with a single question regarding the nonsense of global warming. Why was the earth's climate so cold during World War II and the Korean War?

During WWII, every industrialized nation and nearly all the developing countries were at war. Total war was being waged throughout the world. Men and materials were mobilized to build armies, navies, and air forces. Industries worldwide were mass producing the weapons of war. These factories were not equipped, nor required to reduce emissions, and their governments were not about to say or do anything while fighting for survival.

All these weapons burned fuel so much that not enough could be pumped out of the ground to supply all of them. Eventually, Germany was forced to rely almost entirely on synthetic fuels after many of the fields that supplied them oil were destroyed or liberated. These same weapons spewed smoke and flame and those hit were left to burn on the battlefields. V-weapons and bombers were raining death down on cities reducing them and their populations to a smoldering ruin. Nearly all of Germany was converted to rubble.

Yet the Russian winter of 1941-42 was the coldest in memory, as was the winter of 1944-45 when my own father suffered frostbite at the Battle of the Bulge.

There were atomic bomb tests and then two more A-bombs were dropped on Japanese cities. Several hydrogen bombs were tested and yet the Korean Peninsula experienced the coldest winter in memory.

Many soldiers from both sides suffered frostbite in Korea the winter of 1951-52.

Lorne DeWitt

Brooksville

The Power Of One

One of the many nationwide classroom success stories happened this year in Hernando County at Moton Elementary. To quote from a parent's letter of appreciation to this teacher: "For the first time, I was actually receiving good reports. He comes home talking about what he did in school and actually uses words like 'my friends.'" The parent goes on to say: "you built his confidence from a child who wouldn't talk to his parents, to a child who, for the first time, asked me to make a gift for his teacher - from you he has learned he won't be judged for what he thinks or feels." In conclusion, "A simple thank you is nowhere near enough to express how much having you as a teacher has meant. I pray the love and time you poured into him be returned to you hundred-fold. May your summer be full of well deserved rest, and the knowledge that you made a difference in the life of our child."

Through kind words, thoughtful deeds, and endless compassion, one teacher can do more to shape the future of our world on a bad day than any one CEO or politician ever could do on their best day. Thank God, teachers don't use monetary yard sticks to measure their success in life; to them it's all about making a difference, not making a buck. You see teaching for most teachers isn't just a job; it is a labor of love.

Jim Gries

Weeki Wachee