Letters - Tuesday

SWEET DEAL

Government interference drives up price of sugar

The Gazette’s Jan. 10 Our View, “Welfare corn,” was spot on but didn’t go far enough. We subsidize ethanol from corn at 51 cents per gallon when studies show that energy recouped is close to break-even at best case. We keep Brazilian sugar cane ethanol out with a 54-cent tariff.

There is plenty of cane for ethanol because we keep offshore sugar out of the country with a threshold price requirement that keeps the wholesale price of sugar in the United States at 30 cents when the world price is 8 cents.

We keep out sugar, we keep out ethanol and wonder why our Latin American neighbors don’t like us? Then we worry about undocumented workers who weed sugar beets, etc. Wouldn’t it work better to let these countries make sugar in their countries and sell it to us?

Meanwhile, Lifesavers closed its Michigan plant and moved it to Canada so it can use 12 tons of world-price sugar every day instead of expensive U.S. sugar. Likewise, Hershey Chocolate is moving manufacturing to Mexico with significant layoffs already announced in Hershey, Pa.

Our lawmakers need to study the law they didn’t write — the Law of unintended consequences.

Tim Haley

Colorado Springs

NO FREE MARKET

Blame government meddling for high insurance costs

As enthralling as Chris Reimer’s assertion that the insurance industry is run through shady, backroom collusion is, it is far from reality (“Insurance companies aren’t in a free market,” Letters, Jan. 9). While all businesses use all manner of charts and graphs to assess and guide, no product or service is worth more than what consumers are willing to pay for it. If anyone feels that they’re not getting a good deal, there are an array of companies offering similar and different services at varying rates. You could even go without: that is the free market in action.

I do agree that the insurance market isn’t entirely free, but that’s not because of greedy executives, it’s due to regulation. Let’s say I were to go around and sign up people and start my own insurance company by charging a small fee that goes into a pool until someone gets sick. I would have half a dozen local, state and federal bureaucrats at my door charging me fees to make sure I’m legitimate and legal. The regulatory cost the medical industry suffers is added to the cost of treatment, creating the need for a deeper pool. Soon my small, market-decided fee, would be artificially inflated.

No, I still put my hope in the free market instead of elected officials. They have a long track record of overpaying, under-delivering and inflating costs. “Free” universal health care would stamp out what’s left of the freedom the market garners us.

Trevor A. Leed

Colorado Springs

LOST CAUSE

War has not, cannot, bring democracy to Iraq

The Iraq war has been a disaster. It has accomplished nothing. As soon as we determined there were no WMD in Iraq, we should have pulled out every last U.S. soldier from that barbaric nation.

Contrary to what our government and military are telling everybody, we have not created democracy in Iraq. The new Iraqi constitution states in Article 2 “Islam is the official religion of the state” and “No law can contradict the established principles of Islam.”

Regardless of how many elections they have, the new Iraq is an Islamic theocracy, not a democracy. Just because you have elections does not necessarily mean you have a government that protects human rights or is friendly to the U.S. Hitler was elected. Ahmadinejad was elected.

Our government and military must stop lying to us. If you are in the military, you are chasing a fairy tale in Iraq. Any nation that declares a particular religion to be “official” is doomed to have endless turmoil and strife within its borders.

Paul Kehren

Colorado Springs

WORKING THE SYSTEM

Gingrich best man to improve Washington

For all the candidates yapping about “change,” I have some questions: Is their change for better or worse? Their answer obviously would be better, of course. My next question — and the most important one is — “How?”

The president has no authority to make the laws; all laws must originate in Congress. The president’s only authority is to veto any he or she doesn’t like.

Since the vice president works more closely with Congress than the president, change will come about only when a president has as vice president someone who knows how Congress works and knows how to manipulate the bureaucratic levels of Congress to get positive things done.

I will cast my vote for whichever candidate picks Newt Gingrich to be vice president. Gingrich has a proven record of leadership, accomplishing positive things despite a hostile opposition while he was in Congress as one of its leaders.

James Spieth

Cañon City

A ‘FOWL’ ODOR

City’s sign ordinance doesn’t pass smell test

Far more disturbing than whether or not the Chicken Man continues to strut his stuff is the comment by Woodland Park City Manager David Buttery that, the law “says if it is not specifically permitted, it is specifically prohibited” (“Playing chicken with the law,” The Gazette, Jan. 10).

Apparently Buttery and the lawmakers he cites have never heard of the idea that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Or perhaps the Declaration of Independence doesn’t apply to people in Woodland Park.

Besides being inimical to democracy, the belief that a citizen must first get the government’s permission to take any action is a dangerous one, more in keeping with an absolute dictatorship than a representative government such as the United States’. It implies a power well beyond what the Founding Fathers ever intended and far more intrusive than any freely elected government has a right to go. Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t approve of the philosophy of Buttery and his lawmakers, but the current military rulers of Myanmar certainly would.

Holmes Brannon

Woodland Park

LIBATION LIBERATION

It’s time to free ourselves from archaic blue laws

Since moving here three years ago, it has seemed insane to me how this state maintains the liquor-store monopoly. Why is this so? I’ve yet to get a rational answer from anyone I’ve asked.

Three cheers for The Gazette’s Jan. 11 Our View, “Let 2008 free us from blue laws,” encouraging liquor sales deregulation.

Why can’t we include beer, wine and liquor purchases at a Sam’s or Costco? Why can’t King Soopers and Safeway have an aisle devoted to a cross-section of fine wines, at competitive costs? Silliest of all — why are the liquor stores closed on Sundays? Is that expected to prevent people from drinking their beverage of choice?

This should be an issue supported by folks across the political spectrum. The vast majority of Coloradans can and will conduct themselves responsibly, and don’t need the government, or the liquor lobby, dictating when and where we spend our money. The free market should be exercised in this case, thereby normalizing the insane pricing we endure today, and ending the artificial support of a minor sector of industry.

I strongly encourage everyone to write to their legislators in support of state Sen. Jennifer Veiga’s proposal to eliminate the current blue laws. It’s way past time to do so.

Bruce Barrell

Colorado Springs