Support Planned Parenthood
It is imperative that the New Hampshire Executive Council vote to restore funding to Planned Parenthood. The facts are as follows: Planned Parenthood provides fertility control to women of all backgrounds. It offers family and sexual health counseling to citizens of all backgrounds and both sexes, and screenings for cancers and sexually transmitted infections. Refusing to fund them as a means of restricting access to a constitutionally protected right (i.e., abortion) is not only morally and ethically wrong, it only serves to further increase incidence of the very thing you seek to stop: unwanted pregnancies requiring termination. The defunding of Planned Parenthood is a self-defeating policy and serves only to cause more hardship and suffering to the citizens in our state.
Charles “Chad” Picard
Lebanon
A Dartmouth Bubble?
Harvard and Penn have bubbles. Columbia is raising funds to construct a bubble. Yale is investigating installing a bubble. Dartmouth can install a bubble, too. Why not?
Like Harvard, Dartmouth could have a dome-like removable bubble that would give it year-round use of any one or more of its artificial turf fields. The bubble would cover the playing surface from November until spring to provide for winter workouts and spring practices. The Harvard bubble rises high enough to accommodate full-sized field activities such as football, lacrosse and baseball. These are the same sports for which Dartmouth asserts it needs to build a colossal building alongside a residential neighborhood of single-family homes.
Dartmouth insists that this colossal structure needs to be built in the Tyler/Chase roads residential neighborhood so that Dartmouth students can walk to practice and not have to take a shuttle to other land Dartmouth owns. A bubble on any one of Dartmouth’s artificial turf fields would meet that objective.
It is incredibly selfish and arrogant that Dartmouth would prefer to burden and permanently diminish a neighborhood of family homes with an oversized, warehouse-style, 72-foot-high building rather than choose an alternative so readily available and which the institutions with which they are competing for student-athletes have chosen.
Nina Lloyd
Hanover
The Truth About the Koch Brothers
John McClaughry’s June 21 op-ed piece in praise of Charles Koch’s book Good Profit prompted me to write in praise of a book with a more honest perspective: investigative journalist Jane Mayer’s excellent Dark Money, in which the Koch brothers’ Machiavellian political intrigues figure prominently.
McClaughry quotes Charles Koch’s definition of Good Profit as “creating superior value for our customers while consuming fewer resources and always acting lawfully and with integrity.” Mayer’s book shows just what a fabrication that is. One of many examples: The Koch brothers’ businesses have paid millions of dollars in fines for breaking the law, including a $30 million penalty for violating the Clean Water Act. The Kochs and their cronies also hold regular secret gatherings at luxury resorts, where they compete with each other to raise money for conservative academic “centers” at public universities and “not-for-profit” think tanks whose donors are untraceable.
These people’s goal is to indoctrinate and fund political candidates who will toe their line and advance their agenda. That agenda, broadly, is to undermine state and federal laws that protect the Earth, the air we breathe, the water we drink, our voting rights, our workplace safety and our kids’ education. To them, America is for sale and they aim to be the highest bidder. The assertion that the Kochs and their sinkholes for unlimited and untraceable political influence are acting in the slightest bit “lawfully and with integrity” is laughable.
Rebecca Kvam Paquette
Hanover
More Guns, More Violence
Regarding the pit bull attacking the off-duty police officer’s huskies and the bullet that officer used to kill the pit bull, I encountered those huskies last week. Like most of that breed, they are somewhat averse to humans except for their owners. I never saw the pit bull, but I am afraid of these dogs that have been bred as fighting dogs and cannot be controlled by their owners when aroused. If one attacked me, my child or dog I would stab it through the heart. However, I don’t carry a knife.
I am not sure why an off-duty police officer carries a weapon; however, since the NRA encourages civilians to carry firearms, including public elementary school teachers, and since Congress is beholden to the NRA, I should probably keep an AK-47 with me at all times.
Fortunately, I no longer live in White River Junction. I live on the North Shore of Kauai, Hawaii. We have the most stringent and rigorous gun regulations in the U.S. To purchase a gun, one must first get a permit from the police, who examine criminal records, etc. Because the only access to the island, short of a yacht, is through the airport, it is rare indeed to read of a gun death in our local paper, The Garden Island.
Jon Appleton
Princeville, Hawaii
Those Who Bleat About Guns
The editorial “America’s Gun Cult,” in the June 23 Valley News, seems to have been an attempt to convince those who prefer the ease and convenience of feeling to the time and effort required for thought, that the average American is many times more likely to be the victim of a homicide than are the residents of other countries.
The low incidence of gun deaths in Japan was cited (an old favorite of shallow thinkers), but no reference was made to the similar level among Japanese-Americans. Nor was it mentioned that once participation in drug, gang or other illegal activity is factored out, the chances of death by firearm drops precipitously. Much of the remaining difference is accounted for by the fact that Americans are also beaten, stabbed or strangled more frequently than the residents of the cited countries. It was also not mentioned that many places in the U.S., typically those with “laxest” gun laws, are among the safest places in the world.
Another point not deemed worthy of mention is that a far more significant driver of violent crime than any class of weapon is the one referred to when the term “a lengthy criminal history/record” is used, as it is with appalling frequency. I’m sure readers know which end of the political spectrum is responsible for our revolving-door justice system, but for those in need of a clue, it’s the one currently bleating about guns.
Anthony Stimson
Lebanon