I personally am stunned at the arrogance of mankind
letter to the editor
To the Editor:
Once upon a time I worked for the original Despicable Me. But his mantra of "Perception is everything" has stayed with me all these decades later. That's what popped in my head as I read last week's letter to the editor. The writer must have watched a different exchange between Comey and McCain than the one I saw. I watched a once highly respected American hero stumble through questions totally irrelevant to the topic. What she perceived as Comey flustered and stumbling, what I saw was an entire room squirming and uncomfortable at witnessing McCain making a fool of himself. Perception.
Then I turned to the guest column. The columnist must have been thoroughly impressed with Al Gore's book on global climate change, "An Inconvenient Truth," since he referenced that phrase in each segment of his column. Unfortunately, here again, perception is everything. Law enforcement profiling may work for you, an elderly white man, but not so much if you're not. And I can't imagine what news outlets he is referencing that qualify statements with essentially a "just kidding!" What school of journalism has he been monitoring that teaches indoctrination over education? Liberty University? BYU?
But his first and biggest gripe was the tax issue. I have to thank him for that since I never actually realized we were "rich" – but we must be since we have paid lots and lots of taxes over the years! But everyone pays taxes. Maybe they escape the federal income taxes, but if you live in Ohio, you pay Ohio taxes. In addition to state income tax, there's the local income tax, and if you live in one district and work in another, that's a double ding, we pay a school income tax and then there's property tax. Oh yes, don't forget the blessed sales tax. And look at your pay stub – you're paying Social Security and Medicare taxes. Check your phone bill or your cable bill. Not many people actually pay no taxes. So the inference that low income people are scammers is a lie and an insult.
Then he turned to climate change denial. When 99 percent of the world's climate scientists affirm that we are burning up our own planet, all in the name of greed, I am stunned at the arrogance of mankind – hey, look at the cows, the bees, the trees, volcanoes, the rocks – it's all their fault, not ours! Sorry, but your haughty, condescending attitude does nothing to prevent devastation. A new study casts extreme doubt on the global stability of rising sea levels. From James Hanson, former NASA lead climate scientist and 16 co-authors considered tops in their fields, it concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years.
Vice President Gore was not available for comment, but I can answer that the consensus of scientific opinion is that dinosaurs disappeared about 65 million years ago either because a meteorite struck the Yucatán Peninsula or because volcano activity in India produced so much pollution that global warming eliminated most inhabitants of Earth (sound familiar)? And the Sahara dried into a desert between 2-7 million years ago due to climate change. What once transpired over millions of years, mankind is accomplishing in a blink of an eye. Congrats.
Martha Cosbey
Doylestown
Once upon a time I worked for the original Despicable Me. But his mantra of "Perception is everything" has stayed with me all these decades later. That's what popped in my head as I read last week's letter to the editor. The writer must have watched a different exchange between Comey and McCain than the one I saw. I watched a once highly respected American hero stumble through questions totally irrelevant to the topic. What she perceived as Comey flustered and stumbling, what I saw was an entire room squirming and uncomfortable at witnessing McCain making a fool of himself. Perception.
Then I turned to the guest column. The columnist must have been thoroughly impressed with Al Gore's book on global climate change, "An Inconvenient Truth," since he referenced that phrase in each segment of his column. Unfortunately, here again, perception is everything. Law enforcement profiling may work for you, an elderly white man, but not so much if you're not. And I can't imagine what news outlets he is referencing that qualify statements with essentially a "just kidding!" What school of journalism has he been monitoring that teaches indoctrination over education? Liberty University? BYU?
But his first and biggest gripe was the tax issue. I have to thank him for that since I never actually realized we were "rich" – but we must be since we have paid lots and lots of taxes over the years! But everyone pays taxes. Maybe they escape the federal income taxes, but if you live in Ohio, you pay Ohio taxes. In addition to state income tax, there's the local income tax, and if you live in one district and work in another, that's a double ding, we pay a school income tax and then there's property tax. Oh yes, don't forget the blessed sales tax. And look at your pay stub – you're paying Social Security and Medicare taxes. Check your phone bill or your cable bill. Not many people actually pay no taxes. So the inference that low income people are scammers is a lie and an insult.
Then he turned to climate change denial. When 99 percent of the world's climate scientists affirm that we are burning up our own planet, all in the name of greed, I am stunned at the arrogance of mankind – hey, look at the cows, the bees, the trees, volcanoes, the rocks – it's all their fault, not ours! Sorry, but your haughty, condescending attitude does nothing to prevent devastation. A new study casts extreme doubt on the global stability of rising sea levels. From James Hanson, former NASA lead climate scientist and 16 co-authors considered tops in their fields, it concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in sea level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years.
Vice President Gore was not available for comment, but I can answer that the consensus of scientific opinion is that dinosaurs disappeared about 65 million years ago either because a meteorite struck the Yucatán Peninsula or because volcano activity in India produced so much pollution that global warming eliminated most inhabitants of Earth (sound familiar)? And the Sahara dried into a desert between 2-7 million years ago due to climate change. What once transpired over millions of years, mankind is accomplishing in a blink of an eye. Congrats.
Martha Cosbey
Doylestown
