Letters to the Editor
mike_labonte
Published Letters: 19
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kudos
[Read the article: Baghdad: The besieged press]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is an excellent article because it contains information from/about lots of people, and presents it in a way that helps me understand the changes that have taken place. As far as I can tell it is the insurgents who have created this environment for journalists, and I do find myself wondering how it helps them.
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Re: Other approaches
[Read the article: EPA to California: Drop dead!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I also had fees/taxes in mind as an alternative approach. One obvious problem with mandating non-trivial standards changes is the presumption that the supply of cars will be there. Without federal intervention, California would probably go through another wave of limited car and truck availability.
NPR reported that 17 states currently follow CA standards. Another approach is to get at least 10 more to sign on. Once a majority is secured the car companies/EPA would have a tough time resisting.
Who would ever imagine an Environmental Protection Agency would opt for less protection? Face it: the attempt to render the federal government useless, Reagan's dream, is slowly working. If only it didn't have to cost so much money at the same time ...
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Maybe the polls are right
[Read the article: Does race explain the polling disconnect?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Maybe the election results are wrong. According to a post at Black Box Voting, 83 towns using hand counted paper ballots went for Obama, while only 45 went for Clinton. In the bigger towns and cities that use optical scan machines, 38 went for Obama and 59 for Clinton.
So you could say cities went for Clinton and towns for Obama, by a huge margin. If the polls interviewed more town people than city, then everything might make sense. But the gap is so striking that maybe some recounts are warranted.
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Cross voters lie in polls
[Read the article: Does race explain the polling disconnect?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think unenrolled Republicans made Clinton win.
In NH many people who always vote Republican are unenrolled, partly to reduce the flow of political junk mail. In primaries they can get either a Democrat or Republican ballot. Some people select the opposite party and vote for the most defeatable candidate in primaries, not exactly something to crow about. Does anyone think they tell the truth when pollsters call?
The demographic fits. In the smaller NH towns where they count paper ballots by hand, voting is taken as a serious civic duty. I think they are less likely to cross over, and 83 of these towns voted for Obama, versus 45 for Clinton. Of the bigger cities where they use machines and there is more of a market mentality to elections, 59 went for Clinton and 38 for Obama.
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Corrections
[Read the article: Was the New Hampshire vote stolen?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This story makes mistakes by assuming that New England elections are operated like the rest of the US. Not so.
1) This article uses "county" and "counties" in many places. Counties in NH have no function in elections. All elections are conducted by cities and towns with some help from the State Secretary.
2) There are no central tabulators used. Precinct counts are delivered on paper. At least one town had setup electronic transmission at one point, but I don't know the extent of this.
3) "Her surrogates would have needed to get into a lot of card readers and GEMS machines in order to achieve that count through hacking."
This story completely misses the fact that all voting machine cards in NH are programmed by one company. No election offical has any idea what is on those cards, except that they are able to pass a 50 ballot test. Harri Hursti with the help of Ion Sancho proved that those memory cards can be programmed to throw an election. In this case one person could conceivable alter 81% of NH votes. This is of course very likely, but I'm glad to have these recounts.
I'm not saying the election was bogus, I'm just looking at the journalism here.
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This was an audit
[Read the article: Kucinich's New Hampshire recount doesn't change results]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree with several people here who are happy the recount took place. We need to audit our elections now and then, preferably a lot.
In the case of Hillsborough County NH, it took 393 miscounted ballots to shift the gap between Clinton and Obama by 49. At that rate, an election with a 1% margin of victory might have nearly 8% of the ballots wrongly counted. And in some states a 1% margin of victory avoids a recount. But how would people feel if they were told:
"The winner won with a 0.99% margin, so no recount is required. Statistically, at least 92% of the ballots were counted correctly. The Secretary of State has commended poll workers for conducting another good election"
Farhad did a much better job with the facts on this one, and dispels some myths told elsewhere. But why is the title "Kucinich's New Hampshire recount doesn't change results"? That puts the focus on the least important point. We now know a lot about NH elections that we didn't know before.
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Good enough for NewsTrust
[Read the article: Your presidential candidate: Hot or not?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Excellent article! Having given a few lectures on this subject I can confirm the information. I have posted this at NewsTrust.net for review.
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... associated with electricity generation ...
[Read the article: How much does solar power pollute?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Watch out, this statement is a little too carefully worded: "At least 89 percent of air emissions associated with electricity generation could be prevented...".
Does the report address toxic emissions associated solely with solar production? Someone who makes the equipment that PV manufacturers use told me that a big problem is that they use nasty chemicals. That adds to the difficulty of starting a PV manufacturing facility in the U.S. The good news is that there is supposedly some kind of revolution going on, and soon (maybe now) they will be much cleaner.
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why 3%
[Read the article: When is a recession not a recession?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think it is worth exploring why the IMF considers 3% growth the lower limit for a healthy world economy. Growth comes from productivity gains and population increases. Does the IMF believe that a certain amount of each is necessary?