To The Editor

Dear Editor,

How can it be that a year has passed since Mom died?

After a two-decades long descent into dementia, dependence, and debilitation, Dorothy is free from Alzheimer’s, but her survivors are not. Alzheimer’s continues to devastate us, infecting our every memory of this beautiful, beloved person.

As if this long, slow goodbye were not awful enough, the disease’s after effects are nth degree atrocious. When Mom died on Jan. 26, 2011, part of me was grateful her suffering was over; the other part had no idea then how ours would continue.

I have since vowed I will do what I can to help others avoid the physical, financial, and psychological trauma that is Alzheimer’s.

How?

Two words: aggressive advocacy.

A year ago on Jan. 4, Alzheimer’s activists were instrumental in moving a bitterly divided, bipartisan Congress to unanimously pass the National Alzheimer’s Project Act (NAPA). More than 50,000 emails, nearly 10,000 phone calls, and 1,000-plus meetings led legislators to agree the only way to overcome the escalating Alzheimer’s crisis is to create a coordinated national plan of action.

A draft of said strategy awaits your input at www.napa.alz.org. 

While online there, please contact Representative Cory Gardner, and Senators Michael Bennet and Mark Udall, and let them know they mustn’t allow either the Alzheimer’s Breakthrough Act or the HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act to languish for another session. Their immediate co-sponsorship and our collective voices will make a difference in 2012.

The millions living and dying with Alzheimer’s can’t wait for another anniversary to pass.

Brenda Rader Mross, Ambassador
Alzheimer’s Association Northern Colorado Chapter

Welcome the passage of Senate Bill 1867 and the police state.  No hearings were held and this passed under the guise of “our security.”Our government now has the right to detain and imprison American civilians indefinitely WITHOUT charges or due process.  Guilty until proven innocent is now the American way. This bill is the final step necessary to strike down any remaining Constitutional protections.

We have fusions centers all over the country gathering information on all citizens from all different sources.  These fusion centers have no oversight. Everythingyou do and own is tracked, including your financial transactions. We fear the IRS whose power is unrestrained in attaching citizens’ resources. We have FEMA camps that have been built all over the US, with barbed wire facing inward, guard station, restricted access, cameras, and plenty of coffins.  Sounds ominous, doesn’t it?

We have failed ventures (Solyndra) and illegal activities (Fast & Furious) being covered up, government officials taking advantage of insider information to enrich themselves.  All this is being done with OUR money.  These actions are all worthy of impeachment proceedings.

Where is the outrage? Nothing will change unless we clean out Congress and create TERM LIMITS to get rid of them.  We should be asking ourselves why does hardly anyone know about the Get Out of Our House (goooh.com) movement  which will allow us to do just that and why isn’t the press reporting on it?

K. Burson
Houston, Texas

This was a very bad idea! The amount withheld from your paycheck (matched by your employer) is not a “tax,” but a contribution to your Social Security retirement benefits. If you don’t pay in during those quarters, it reduces the benefits you will receive upon retirement. Ask the Social Security Administration for a calculation of your estimated benefits (which are based on how much you pay-in) and you will see what I mean!

This “tax holiday,” like all holidays, costs you in the long run.  The reason that Social Security contributions were made mandatory was because a large portion of the population is too shortsighted to save for retirement on their own.  Where will your “stored harvest” be when you’re ready to retire?  That $1,000 per year that you don’t contribute today will mean money you won’t get tomorrow!

Furthermore, this “holiday,” in reality, further depletes an already broke system. And, by the way, now that we’ve experienced this “holiday,” how hard do you suppose it is going to be to re-institute this “non-tax”?

Do you see the absence of wisdom…Grasshopper?

Joseph Dion (Retired Attorney/CPA)
Masonville, Colorado

These attacks are of a piece with similar responses from conservatives in other spheres who feel their world-views are under attack, as in the case of a teenaged girl in Rhode Island who successfully sued to remove a prayer banner from her public school’s wall, and who’s been receiving threats of violence.

Her offense? An accurate understanding of the ideals of her nation’s founding document, and the temerity to hold an institution accountable to them. Dr. Kerry Emmanuel’s offense? Noting some of the plain facts about global climate change: it’s real, it’s our fault, it’s dangerous, and it needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. Apparently, conservatives go into grotesque spasms of victimhood the moment they have to deal with logic, reason, and factuality.

Warren Senders

Medford, Mass.

This weekend as Rep. Scott Tipton was traveling his district, he was pressed on why he supported repealing health care reform, leaving children with cancer to the whim of the marketplace.  His answer? He doesn’t have a better plan, but still doesn’t like the Affordable Care Act. The last thing parents with sick children should be worrying about is how they will get health insurance for their children, but that’s exactly what Rep. Tipton and the Republican Party are saying – they will take away health insurance coverage for your children. Take a look: 

“Another audience member chided the Republican Party for supporting a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which he said would protect his leukemia-stricken daughter from discrimination in the health insurance marketplace. Tipton responded that the Republican Party is in favor of cheaper and better access to health care but that it shouldn’t be up to the federal government to control it.” – Steamboat Today, 1/7/12

Lauren Weiner
Deputy Communications Director
Americans United for Change

To the editor:

Myths about social security are like monsters in B movies that keep returning no matter how many times they’re killed — like the myth that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.

While there was a Charles Ponzi, and there is a scheme named after him, that’s where any accuracy ends. That took about two minutes online to discover.

Social Security was created to help everyone; Ponzi’s scheme was devised to enrich himself. Social Security was created by a man so respected, he was elected president four times. Ponzi was an ex-con who had previously served time for forgery and smuggling.

Ponzi claimed to be buying and selling international reply coupons, which never existed in sufficient quantity to generate the profits he promised investors. In other words his scheme was a fraud from beginning to end. Which is why it took barely a year from start to finish for his scheme to unravel and Ponzi was sitting in prison.

Social Security, on the other hand, has been around for 77 years, and has never missed a payment. In fact, the program currently has sufficient funds to pay full benefits through 2036.

Another myth is that the Social Security Trust Fund contains nothing but IOU’s. This is misleading, since those IOU’s are in reality interest-bearing government securities, similar to what we once called savings bonds. There has never been a huge vault of cash labeled Social Security funds. The money each of us contributes to the program is used to buy more interest-bearing government securities — as it always has. The same securities purchased by governments, banks and individuals all over the world as quickly and as often as they’re offered. Because the U.S. government has never once failed to honor its financial commitments. Never.

Does this mean there are no problems facing Social Security today? Hardly. The program will always require occasional adjustments to ensure long-term stability, just as President Reagan did in 1983. But if we really want serious discussions about keeping this most successful program going strong, we’ll need to deal with facts, not myths.

Ken Bublitz
Fort Collins

Our dogs are family members. We include our dogs in family outings, in deciding where to live, what’s for dinner, who sleeps where on what part of the bed. Dogs have been an integral part of our existence for thousands of years. The human canine bond is the longest interspecies relationship that has ever existed.

Yet, this reality collides with the existence of dog producers who breed and sell dogs by the thousands every year solely for profit. These dogs consistently show up at pet stores, on pretty websites that depict little puppies on downy blankets – a cover for the horror of wire cages piled high with dogs, feces-strewn kennels, females being bred over and over without a break, very little if no veterinary care, etc.

A statewide non-profit, Colorado Citizens for Canine Welfare (3CW) is asking our US Representatives and Senators to co-sponsor the PUPS Act which will close an Internet sales loophole in the Animal Welfare Act. It will also require USDA breeder licenses for anyone selling over 50 dogs a year, kennels that are free of pest infestation and that dogs get one hour of exercise a day. The opposition has lots to say:

“It will dramatically reduce the number of dogs available to the public.”
Pet Industry and Joint Advisory Council.

“The need for exercise is not scientifically proven” AKC. Yes, that AKC.
American Kennel Club.

“We won’t have enough dogs for law enforcement and the disabled.”
Sportsmen and Animal Owner’s Alliance 

Really? We kill nearly 4 million dogs a year at shelters.

Yes, commercial dog breeders will have to work harder. It will cost them more. But the economy should not be an excuse to allow the continued exploitation of our best friend. Join me in asking US Representative Cory Gardner to sponsor the PUPS Act. Go to http://gardner.house.gov/office/ft-collins or call his office 970-221-7110. Go to our site www.coloradocanine.wordpress.com and find out more about the PUPS Act or research it yourself. But tell Rep. Gardner that our best friend and his buddies need a favor. A really big favor. It’s a matter of life or death.

Mary Roberts is a Larimer County real estate agent who blogs about homes and dogs at www.coloradohomesandhounds.com. She is Communications Director for 3CW which educates the public about puppy mills, pet stores and Internet sales.

Editor: Call your local representative if you are not In Colorado HD-4

Response to

“I think it should be wider.”

— U.S. Senate candidate Clark Durant, a Michigan Republican, sharing his thoughts on the wealth gap and why Occupy Wall Street protesters should “go find a job.”

I find it ironic that Republicans have such disdain for the lazy, and yet their solution to everything is do nothing. Their answer to wealth inequality? Do nothing. Healthcare? Do nothing. Climate change? Nothing. Racism? Doesn’t exist. For a group of people so head over heels in love with self-reliance, they sure do recommend a lot of sitting on (one’s) ass.

If A Christmas Carol was performed by the Tea Party Dramatic Society, it would be a cautionary tale about how the hero, Scrooge — a blameless job creator — is turned into a socialist through the corrupting influence of Tiny Tim. And the play would end with a simple, plaintive question from Mr. Scrooge: ‘Just how much of my wealth does Mr. Tim think he’s entitled to?’

And that is the great Republican fallacy of this election: that our economic problem are due not to Wall Street’s gambling, but because too many Americans are lazy.  But there are 16 million unemployed, and we only created 80,000 jobs last month. The problem isn’t laziness — it’s math.

This is where the Republican Party is now: in favor of people dying because they don’t have health insurance. In favor of letting people go unfed if they won’t work. And if they wanna work, but are Mexicans, in favor of putting up a fence that electrocutes them.

Bill Maher