Letters To The Editor's blog

The REAL FRACKASAURUS COLORING BOOK

Ben Price, CELDF

On November 15, 2010, South Fayette Township in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania passed a zoning ordinance regulating the location of oil and gas extraction activities in the municipality. The ordinance was drafted by the Township and cleared by its Zoning Board in an attempt to protect from fracking as much of the community as possible through the land-use regulatory authority delegated to the Township by the State in the Municipalities Planning Code (MPC). What the Board of Commissioners adopted is an ordinance they cleared as to legality with their municipal Solicitor. They played it safe. They colored inside the lines.

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Celebrating International Women’s Day 2010

 

 Penn State’s University Office of Global Programs (UOGP) is pleased to announce its third annual breakfast in celebration of International Women’s Day, to be held Tuesday, March 16 at 8:30 a.m. in Heritage Hall of the HUB. Featured speaker this year is Ann Tickamyer, professor of rural sociology and head of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology.   Her scholarship focuses on rural poverty and development, gender and work, and social welfare provision in the U.S., Indonesia, and Southeast Asia.  She will speak on the timely subject of “Women in Disaster Relief and Recovery.”  Read more »

        Defense spending is by far the largest expenditure of our federal government, and it's increasing every year. The Defense budget represents about half of all U.S. discretionary spending. Our Defense appropriations exceed the total amount of defense spending by all other nations in the world -- combined!  Defense spending is one of the largest contributors to our huge deficits.
        We are embroiled in two wars, racking up deficits, and Americans are not willing to pay for them by having their taxes increased. We can't have it both ways; either we pay for our wars, or we incur further deficits.
        The U.S. no longer can be the world's sole policeman. It will take the combined efforts of all civilized nations to help stamp out terrorism throughout the world.
        The Defense Budget is a 'sacred cow' that few legislators seem willing to trim because they will almost certainly be labeled as being soft on defense -- or even worse, 'unpatriotic'.
        There is always fat and waste that can be trimmed in any budget. Defense Department budgets should receive the same scrutiny as any other department of our government and should not be immune from legitimate cuts in unnecessary, wasteful spending.
        
 
Paul G. Jaehnert
 

Yesterday's CDT editorial [4/17] criticized candidates for not filling out the Project Vote Smart Political Courage Test, a questionnaire about their positions on various issues. Please do not form opinions about our candidates based on this editorial, as it is incorrect. 

The CDT claims most of our candidates "refused" to take the test.

If the CDT had called our candidates rather than simply looking at the Vote Smart website, they would have found that most of the candidates did fill out the form, or attempted to fill it out on-line but could not get the program to work.

Project Vote Smart apologized to candidate Tim Wilson for not acknowledging his submission, saying they had converted to on-line submission this year, and had experienced problems.

At least 30 groups have sent lengthy questionnaires to candidates. Filling them all out is over a week's work per candidate.

Additionally, the CDT Voters' Guide says Rep. Scott Conklin did not respond to the League of Women Voters questionnaire. That is untrue. He did submit his information.

We hope the CDT will print appropriate corrections.