Tax revenue from pot sales not worth the trouble

This concerns the recent City Council meeting where Councilor Lynette Perry proposed that the Council reconsider the city’s ban on retail marijuana sales within the city limits as a source of income. Who is going to buy the marijuana? It will be our children, the few teens going through the know-it-all years, the adults who carry heavy emotional burdens — even pain. I’m hoping the last two categories wouldn’t mind going out of their way to get this avenue of relief.

Before moving to Baker City I loved in Fair Oaks, California, two houses down from the Catholic Church and school. A drunk driver hit a student in the crosswalk. He didn’t kill her — just some broken bones — but about a year later another drunk driver hit the same little girl and killed her. Her mother cried out, “they killed her twice!” and MADD was born.

I wasn’t there when the mother cried out, but I could hear it again and again every time I turned left onto Sunset.

Have mercy on mothers! MADD could also become Mothers Against Drugged Drivers or Drug Dealers.

The income isn’t worth it.

Suzanne Kahle

Baker City

America’s Constitution and laws define our country

I just received a letter from the “National Committee To Defend America.” Many of you should have received this same letter. Let me make it clear — they’re on America’s side. But want to know whose side we as Americans are? These questions should not ever need to be asked.

Should Muslim law ever replace the U.S. Constitution as America’s courtroom. Seems there are some liberal justices in the Supreme Court who think so. Pro-ACLU Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonia Sotomayor say they don’t understand what’s wrong in using foreign law, including Muslim law, which tells me they know nothing about what they are talking about. There’s already been 50 court cases in 23 states where Muslim law was used to render a verdict. In New Jersey a Muslim man was acquitted of raping his wife. Muslim law gives him that right. These are all legal in Muslim law as well — honor killings, Jihad bomblings, the beheading of Christians.

I believe it’s time many of us wake up to the fact we have enemies in our government. We all must decide if the values and laws this country is based on, the freedom it stands for, or do you give it all up to a liberal government and foreign laws that hate you and me, that think we should be subject to laws besides this country’s. From citizen to subject.

Excuse me, but I have always been under the belief that when you come to this country, you are required to obey its laws, not the laws of where you come from. I believe to become a citizen you take an oath to uphold this country and honor it and its flag, not a black one. God has honored this country because its people honored Him. There’s some who want to take God out of most beliefs, without knowing the price we all would pay. I pray that you and I won’t let it happen.

Richard Fox

Baker City

B2H power line is obsolete before it’s even built

Mitch Colburn, an Idaho Power spokesman for the controversial Boardman-to-Hemingway transmission line, insists that demand for electricity will increase and a shortfall will exist by 2025, but my research shows that the market is not growing. Idaho Power’s billed sales for the last 10 years have been essentially flat, if not declining. That’s supported by reports from the US government and Idaho Power’s own data.

Changes in electric utilities are occurring so rapidly that most industry analysts propose “strategic positioning” as the best investment to make. B2H is a highly centralized, $1.2 billion megaproject that guarantees an $80 million dollar profit to Idaho Power and their partners’ shareholders, but does not serve the ratepayers or the public. The five Eastern Oregon counties that would be crossed by the line will see irreparable environmental and cultural damages and increasing grid defections, leaving poorest of communities to pay the bills. Idaho Powers’ 12-year-old B2H plans are based on an old-school approach that has consistently ignored dramatic changes in power sources, delivery and storage.

For about a century, affordable electrification has been based on economies of scale, with large generating plants producing hundreds or thousands of megawatts of power, sent to distant users through a vast transmission and distribution grid. Today, utility industry developments are replacing that simple model.

At the top of the list is the availability of low-cost natural gas and solar power. Generators based on these resources can be built much closer to customers. We are now in the early stages of an expansion of distributed generation, which is already lessening the need for costly and wasteful long-distance transmission.

The insecurity of a centralized transmission system is not in our best interest. If one large transmission line goes down, perhaps due to terrorism or forest fire, entire cities are blacked out and vulnerable. With distributed generation, most areas would still have power. Ongoing price declines and technological advances in energy generation and distribution show the proposed B2H transmission line will be obsolete from the onset. Considering decreasing consumer demands and the rapid and dramatic changes in the industry, Idaho Power’s self-serving efforts to support need for the B2H are neither credible nor realistic.

JoAnn Marlette

Baker City

Member of the Stop B2H Coalition

StopB2H.org