Protect public media
My wife and I are regular listeners to Carbondale’s KDNK Community Access Radio via streaming here in Lincoln, Nebraska. Streaming enables us to enjoy KDNK, your local community radio station that is a gift for us all.
I spent my 45-year working career in commercial and public broadcast media.
We recently received a disturbing email from KDNK. It talks of Washington politics — threats of the government defunding and dissolving the public media infrastructure. That structure includes KDNK.
Do not take these threats lightly.
Community stations like KDNK are NOT controlled by the government. They are independent: free to breathe and think for themselves. They are guided by a board made up of your community residents. And, for the most part, they are funded by a lot of you, good Sopris Sun readers.
Some people in Congress want to cut funding for public radio and television. They wield this authority based on their individual beliefs, not the will of the people. They think public broadcasting entities should be curtailed, even punished for their objectivity. They think public broadcasters should narrow their frame of reference to non-objective concepts of what listeners should hear — not what they need or want to hear. The traditional way of threatening these freedoms is to defund them.
Some are even going as far as to skew facts, obliterate public opinion and publicly punish dissenters. Politicians promise to curtail the funding to drive stations into submission. This concept contradicts the guarantee of free speech in our nation.
Carrying out these threats will fuel the movement toward autocracy and non-representative government. We must fight and defeat this, if the democratic lifestyle which Western Slope residents love is to survive.
Think about this with me for a moment.
There are few causes more “local” and people-serving than community radio. With its continuous attention to local needs and instant information-sharing capability, KDNK has the communication tools and knows how to use them. If it ignored Western Slope needs, it would not only be killing its purpose, but would lose the support of you — the people who created it!
This threat to withhold public assistance shuns the will of the People. Its perpetrators must be made to understand the facts and figures of why public broadcasting is a national imperative, a local treasure, an essential resource in times of emergencies and a basic element of our freedoms.
Concerned?
You can wield substantial influence on this issue by contacting your senators and representatives and making your thoughts known. This can go a long way to assure the tenets of Democracy and free speech are upheld. Your House member is Jeff Hurd (202-225-4676) and your senators are John Hickenlooper (202-224-5941) and Michael Bennet (202-224-5852). You can also sign the Protect Local Public Media petition found at www.protectmypublicmedia.org
There are few tenets as strong as the will of community radio broadcasters in telling the real story of the present and helping find the best paths to the future. Please, do what you can. Now. Or a fragile freedom may evaporate on the air.
John Cutler
Lincoln, Nebraska
What is happening?
Do you get confused by all of the White House multiple news blasts daily? Is that the intention, to keep us so confused that we don’t really know what is happening? Trump wants Gaza? Is Trump assuming that since the U.S. paid for the bombs to destroy Hamas and the Palestinian land and people now he gets to take over Palestine as an American colony? For oil? For more Trump golf courses? Is Trump’s plan to send generations of American youth to fight Hamas and the rest of Palestine in order to “own” Palestinians and their land?
Trump’s plan to strip the Education department ties in to this goal: keep American youth uneducated so they will accept the role of being colonizers in the Arab world. Don’t let them learn any history or science, certainly not critical thinking.
A judge ordered Trump to restore the funding that Congress had already pledged for Medicaid, school lunches, low-income housing subsidies and other essential services. The White House responded, “Any legal challenge against it is nothing more than an attempt to go against the will of the American people.”
Really? It’s hard for me to believe that the U.S. has become a nation of mean spirited people.
Supposedly the president and vice president of the U.S. are Christians, but these so-called Christians have forgotten that Christ’s fundamental teaching was: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” This was not an exclusive statement but an inclusive one. We inhabit one earth together and we have a responsibility to care for one another and the resources our planet gives us with kindness, not prevent the children from eating, the poor from getting medical care. Thank you for being caring Americans.
Illene Pevec
Carbondale
Pride of Beyul
As a caretaker at Beyul, I take pride in our team’s work to keep the old Diamond J Ranch open as a four-season destination, as it has been for over a century. The Diamond J has long served as a lodge for outdoorsmen and their families to explore the wilderness.
The 10th Mountain Division trail system runs right through my backyard in the hinterlands of the upper Frying Pan River Valley. As a caretaker, I guide groups on land tours, sharing what Beyul’s little spot under the sun and stars offers the world.
I love sharing Beyul’s heritage. I tell guests that Beyul Retreat sits at the base of Reilly Mountain, named after the family of its early owners. I show them the Longbranch Cabin, where the homestead began. I ask them to imagine the road as a railway and the journey to Beyul as a train ride from Glenwood Springs or Leadville. I invite them to picture the valley before Ruedi Reservoir was cut into its floor, when Thomasville’s original village stood downstream.
We also explore an even older history — the Utes, who danced in ceremony, hunted big game and harvested tobacco from sacred streams. They were true protectors of these mountains. As a Beyul employee and Meredith resident, I honor and respect these lands and am grateful to lay my head in the Sawatch Range each night.
Beyul is not Disneyland; it’s more like Narnia. A place where: military families reconnect, unplugged from Wi-Fi; songwriters craft poetry by fires in a blizzard; first-time yogis find balance on one foot; fathers and sons fry fresh-caught salmon; neighbors cross-country ski in our backyard; newlyweds are showered with golden aspen leaves.
Stop by for a hot cup of joe and see for yourself.
Jeremiah Glascoff
Meredith
Community priorities
Communities in the U.S. have a problem. If they are popular, they become a target for developers. Another problem is that decision makers often fail to realize that their first priority in governance should be what is best for their existing residents. There is no obligation for towns to help people who currently live elsewhere. And, in most cases, developers do not pay enough in fees to cover all the infrastructure that is needed to support their new development. That’s why there is always a shortage of things like child care, affordable housing and affordable health care. Glenwood is even now raising sales tax to rebuild roads. That sales tax hurts lower income people.
Glenwood Springs would be heavily impacted by developments like Spring Valley, Nutrient Farms and the large parcel on Highway 82 south of the old Sopris Restaurant. And there are numerous smaller projects. All of these will produce severe impacts on transportation, schools, local recreation, air quality, water use, taxation, police, fire safety, health care and more. I call it “snowballing.”
This is a big country. There is no end of other places for developers to do their thing. Developers are very good at painting their projects in a favorable light. They love to talk about the quality and benefits to the community. But the bottom line is for them to make a profit. Often, like Spring Valley, the developer is even from another state.
I think it is time to rethink our priorities.
Patrick Hunter
Carbondale
Climate change fund
This will be of interest not only to Colorado homeowners concerned about the risks of wildfires and flooding, but also to all taxpayers. Whether we realize it or not, we are all paying for the impacts of climate change. These costs are large and growing and have effectively become a tax on the public.
For example, the 2013 flooding event along the Front Range by itself caused severe damage to our roadway network and required more than $700 million in emergency repairs. Ongoing climate change will challenge our whole economy, including businesses, farmers, ranchers and city and town budgets with lost income plus additional costs for repairs and mitigation. Right now, taxpayers are on the hook for 100% of the cost from climate damages.
Assistance could be available through a Colorado climate change cost recovery and adaptation fund, as recently proposed by the Colorado Coalition for a Livable Climate.
It would be called the PROTECT (Polluter Responsibility and Opportunity To Ensure Communities Thrive) Act. Such legislation already is the law in New York State and in Vermont, and is being considered elsewhere.
Funding would come from fees assessed on the largest fossil fuel companies doing business in Colorado. It is based on the fairness principle: Those who pollute should help pay for the consequences, including infrastructure repair and improvements and compensation to Coloradans for climate damage.
The text of a PROTECT Act is essentially already written. Governor Polis and state legislators, please start to work on passing such an act.
Chris Hoffman
Boulder