I am happy with the governor’s position on nuclear waste in Utah. I wish that he would expand the view to include coal burning power plants. That our citizens die mining coal and we have unhealthy air from burning it so that we can sell cheap electricity to California markets is not fair. I would love to see a requirement that the communities that benefit from dirty energy should be required to store that waste in their community, and suffer from the health costs associated with its production. It is tragic that we have allowed our land to become the nation’s dumping ground. Why don’t we instead develop thermal and large scale solar energy production plants, both of which are natural resources unique to Utah instead of the 4 new coal burning plants under consideration and a storage area of toxic chemicals (Dugway) and nuclear waste.

On immigration, in the last two weeks you have addressed an issue of illegal immigration that is commonly mislabeled as the immigration question. This is a misleading label. There is no public outcry against immigration or immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants and love immigrants, foreigners who came because they believed in the cultural and ideological values that this new democracy represented. The issue with current illegal intrusions into our country is that many illegal immigrants are arriving in our nation who don’t share the values and culture that made the United States what it is and don’t seem to want to become a part of our society and accept the culture and beliefs that the nation is founded on, but now come for purely economic and safety reasons, but whose allegiance is still to la Patria. This conflict has nothing to do with race or immigration it is a question of laws and security and the clash of culture and cultural values. Our tradition is one of a melting pot, cultures integrated into one homogenous whole called America. This tradition is under attack and the citizens of this nation are justifiably worried at the disintegration of our national values and culture into a fractured society.

Posted by Curtis Davis, Saturday February 23rd, 2008 @ 1:00 pm