READERS WRITE

Energy

Guess who benefits from oil drilling

Is anyone going to tell the truth about oil? The truth is that it is an international commodity and traded as such. It doesn’t matter where it comes from —- North Dakota, Alaska or Saudi Arabia —- the price is the same. So we all need to ask ourselves who benefits from offshore drilling or opening up ANWR. It certainly won’t be the American people. I’ll give you a hint: The only benefit is to the unregulated marketplace and the oil producers, the oil interests and oil lobbyists deeply entrenched in Washington.

JIM WECK

Big Canoe

Postal Service could set example

To save gas while delivering the mail, we must replace all those outmoded mail trucks with plug-in hybrids or all-electric vehicles. These new trucks could also have solar panels on their roofs, saving even more in energy costs. The stopping and going from mailbox to mailbox is the ideal application for this type of vehicle; it also will boost the refinement of this technology. Will it happen? Probably not, until we get Big Oil out of the White House.

WALTER SIKORA

Athens

Clean-coal electricity is the answer

All the nonpolluting electric car needs is a 140-mile battery to make it the next-generation car.

Lithium-ion batteries get too hot. Engineers are working on it. Any day now they will succeed, and church will be out for the electric car.

What energy should electric utilities use to recharge batteries at night? Cleaned-up domestic coal is the answer. Millions of tons of carbon dioxide from burning coal, compressed and cooled, have been injected into the ground in Europe for two years. It works.

We need a government-funded cleanup of the 10 government-built Tennessee Valley Authority coal-fired plants to perfect these processes. The savings on imported oil by cars using domestic clean-coal electricity will pay for it. Jobs will be created. Balance of payment deficits will collapse. Our economy gets well. It beats offshore drilling and helps solve climate change.

GEORGE M. STAMPS

Oxford

Forgiveness a powerful response

What Bill Herald (“John Edwards: He was not a victim,” @issue, Aug. 12) does not understand, as evidenced in his attack on “women’s rights groups” (an outdated appellation), is that those who genuinely advocate empowering women recognize in Elizabeth Edwards’ response an action more powerful than any government agenda and capable of unmeasurable change: forgiveness.

JACKI LAUBY

Roswell

Parents need more information

In the article “Social studies material revised” (Metro, Aug. 11) we receive the same old information on why the new curriculum needs to be revised, but the information that would be instructive to parents is not included.

What exactly will be on the “revised” curriculum? Publishing the new curriculum in the AJC would be most helpful. Students bring home a social studies book and as parents we assume that what they need to know is in that book. If that is not the case, we need to know.

From the article all I can discern is that students will no longer learn about the Renaissance in the sixth grade.

What other information will middle school students need to learn? Parents want their children to succeed and we want our schools to teach, so please tell us what our students are supposed to be learning.

MARKETIA PATTERSON

Alpharetta

Union demands can destroy jobs

The proposed Employee Free Choice Act will not be free but could destroy what is left of America’s industrial base.

Granted the union movement has benefited laborers, but unreasonable labor demands have closed many once-powerful American industrial companies.

In 1948 I became a union member, not by choice, but because Michigan is a “closed shop” state, and in closed shop states you belong to the union or you don’t work.

Later I worked many years for a steel company and witnessed its near demise, caused by unions that refused to acknowledge the company was competing in a new-technology world economy.

The closing of two Atlanta auto plants can be laid directly to unreasonable union demands. These companies, which employed thousands of Georgians, could not compete with their non-union (often foreign) competitors.

Honest unions promote workers; corrupt unions destroy workers’ jobs.

DONALD S. CONKEY

Woodstock

Gunfight at Sanford Corral?

I shook my head in dismay when I read the article regarding the gun legislation battle and the attempts to expand the ability to carry firearms to campuses and churches (“Gun legislation: Campuses, churches in debate’s cross hairs,” Page One, Aug. 13).

Can you imagine this year’s UGA-Georgia Tech football game if this law were expanded? Here is a likely scenario: One team’s fan says something about an opposing fan’s mother and now we have a gunfight between “law-abiding” citizens.

In addition, I do not recall reading about Jesus brandishing a pistol as he preached the Sermon on the Mount. If a church decides to hire a security guard, that is one matter, but churchgoers carrying weapons is flat-out nuts.

Bottom line: This law was a bad idea to begin with and the attempts to expand its reach are worse.

KELLY M. SQUIRES

Roswell

Misjudging the news

During an era when Cobb County was one of the fastest-growing counties in the country, the Cobb County judicial system and court administrator’s office grew at the same rapid rate. For 23 years “Skip” Chesshire effectively modernized and managed this growth. As soon as his improprieties were known, he retired immediately with his pension, which cannot or should not be touched.

So why the $50,000 investigation and publicity? All witnesses, except for one, were tracked down by the investigators, and the only result is “allegations.” This is a private matter for his family, and they should not have to suffer because of the media’s twisted definition of what is news.

JAMES WILSON

Marietta