March 15, 2008 09:39 pm
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Club fees deter many would-be hunters
In response to your front page article “Love seeks seniors hunting, fishing license,” Sen. Love’s and the DNR assertion that the younger generation has shifted their attention from hunting and fishing to video games is simply not the reason for the decline in residential licenses.
Why don’t Sen. Love and the DNR tell you that the reason is really because an area to hunt is, at best, hard to find. Unless you belong to a hunt club, there are few places to hunt unless you have a friend or someone who will let you hunt on their land. If you belong to a hunt club, you will purchase a residential license and pay the $300 to $450 hunt club membership fee. For most senior West Virginia residents living on limited incomes, the purchase of license and paying hunt club membership fee equates to 2 to 4 percent of their yearly income. It’s just not worth it!
I doubt that most hunters my age (65+) do much hunting these days nor do they take an interest in introducing their children or grandchildren to hunting because of the lack of good hunting areas or hunt club membership fees.
If Sen. Love and the DNR would like to make up the deficit in the DNR budget, they should impose a fee by requiring all hunt club members to purchase an additional stamp for their license. I suggest this fee because all wildlife on hunt club-leased land belongs to the people of West Virginia (West Virginia 20-2-3) and the rest of the residents who do not belong to the hunt club are being restricted from equal access to these West Virginia resources; therefore, the state (citizens) should be compensated.
I also suggest that any hunting lease be required to submit a Wildlife Management Plan for the area under lease which will meet the requirement of the federal/West Virginia Comprehensive Wildlife strategies. This should be accomplished to ensure continued and increased federal grants for West Virginia wildlife plans. I further suggest that the tax base for these leased lands (surface use) be re-evaluated, such as state’s managed timberland property evaluation formula should include hunt club-leased land or the land be disqualified from the managed timberland program. The state should develop various tax incentives and programs for land owners who open their land to public hunting or charge a minimal fee for public hunting.
I believe that no amount of gun training for kids in our public schools (which is crazy) or taxing our seniors will solve the shortfall in residential hunting/fishing license sales. Until the state acquires the necessary guts to take on the real problems, we will see no improvement in the hunting/fishing license sales; we will see fewer DNR law officers in the field, more contaminated trout streams to name a few.
The sportsmen of this state can solve this problem by voting for politicians who will support change to be more consistent with the goals of the management of wildlife with which the people have charged this state as trustee.
Gary Smith
Crawley
Test for drugs before handing out checks
Like a lot of folks in this state, I have a job. I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit.
In order to get that paycheck, I am required to pass a random urine test with which I have no problem. What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don’t have to pass a urine test.
Shouldn’t one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to earn it for them? Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their backsides, doing drugs while I work.
Can you imagine how much money the state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check?
Thank you, from a hard-working taxpayer.
Roy G. Mahan
Sophia
Reader strives to be correct
It seems to me making political decisions based on one’s convictions about each individual issue is better than making a reflexive decision based on a political label. I happen to be a big supporter of public education. Does that mean the vast majority of my friends that are conservative and carry the far right label would reject my thoughts on every issue? I also believe that any standard of right and wrong outside of what God says via the scriptures is man based and thus on a dangerous slippery slope. Does that mean the vast majority of my friends that are liberal and carry the far left label would reject my thoughts on every issue? The convictions that I have are strongly held and often explicitly and passionately expressed. Perhaps even that is offensive to people that consider themselves moderate and view emotional intensity and zeal on any issue as dangerous extremism.
If I must have a label, the label that I would like to have the most is the label of “correct.” Correctism would seem to me to be striving to make the best decision on a particular issue given the most current accurate information and one’s present circumstances. In other words, what is the best thing to do?
Making a decision based purely on a political label does not require us to think and analyze each issue. This label- based spontaneous decision-making also means we do not listen to each other. None of us on this side of eternity have the market cornered on perfection. So it seems to this citizen there is wisdom in listening to another person’s view point, no matter what we may perceive their label to be.
So in this political season I think I will strive to be correct and associate myself with people who do that as well. Perhaps we should all do the same.
Ron Cantley II
Cool Ridge
Easter celebration stands for hope
Easter, the festival that celebrates the resurrection of Christ, is one of the most holy days in the calendar of Christianity. The Easter message is one of victory and hope, for it recalls that Christ arose from the dead on the third day after the Crucifixion; it is the symbol and promise that man’s soul is immortal. In many languages the name for Easter comes from the Hebrew pesah, or Passover. The English word is from the Anglo-Saxon name of Eostre, a Teutonic goddess of spring or the dawn.
Certain Christians disparage the custom of “Easter egg hunts” but fail to see the harm in dressing in one’s best on Easter Sunday. Both these customs probably had their beginning in the pagan celebrations of the rebirth of the world in spring. The egg was a symbol of new life, and many dressed in new clothes and wore flowers in the festival, because the winter had come to an end and the earth seemed alive again. However, the early Church Fathers came to recognize the Easter egg as a symbol of rebirth into a new life with Christ, and His promise of eternal life.
Just before ascending to Heaven, Christ left us a mandate to go into all the world to proclaim the gospel. We do not have a mandate to be as Don Quixote and spend valuable time fighting battles we cannot win. In many cases “issues” repel, instead of drawing others to Christ. President Carter perhaps says it best. “Let us be Christians that are not simply against everything, but let us be for something.” Let us show the love of God in our hearts and thereby spread the gospel of Christ. As we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, let us go forth with the mandate He has given us.
Jennings M. Angell
Hinton
Remember to thank war vets
Whether the veteran served 60 years or six months ago, some are still living a personal hell every day.
POWs remember their captivity and torture. Purple Heart recipients look down to see an appendage not usable or missing and still feel the pain. Some held on to dying buddies knowing they could not keep them alive.
During emotional battles, they have to find purpose amid the confusion around them. Hell hit again when they returned home. They were lepers. For some, this personal anguish led them to Christianity following Jesus Christ. Relief, comfort, love and acceptance are what they needed to survive their ongoing nightmare. Jesus gave them this.
The local VA hospital was built to help our veterans heal physically and mentally. Religion helped in their recovery. Being able to look up on the cross in the facilities chapel is no longer allowable. It was mandated to be covered up for being offensive and the bedside Bibles were removed from the rooms. This is an outrage that the rights they fought for are being violated in this manner. Being able to look on to the cross or reaching for a Bible is how some made it through the night.
Now is time we fight with our veterans and reclaim our privileges and rights that are being taken away. Voices need to be brought to a level of loudness that all will hear. One can get the ball rolling, but there is strength in numbers. Changes have to start at home and now, or everything they fought and died for was for absolutely nothing. It is an outrage our veterans are being done like this, but most of all, it is sad that the VA administration doesn’t have enough back bone to stand up for their patients and their rights.
The next time you are out driving, look at two of our local war memorials. There is one in Coal City and the other one is on the grounds of the Corner Stone Freewill Baptist Church in Crab Orchard, placed there by a local Eagle Scout that is my son. Then the next time you see a veteran, whether you know them or not, shake their hand and say thank you. I do.
Lisa G. Lovely
Arnett
Story shows view of coal association
Ms. Dayton’s take on mountaintop mining is nothing but a bunch of spoon-fed hogwash.
The article describes her guided tour of mountaintop removal sites by none other than Roger Lilly, a marketing manager of Walker Machinery, accompanied by a representative of the Friends of Coal.
Lilly is quoted as saying “unless you know where you’re going (as you travel through the state), you won’t see mountaintop mining.” Of course not. If everyone were able to plainly see the effects of MTR as they drove along the roads of West Virginia everyone in the state would be in an uproar, except those that profit from it.
Still, the appearance of MTR isn’t everything. What it looks like is nowhere near as bad as the effects you can’t see. Just like you can’t see those facts in Ms. Dayton’s article.
Ms. Dayton ponders, “Is mountaintop mining destroying all of our mountains?” As far as she can see her answer is no. Her “impression appears to be confirmed by information provided by the West Virginia Coal Association.”
This article is the equivalent of writing a story about union coal mining and getting a guided tour by Don Blankenship. Next time you want to write an article about MTR, why don’t you try interviewing people who do not have capital interest, investment, and/or stock in its future.
Mountaintop removal is one of many ways that coal is mined. It just happens to be the cheapest. The only reason it exists is because it is cost efficient for company profit margins. Stopping MTR would create jobs because they would have to hire more miners to deep mine. MTR uses a skeleton crew of men and machines to demolish the land in a place that happens to be one of the most biologically diverse places in the world.
News flash, people: Coal is not the only thing that “keeps the lights on.” Contrary to that opinion, there are plenty of other ways to generate energy, renewable energy, and create a sustainable economy. Watch the news. The whole world is talking about alternative energy sources.
Nick Regalado
Rock Creek
Coal article is refreshing
I just want to thank you for your great piece regarding mountaintop removal mining. It is so refreshing to find someone who is brave enough to tell the whole story instead of just the extremist environmentalist position.
In all my years of mining, yours is the singlemost truthful story I have ever read. I know you are being clobbered for it but you have nothing to back up for.
Julia Bonds and a few of her cohorts paint a picture of strip miners as being some sort of evil human beings and treat us as her enemies. She is so wrong. We are her neighbors. We shop at the same places she shops, our kids go to the same schools and we attend the same churches.
She stated that strip miners are temporary workers.
Well, I have been a strip miner since 1976 and most of my fellow workers have similar work records. I live in a coal community right now and have most of my life. Sure, we have dust and noise, but I know the benefits far outweigh the bad things. I have found that coal trucks hauling coal from deep mines, which is what she says she likes, make just as much dust and noise as coal trucks hauling strip mine coal.
She says that her father and grandfather were “real miners.” Well, I appreciate all the work and sacrifices they made, but I feel I am a real miner, too. A big amount of the land we are mining now is land that her real miners butchered up years ago.
Anyone that reallywants to see the truth would see that most of the coal we strip can never be deep mined. So the notion that to stop mountaintop mining will lead to all coal being deep mined is absurd. So I again thank you for showing a little glimpse of the good things about strip mining.
I urge Julia Bonds to stop looking for something negative all the time and try to see the good. I can guarantee you there is much more good than what you wrote about. I choose to live where I live and she has the same choice. I and my fellow workers are not her enemies. Her enemies are these extreme environmental groups that don’t live in West Virginia and could really care less about our people. They have their own selfish agenda and they just go around stirring up trouble between neighbors.
Larry M. Hudson
Scarbro
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