Letters on Renewable Fuel Standard, anti-Muslim group, Trumpettes
Need clear picture of fuel standards
Kansans deserve a clear picture of the Renewable Fuel Standard’s future, and a recent letter did the RFS a disservice (“Winners, losers in U.S. fuel policy,” Feb. 17 Letters to the Editor).
Though the Environmental Protection Agency will set RFS volume requirements when the statutorily established volumes no longer apply, the agency will not have “unfettered control.” EPA will be bound by rules laid out in law, and it can’t ignore ethanol’s greenhouse gas reductions and energy security contributions.
EPA is already following these rules as it sets annual biomass-based diesel requirements, as statutory volumes no longer apply to that fuel. Since 2012, EPA has more than doubled requirements for biomass-based diesel, and the industry has produced qualifying fuel well above those volumes. Stakeholders continue to work to improve EPA’s methods for setting biomass-based diesel volumes, because the method will eventually apply to all other renewable fuels.
Recently, several members of Kansas Young Republicans wrote to state newspapers, repeating this myth about the RFS after 2022. I’m left wondering why they’ve engaged in this campaign?
Paul Winters, Washington, D.C.
Director of Communications, Biotechnology Innovation Organization
No place here
The Southern Poverty Law Center refers to Act for America as an extremist group that is now the largest grassroots anti-Muslim organization in the country. It is also listed as an Islamophobia echo chamber by the Center for American Progress.
How disappointing to learn that this group has a local Wichita chapter. It hosts anti-Muslim extremist speakers, such as disgraced FBI agent John Guandolo, who appeared on Feb. 23 at Crown Uptown Theatre, and who was disinvited as a trainer for the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office in 2014.
Guandolo has claimed that former CIA Director John Brennan secretly converted to Islam and brought Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood into our government. He also claimed that Muslims “do not have a First Amendment right to do anything.”
Act for America, Guandolo, and the Center for Security Policy (with which Guandolo is closely associated) are all involved in the deliberate misdefinition of Sharia law as ideology committed to destroying Western civilization, a definition not recognizable to scholars of Islam and Muslim tradition.
There is no place in Wichita for this misinformation. Shame on the Crown Uptown for hosting this event.
Celia Gorlich, Wichita
GOP Trumpettes
I have been a registered Republican since I turned 18 and voted for Richard Nixon. Was that my first mistake?
I did note vote for President Trump, and I feel very good about it. However, I am upset with my representatives in Washington, D.C., including Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan.
I do not feel that Moran is a Republican anymore. He and Republicans make excuses for what Trump does and says. They don’t care as long as they get their way and are in charge of both houses of Congress. They show no regard for the people of this country – the people who elected them.
I hope “we the people” have enough nerve to vote Moran out when he runs again.
Barbara Combs, Wichita
Letters to the Editor
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This story was originally published March 4, 2017 at 5:04 AM with the headline "Letters on Renewable Fuel Standard, anti-Muslim group, Trumpettes."