Letters on tar sands, Planned Parenthood fundraiser, faith failures, Huelskamp, pay to play, conserving water

Cancel Canada tar sands projects

Petroleum plunderers seek to expand their 110-square-mile toxic sludge moonscape – the once ancient arboreal forest homeland of Alberta’s Lubicon Cree. Make no mistake, this is oil mining.

Pumping this Molotov cocktail requires extremely high pressures and temperatures. This results in millions of gallons of spills by way of ruptures from pipe manufactured in India and China. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration declared TransCanada’s Spread 3 welding to be grossly insufficient by flunking up to 72.2 percent of the total welds during one week of testing in 2012. The Keystone pipeline has been built upon visible rocks, river and waterway crossings with angle bends often not piggable to inspection and cleaning.

Want jobs? Repair decaying pipeline infrastructure.

As a former pipeline and refinery inspector, I would plead with companies to do what Shell, Total, Norwegian Statoil and Suncor have done – cancel tar sands projects. Koch Industries is nearly alone in its Athabasca madness.

Climate change is real. The oil companies are eradicating the Cree Nation and now are seeking to annihilate the rest of us, too.

Other ways to help

Episcopal churches apparently “help people in need” as long as they’re not voiceless and defenseless (“Church fundraiser attracts protesters,” Jan. 14 Eagle).

I don’t know the church’s criteria to be considered a person. What other group comes under the church’s class of people not to help? Do you think God will bless this hypocrisy?

With a little thought, St. James Episcopal Church could come up with other positive ways to help women struggling with unwanted pregnancies than by supporting an organization that performs abortions. That College Hill United Methodist Church is complicit in any way is also shameful.

Look out for others

I’m disappointed in the lack of participation in Inter-Faith Ministries by many churches in Wichita. It’s sad when a person’s faith doesn’t compel him to look out for the welfare of his brother or sister.

There are places of worship in this town that could accomplish so much good if they put as much energy into caring for the poor and the sick as they do persecuting homosexuals and whoring with politicians.

It doesn’t surprise me one bit that so many people are cynical about religion. Some faiths are even driving people to destructive acts, such as Muslims killing cartoonists and Christians bombing abortion clinics. Can we transform the madness into love and empathy?

Show appreciation

On behalf of their peers who have lost their lives after expressing their opinions of Islam or Muhammad, is there a chance we Christians can get just a token of appreciation for making it possible for the media to express their opinions of Christians and Jesus without needing courage to do so?

Send back to farm

U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, needs to be back on the farm. How we elected such an immature, myopic and spiteful person to represent us in Congress sadly speaks to the low level of mature intelligence among voters.

Huelskamp can do nothing but say “no” to any legislation that doesn’t fit his narrow view of what is good for his backers, especially the rich and powerful contributors. He offers nothing positive; he only has temper tantrums when he doesn’t get his way. He’s even lost support of his fellow neocons. Now he’s only “on the outside, complaining” (Jan. 8 Now Consider This). What a poor example for Kansas.

Huelskamp is a school-yard bully who has never grown up. He seems to enjoy that role.

Huelskamp needs to go back to his farm and play in the dirt – his own dirt. His penchant for throwing dirt around Washington, D.C., is a disgrace to all Kansas. Let us ensure that he makes that return trip to the barn at the next election in 2016.

Vote doesn’t count

Watching the film “Pay 2 Play,” I got my eyes opened to the fact that our votes don’t count during election time. Big money from all over the world is what puts people in office in the United States.

The only way for our votes to count is to make it a law that you have to vote. There are several countries in Europe where it’s a law to vote. They have ways of knowing whether you vote.

Go to Amazon.com, and you can buy the “Pay 2 Play” DVD.

Reduce watering

The Wichita City Council should have voted to ban excessive lawn watering before Wichitans voted on whether to raise the sales tax to finance a new water source. If the city reduced water consumption significantly, it could be years or decades before it would need a new water source.

This story was originally published January 15, 2015 at 6:04 PM with the headline "Letters on tar sands, Planned Parenthood fundraiser, faith failures, Huelskamp, pay to play, conserving water."