Letters to the Editor: 12.25.97
Huddled Leadership
East Hampton
December 9, 1997
Dear Editor:
It is downright incredible to get the facts about our little itsy bitsy town straight from the mouth of a national newspaper, specifically the Sunday, Dec. 7, New York Times. It seems the new buzz word is trash-speak, referring, of course, to our beloved landfill.
Aren't we lucky that the elections are over and now the real issues can surface. The bogus airport issue can now be allowed to die so that the shock of a $95 million landfill fiasco can be addressed and a scapegoat found.
Through mismanagement, incompetence, and the lack of foresight, we will be saddled with an $80 million debt. Add to that another $15 million lawsuit filed by the Bistrians, which in all probability is a response to the town's arrogant stand on their golf course development. This, of course, is not a problem since it will insure all those politically connected law firms work defending the town's indefensible actions.
The Democrats shrewdly diverted the issues regarding the enormous cost of various town expenses by focusing their campaign on the "great airport scare." The reality of the airport issue was to simply repair an existing 100-foot-wide runway in order to make it safer for all aircraft. In no way could our present runways accommodate larger commercial aircraft than are currently using it to date.
I can just imagine the leadership huddled together behind closed doors, saying, "Since our property taxes are lower than all the other towns in Suffolk, it will be easy to sell them a major tax increase and at the same time take a tough stand on spending by cutting medical benefits." As for the rest of the money, we'll beg from the state and Federal Government." That scenario sounds about right for these forward thinkers.
Of course, a couple more screw-ups like the landfill and the only other course of action will be to forget completely about the environment and downzone building lots so that we can have more houses and developments in order to enlarge our tax base.
Isn't it unusual that The Star never reported any of this information to us? Whether it be good or bad for a particular political party has no meaning when it comes to the health of the East Hampton Town citizen!
Sincerely,
EUGENE Z. HALLER, D.C.
P.S. I just received my new tax bill for December 1997. My taxes were raised $400. This is only the beginning. . . .
See an editorial on this subject in this section. Ed.
Their Little Hearts
East Hampton
December 18, 1997
To The Editor:
God bless their little hearts!
To anyone who has ever experienced the horror of divorce, my heart goes out to you. Not only is letting go of the ones you love the most difficult thing I have ever tried to accomplish, it's also the most painful, heartbreaking experience I have ever encountered and, when children are involved, God bless their little hearts!
I can just imagine what goes through a 5-year-old child's mind when they are told mommy and daddy are not going to live together anymore. They are told you can visit daddy every Tuesday and Thursday evening for two hours and every other weekend you get to sleep over on Saturday night, isn't that great?
You're going to have two homes now, two yards to play in, two bedrooms, two bicycles, two swing sets, isn't that exciting? This Thanksgiving you're with daddy, and mommy has you for Christmas, oh boy.
We can't tell them the truth, you're being robbed of your right to a real family, you are now a broken-home statistic with two mothers and two fathers. You get the pleasure of being jerked back and forth for the next 15 years, you're the rope in a tug of war game that nobody wins, lucky you.
You get a stepparent, what fun. I don't care how much therapy you give them, they know who their parents are and that man that sleeps with mommy is not daddy. No matter what any counselor or doctor may tell you, you will never love this child like your own, you may love them, feel them in your heart, but face the facts, blood is thicker than water and if there are other children involved there will be favoritism, it's only human nature. Everywhere you go, people just know, there goes a broken family. What a shame!
People may tell you, children learn to accept their stepparent, they adapt to their new way of life, everything will work out.
Yes, they accept, they adapt, but not because they want to, because they have no other choice and things do work out, they take the loss, they are robbed. I, being a father of two boys, 9 and 5 years old, am not proud of what has happened to our family.
When they get older and remember the heartache and pain we've caused them, I hope and pray they don't follow in their parents' footsteps and rob their children, knowing, as they've learned from their parents, how easily it is done! God bless their little hearts!
So if any of you out there is contemplating divorce with children involved, do whatever it takes to make your marriage work. Get help, seek counseling, change your ways, and above all communicate, sit down with your spouse daily and talk, without interruptions, feel what they feel, and hopefully with the help of God the love will last forever.
I do understand if the love is gone, you have sought help, prayed to God, tried everything in your power and still the love cannot be brought back, then you have no other choice. Living with someone you do not love is no way of life, for children with parents who do not love each other it is no way of life either.
So don't let this happen to you, do whatever it takes to make your marriage work. Give your 100 percent and if the love is there you will get 100 percent back. So please remember, family is the most important thing in life, family belongs together not apart!
God bless their little hearts.
Sincerely,
RON BENNETT
Voodoo Science
Sag Harbor
December 14, 1997
To The Editor:
I want to explain my objection to the methods employed by the groups that are attacking Brookhaven National Laboratory. It's not that their ideas are false, though I do think most of them are, but that they support these ideas using voodoo science.
What's voodoo science? It's a method that starts with a central assertion that is assumed to be true, and that then seeks to square all observations with that dogma.
An example of voodoo science is creationism. Creationism asserts not that the universe was created by God (a proposition in which lots of reasonable people, including scientists, believe) but that He created it exactly when and how the Book of Genesis, literally interpreted, says He did.
"Creation science" seeks to shoehorn all the observed facts of geology, biology, and astronomy into a 6,000-year time frame, rather than letting these facts speak for themselves.
Because the theory that a voodoo science seeks to protect is usually a fairly absurd one, it is generally necessary for it to have a fallback story to use when all else fails.
That fallback story of creationism is that God created the universe 6,000 years ago in just such a way that it looks considerably older, presumably so that He would have an excuse to damn all scientists to hell.
Similarly, the anti-Brookhaven movement is a religion (one with a devil but no God) whose central dogma is that Brookhaven National Laboratory is responsible for all ills on Long Island that are similar in any way to ones that have anywhere, under any circumstances, been caused by radiation. Its version of voodoo science seeks to tell, not whether a particular evil has emanated from the laboratory (guilt or innocence to be determined), but that it occurred (guilt assumed from the outset). This poses a problem, however. What does one do when even creative spin-doctoring can't produce a plausible guilt scenario?
That's when anti-Brookhavenism, like creationism, needs a fallback story. The fallback story here is that any results that appear to exonerate the laboratory must have come about through conspiracy and coverup.
This is not to say that conspiracies and coverups never occur. But to claim that government officials must be lying simply because they are government officials, without any evidence to that effect, is to ratify the world view of the right-wing militias and the Unabomber.
Sincerely,
JOHN ANDREWS
Note: For purposes of identification, I perform research on energy-efficient buildings at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
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