Let's Clarify

Nuclear Weapons Rights

2009-06-25T16:30:00.003-04:00

Please Comment: Who has a right to own and operate a nuclear weapon? If Iran wants one, what should we do about it?

Iran feels they are just as entitled to them as America is. Is that true? Are we somehow better than them? Many feel as if Iran's government is far too unstable to trust with nuclear weapons. I feel that playground rules apply here: if they want something, what are we going to do about it? If they can make them, they are entitled to them. If we can successfully take the weapons from them, we might, and that's okay. That would likely upset the Iranians, possibly resulting in another Iraq-style conflict. I particularly think it unwise to group them with North Korea as an "axis of evil." We've got to uphold their rights if they're going to respect us, but we also have to protect ourselves. Maybe instead of making them forfeit their weapons technology, we should insist on overseeing it, to ensure our own safety and security. Isn't that what we did with the Russians? What do you think?

Scam

2009-06-18T14:15:00.001-04:00

Listing:

richmond craigslist > etcetera jobs house help

Reply to: collinsmaxims@hotmail.com Date: 2009-02-15, 11:28PM EST

House help need

Compensation: 20hr

This is a part-time job.

OK for recruiters to contact this job poster.

Please, no phone calls about this job!

Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

PostingID: 1036433090

Me:

Hi! My name is Christian Briggs, and I would love to provide household labor for you immediately. I just got out of the navy after six years of service (honorable discharge) and am currently enrolled at J Sargeant Reynolds to become an elementary school teacher. I have a friendly, respectful demeanor, and would love to come out and meet you whenever it is convenient for you. You can contact me anytime at 804-338-8332.

Thank you for your time and consideration. Christian C Briggs

Collins:

Am sorry for responding late to your mail, I have been out internet for some days.Am Collins and My wife's name is Vivia , she's 5 months pregnant and this is her first baby. We are relocating to the City from The Scotland,I will be coming to there to work on contract basis with United States Environmental Protection Agency on a private research work So i need someone who could help me take care of house by doing some house work while am off to work.Someone that will alos help in running some errands. I will be offering you $20/hr, i will be needing your services from for three hours at any suitable time of yours, Mondays through Fridays. I believe you are fit for this position in as much you will prove yourself to be a reliable and good person, We have a financier that is based in the states and he will be handling the payment and some other expenses, so he will be the one that will be taking care of your the payment, I will instruct him to pay for the first two weeks before my arrival so as to secure your service, actually i should have paid for more weeks but i will extend the payment if am satisfy with your service after the two weeks. My financier will be making out a check to you before my arrival, you will be receiving a check of $5,700 out which you will deducting your pay for the first two weeks and you will be using the remaining to buy foodstuffs and other things needed in the house,you will getting this foodstuff on the day of our arrival which is March 5. Actually all flights from the Scottland arrives at nights so you will be getting the foodstuff in the morning and making all other preparations. I will also instruct my estate agent to mail the keys of the apartment to you so that you can do all other necessary preparations before we arrive,I will also email you the shopping list. You have to get all this shopping before our arrival so that we wont have to start running around when we arrive, So my financier would be needing the following Information to make out the check: Name to be on Check, Address, City, State:, Zip code, Phone number

Did you accept my offer? All i need from you is total honesty and sincerity. I know you will be committed to the work,You will also have a nice period of working with my wife. I will be waiting to hear from you. Thanks

Me:

Mr Collins,

I appreciated your prompt reply, and I accept your offer. My contact/mailing information is:

Christian C Briggs

5863 Flowering Peach Lane

Providence Forge, VA 23140

804-338-8332

I am excited by the prospect of assisting your family, and showing you how dependable I am. Once I have the details, etc, you can count on me to have everything ready for you upon your arrival on March 5.

Sincerely, Christian C Briggs

Collins:

Hello , I hope you are fine and in Good health. I am sending you this mail to notify you about the payment for the helping position and i want to inform you about the paycheck which you would be receiving , Please for the nature of your job and for the good relationship between yourself and myself.I hope i can count on you with this and i would be looking forward to see you on my arrival .I hope i would be in good hands. I would email you the tracking number of the package which would contain the payments as soon as it is sent. Thanks and God bless you The apartment is Located at: 4156 Gadwell Ct, Providence Forge, VA 23140 Its only remains the leasing agreement that would be signed and i'll acquire full leasing of the apartment...And i will like to inform you that there has been a change in plan, When you get the check for the amount of $5,700. I want you to deduct $700 as your deposit and $700 for the shopping of groceries and then help me to send the remaining $4,300 to my travel agent, I should have get the money across to my travel agent but i ran out funds here. Kindly get back to me if you will be able to help me out with this The check will deliver to you before friday,so dont worry and i'll let you know if i have to postpone the arrival day . Thanks for your concern

Me:

Hello Mr Collins, Thank you for forwarding more details. I just mapped your apartment online, and it is 2.5 miles (4km) from mine. What a coincidence! You'll find this area of Virginia is particularly beautiful, and in a very pleasant community. Also, I understand your circumstances and will work with you to the extent of my capabilities. I will keep my eye on the mail, and keep you informed of what is going on here.

Sincerely, Christian C Briggs

Me:

Mr Collins, I hope you are doing well. Forgive me, but you ought to know that in the past, I've been warned never to forward unsecure money. Depending on the circumstances, it might be prudent for me to work things out directly with your financier. No matter what the case, I am confident you will understand that in these times, precautions sometimes must be made. As I said before, I will work with you to the extent of my capabilities, and you can certainly put your trust in me. I am excited to meet you and your wife Vivia, and to see the bump. (I love children) Take great care, and God bless. Thank you so much for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely, Christian C Briggs

Collins:

I will keep you informed, I got your mail

The Obligation of a Just Society

2009-06-18T14:04:00.005-04:00

The Virginia Department of Corrections the the state's largest agency, and spends over one billion dollars of your money every single year. Do you think it's well invested? Emma Goldman once said, “Crime is naught but misdirected energy,” but so is our prison system. These inmates are getting fed, clothed, and guarded over by our precious tax dollars, many of whom for the rest of their lives, when they could be contributing to society, serving others, and increasing our country's productivity.

Specifically, what do we expect to accomplish by putting people in jail? To what extent does the prison system reduce crime, and why? What are we doing to ensure that those released will not go out and break into someone's home? What does the prison system cost our country culturally, financially, and economically? What can we do about it? To reduce crime, we need to reevaluate the entire idea of imprisonment.

Andrew Peyton Thomas’s article, “Imprisoning Criminals Prevents Crime,” which was published in 1998 in The Weekly Standard, he sought to describe the logic behind our current system, and defend its success from “liberal criminologists." He described one set of statistics, the liberal interpretation of them, then provided his own “common sense” conclusion. He illustrated the consequences of both conclusions, then went into detail regarding the effects of “deterrence and incapacitation” that imprisonment provides for more specific crimes, such as burglary and robbery. The author then concluded by emphasizing that more criminals need to be locked away, thus causing crime to continue to drop, in spite of the persistent corruption of American values. Based on that, one could imagine a bleak future in America, where a majority of the people are behind bars. There are no criminals to fear, but everyone has reason to fear the law.

In 2006, Neal Peirce published the article “To Reduce Crimes, Activists Draft Dramatic New Formula” in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He described a new way of looking at crime reduction: “making one-timers out of potential repeat offenders." Recidivism is a big problem, the author contended, and it’s costing us security, productivity, and exorbitant amounts of tax money. He described the barriers that each released prisoner faces in society, then went into detail about a new committee based in Chicago which is seeking to do something about it. Then author returned to describe more obstacles confronted by returning convicts, then concluded by discussing the desired result, which sought tax dollars directed at employment programs and rehabilitation, rather than extended sentencing and the eventual reprocessing of repeat offenders into the prison system.

Peirce’s opening was the strongest part of his piece, starting with a focus on fighting crime, then hooking the reader by putting the current solutions to crime in a bad light. He wraps it up quickly with a seemingly unbelievable but promising focus of released prisoners not repeating their crimes. Peirce then moved right into the next paragraph, using surprising statistics, such as “across the U.S., roughly 60 percent of released prisoners commit another crime, and more than 50 percent return to prison within three years” to prove to the readers how much of an impact this change could have on crime.

In contrast, Thomas used his opening to undermine his own valid argument, and wasted his efforts criticizing someone else’s proposal that “the imprisonment boom has developed a built-in growth dynamic independent of the crime rate." I understand this is a response article, but if he wanted someone to buy into his opinion, then he needed to provide something of substance in the opening for others to support. Happily, this provided much-needed background for his introduction.

The author’s hook was hidden, if it existed at all, in his statement that “incarceration rates are rising while crime rates are falling” and relied on the readers to stop and think about it on their own. He especially needed to hurry up and get to his focus, which was “the removal of known criminals from society…will reduce the crime rate." The author also repeatedly put the blame on liberals, which immediately narrowed his audience to the far-right wing, and even undermined his credibility.

Further into his piece, Thomas should have elaborated on his statistical analysis, “only anarchists would pronounce this a tragedy," but he did do a good job of illustrating his point by describing a seriously flawed reform in Arizona. Voters there sought to release “all inmates sentenced for first-time drug offenses – about 1,000 inmates in all” then the law was adjusted to disqualify those previously found guilty of a felony, which reduced the number to 53. This example did a lot for the author’s argument that the right people are getting locked up.

In the publisher’s preface, we were told that Andrew Peyton Thomas had been through law school, which explained his assumption that all his readers were supposed to understand the obscure Latin phrase “ipso facto." Luckily, the context was enough for most readers to understand, but was still distracting. Finally, the author's voice was far too hostile, as if you were either on his side, or you were a dangerous liberal. If an author doesn't care about who his reader is, why should the reader care about anything he has to say?

Neal Peirce described throughout his article the obstacles faced by released prisoners. In doing this, he kept the reader firmly focused on the idea that our society is setting these people up for failure. One set of examples included “substance abuse, lack of housing, depression, and the fact they may never have held a job in their lives." Many of these people were initially arrested doing the only thing they knew how to do to survive. What do we honestly expect them to do upon their release? Imagine how successful someone could be selling drugs again, rather than flipping burgers. All they have to do is pick up where they left off.

We can undo this cycle by helping these men and women find success as a law-abiding citizen. Peirce illustrated one solution which is planned to be tested in areas in Chicago and in nearby major cities: “groups of freshly released inmates will be given subsidized, wage-paying jobs for periods of up to three months, combined with an array of support services and help at finding regular employment." This gave the author credibility, because it showed there are others that agree with his point that we must do something about this continued waste of resources we call prison.

In conclusion, Peirce’s piece made a great argument, with plenty of examples in and around Chicago, of one way we can expect to see crime reduced nationwide. His use of cause-and-effect demonstrated the process through which released prisoners face obstacles in their communities, then commit the same crimes and are sent right back into the system they had just gotten out of. In contrast, Thomas’s argument was that there is a continued drop in crime, therefore the system does not warrant any improvement.

Andrew Peyton Thomas’s last paragraph should have been reorganized, because the first sentence was far too long and jumped back and forth too much: "Still, those of us who, until recently, thought that...should admit that we underestimate the effectiveness of simple punishment." The last sentence was even worse. I honestly did not understand what Thomas meant by “as long as America as a whole is spared the pathologies most acutely associated with the inner city," and it made no reference to anything else in his essay.

Thomas also had the nerve to attribute only marginal effect to “improved police work, greater community involvement, teenage curfews, and other reforms.” He ought to have left these out, rather than draw attention to his lack of respect for anything other than imprisonment for the reduction in crime. The other critical flaw in Thomas’s essay was his dehumanization of criminals. His closing statement isolated criminals from being a part of society, and even from being American. He called them “career criminals," which immediately cut them off from having normal lives ever again.

What the author and millions of others fail to see is that criminals are people too. They are us. For the most part, they are Americans. If you continue to alienate them, their behavior will never improve. If everyone had access to the right resources, however, there would be no reason to commit the types of crimes that continue to send impoverished people back to prison. The fact is, our system was ideally put in place to punish crimes, not people.

We need to fix our prison system. Obviously, it must continue to fight crime for the same reasons it did before: Before someone commits a crime, they have to expect that the consequences, and their likelihood, are reason enough to choose not to. After someone commits a crime, the consequences meet or exceed their expectations. The system must not release someone who is likely to commit crime again, and must provide services that suit each individual’s crime. The primary task of a prison must be to continuously work hard at preparing each person for release.

It is less obvious for many people that a high recidivism rate indicates that prisons do not meet these needs well enough. The prison system needs to provide an environment which perpetually improves each prisoner through education, discipline, and responsibility. Each prisoner needs to have a unique plan for release, with clear expectations, thus providing them with the hope of living a normal life, even if they were brought up without that hope. In the interest of punishing criminals, pain should be administered as necessary for rehabilitation, and once released, every dollar they make over minimum wage should be taxed to help pay for the services they’ve been provided.

The bottom line is that the public deserves for every criminal to have unlimited access to rehabilitation resources. This means counseling, medication, and employment. Why should our tax dollars pay for these things? Because it is for our safety. It is in the public’s best interests. These men and women deserve to have a more thorough rehabilitation process, and we deserve the safety that comes with it.

Justice is defined by Merriam Webster as “the assignment of merited rewards or punishments,” and also “the quality of being just, impartial, or fair.” Our society craves justice, but we do not realize it gives us an obligation to remember that everyone commits crimes. These people who commit crimes do deserve retribution, but then they must be given a second chance to become like the rest of us. Otherwise, there is no point in punishing them. Even worse, many of them will have no choice but to go back and face a life of crime. By alienating criminals, we put ourselves at risk.

There are desperate criminals out there right now, with no opportunities, no support, and no one willing to help them start a new life with a real job and an education. They need money to feed and clothe themselves. They know how to steal cars, televisions, and children, and who to sell all of them to. They have access to weapons, drugs, and they especially have access to our families. Who is going to be their next victim? What are we going to do about it?

The Purging Fire

2009-06-15T14:07:00.003-04:00

The Catholic Church believes in a place people go to called purgatory, where pain and punishment is used to cleanse a person of their faults. The reality is, most people are destined to face such an experience in their everyday lives, possibly as a consequence of their faults, including you. Always tell yourself that no matter what, everything happens for a reason. This way, once everything you care about has been taken from you, you can recognize the new opportunities in front of you. It seemed like I lost everything in the Fall of 2008, but in spite of that, my future ended up better than it was before. That experience was meant to happen, and I was meant to face it and improve as a result of it. Once again, it was proven that there are no coincidences.

Few decisions are more satisfying than allowing your enlistment in the US Navy to end. On a gray aircraft carrier parked at a gray pier on a gray day in Norfolk, I looked forward to getting my freedoms back, making more money, and finally having a far more time made available to my family. September was supposed to be the best month of my life. My wife and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary, moved into a new house, travelled to Mexico, then both of us started our new, better paid jobs. Whenever we saw kids, we got an itch to have some ourselves, then reminded ourselves to wait and enjoy each other while we were young.

In early October, I reflected on these changes as I dragged my feet out to the parking lot of a gas turbine power plant south of Richmond. The cell phone was in my wife's red Tacoma instead of my green Mustang because the latter had been rear-ended by a lumber truck three weeks earlier. It had been my first and only car. The hot sun glared at me, forcing me to find the cool shadow of a building to dial the numbers. Calling my wife troubled me, not only because it was about my best friend's upcoming funeral, but also because of the stress of our ongoing relationship problems. My wife had threatened to divorce me because these problems had reached a breaking point; my new job was drawing most of my time and energy, and things weren't going to improve anytime soon. Grappling with all of these events, combined with the difficult transition to civilian life, led me to seek psychological counseling. This would start out doing more harm than good, as it forced me to examine my mind as a broken system which needed repair.

Among all of my worries that month, I wasn't worried about anything as much as I was about my job at the company. Things had gotten especially critical since we were all put on two 12-hour shifts to do heavy work for at least the next two months. Worse yet, over the previous weeks, I'd been having difficulty focusing. I was even struggling just to stay awake during briefs on safety, which was the top priority at our industrial facility. So why would my supervisor be walking up to me right now, while I was on the phone? My blood ran cold.

His non-chalant stroll gave me limited time to get off the phone while my heart pounded with dread. There had to be something wrong with what I was doing at that very moment, but it was too late to do anything about it. I could only face the consequences and try to learn from it. Once I hung up, he looked at me, and like a friendly suggestion mentioned that I couldn't talk on my phone in this area and I needed to be wearing my hard hat. I also just missed a meeting I was supposed to be at, and my presence was needed in Bob's office. Bob was our boss's first name.

Sitting at Bob's desk, what I had thought would be a counseling session rapidly turned into a procedure for discharge. I tried to defend myself, but was soon given a cardboard box to pack my things into. I had never been fired before, and I especially never believed that I would have such bad conduct to deserve this treatment. I was on the verge of tears, but thankfully never crossed until I got home. In one way, the crisis was over, but I also had no idea where the consequences of this event would leave me. Would my wife leave me? Could I survive the devastating knowledge that I alone was responsible for this, that perhaps there was something so fundamentally wrong with me that it was impossible to redeem myself?

My life did not come to an end, and my wife stood by my side. With her help, I was able to lift myself back up and seek employment, but there was still a major problem. Right about the time I was fired, the economy took a downturn, several plants in the Richmond area were performing layoffs, and I was not exactly star material anymore. My attitude took another downturn, and I didn't know what to do about it. Even places like Food Lion and Sam's Club would not hire me. This was devastating to my self-image, and soon had no faith in myself whatsoever. I was troubled daily by frightening thoughts, but my wife kept supporting me, and never left my side. Without her, I would have been lost to the darkness of my own mind. With hard work from both of us, and with a few visits to a counselor, I began to feel better about myself. I was starting to see the potential I still had within, and the opportunities I still had ahead of me. Now I had to make a decision: Should I go back to the Navy, and forget my dreams of being home as we start a family, or should I dream a new dream, and go to school to change my career field?

I had left the Navy for a good reason, and I felt that going back would betray my principle of putting my family first. I had no idea what I wanted to study, so I took personality tests, looked at employment statistics, and found that education would best fit my interests. But teaching? I was still uncertain, so I called and met my former Physics teacher, Mr. Davenport. We reconnected and a had a long discussion about the reasons to choose teaching and the realities of it. Surprisingly he told me that he, too, tried to get away from teaching when he was in undergraduate school. He answered all my questions, but I was still faced with a difficult decision.

I may have initially rejected teaching, but the more I looked into my heart, the more examples I saw supporting the idea. My favorite times in the Navy were spent mentoring junior sailors, and I was especially moved by my mother's work advocating for children in broken homes. I thought about when I used to read to kids while I was in kindergarden, and how I once tried to start a class during recess in elementary school. Finally, I went back in my mind to the picnic table outside my old high school cafeteria. This was where I first considered the Navy, because it had such a positive impact on our future as a nation. The truth was that I could make the same difference by taking responsibility for the development of our nation's youth.

Losing my job and having no one to hire me forced me to look at what would really make me happy, and made me search out my unique purpose in life. It took no less than the weakening or destruction of everything I held dear to correct my path and show me my destiny. Through the suffering I endured, I grew smarter and stronger. The direction of my life improved even more than I did. If I hadn't dropped the ball and gotten fired, in twenty years I would still be working at that power plant, keeping the lights on for the people of Richmond. Instead, I'll be in a classroom, imparting knowledge and character to young children. I will be influencing the future of our community through my efforts there. I will be a leader.

There are no coincidences. No matter what is lost, no matter how bad it hurts, an opportunity will always arise. As I found out, however, often this new door is only visible once your outlook is positive enough to receive it. You have to be prepared to turn away from the closed door. Then with patience, gratitude, and hard work, you can start the journey you were meant to be on all along..

This Lie Can Kill You

2009-06-11T15:11:00.006-04:00

You wake up tomorrow morning, get your things together for the day ahead, and grab an apple in your rush to get to work on time. You put on your shoes, open the front door, and at first you don't recognize what you are looking at. You soon realize what's wrong: the car, the yard, and the pretty river at the end of the road are now buried in dark-gray mud and rocks. Your neighbor's house is gone and there is a dead fish at your feet. There is a foul, metallic stench in the air, and you cough reflexively. What are you going to do now?

This is the same bizarre scene that the residents of Kingston, Tennessee woke up to last December. The substance they were now living with was a "slurry," a wet coal waste full of toxic concentrations of heavy metals. Like a backyard grill, coal power plants produce ash, most of which is disposed of in bulk on property owned by the power plant. At 1:00am that morning, a sixty-foot tall reservoir of the slurry collapsed, releasing over a billion gallons of wet ash over 300 acres of land, destroying houses, and poisoning the air and water far beyond that. What's worse is that this event has successfully been kept secret from the American people. The coal industry cannot afford to risk losing support for "clean coal," their mythical concept designed to generate more money for the industry.

The essay "Black Tide" was written by Sean Flynn and published in the June 2009 issue of GQ to answer one important question about such an epic environmental disaster: "Why isn't anyone talking about it?" The article reviews the history of Kingston, describes the disaster and its impact, and debunks the idea of clean coal. The author tells us that clean coal is the shortened form of "clean coal technologies," which primarily includes efficient furnaces, particulate scrubbers, etc. The industry will still be blasting coal out of mountainsides, sending fumes into the atmosphere, and producing tons of unregulated ash, leaching into our water and air. Thanks to both 2008 presidential candidates and "17 million dollars worth of commercials," the vast majority of Americans think clean coal is the best thing that ever happened for the environment.

The author, uses the collapse of the dike and its subsequent impact to illustrate only one of the many flaws in the clean coal philosophy. He also illustrates one of the more unforeseen ways the industry is likely to cost us, in spite of its promises. He felt it was also necessary to honor the human suffering which could have been wrought on any such town with a coal power plant. The title, "Black Tide," is great. It gives the reader a surreal, but true image of what happened, and that image generates feelings of outrage. He also uses the fact that the event hasn't been featured in the news to make that feeling stronger.

Flynn's points are explained by going into adequate detail about the origins of "clean coal," the life cycle of coal fuel, the health problems and lifestyle impact of the disaster on the residents, and the current measures the company responsible is taking. Unfortunately, some of the vast length of this piece should have been given to explaining the technologies encompassed by clean coal. It would have given him more credibility by exposing more of the opposing view to his arguments. Of course, it would have been tricky to explain it in layman's terms, and avoid putting the reader to sleep. Also, instead of just telling us what "clean coal" is an abbreviation of, and giving us two examples the concept, he should have given a more specific definition of the term, like the one written by the US Senate:

"The term clean coal technology means any technology…

which will achieve significant reductions in air emissions of

sulfur dioxide or oxides of nitrogen associated with the

utilization of coal in the generation of electricity."

He supports his point with engaging statistics, such as the insane quantity of toxins Kingston Power Plant's nine furnaces released in 2007, while utilizing clean coal! They released "1,700 tons of hydrochloric acid, 329 tons of sulfuric acid, and ten tons of ammonia," just to name a few. Flynn also points out that "roughly a third" of coal power plants nationwide have "no pollution controls at all." He goes further to support his point by transcribing personal interviews with both residents and officials. Among these, one of the most moving was that of a man named Travis Cantrell, who related the sound of the collapse to that of a freight train, or a tornado.

The best quote was from Joe Lucas, the vice president for communications (read: Chief Spin Doctor) at clean coal's lobbying company, ACCCE. He says, "there's never been an environmental issue facing this industry that hasn't been met by technology." What he really means is that if the industry faces a lawsuit, they have no choice but to either shut down the industry, or propose a technological solution. Using the word "met" implies more that they've made a plan, rather than saying they've been successful or have even begun to implement any plan.

Regrettably, the author should have been more clear about the property damage. The title page says, "a wave of sludge buried an entire town," but he could have won more hearts and minds by clarifying that. To be honest, from what this reader could tell from the content of the article, the only things buried were river components, yards, fields, and two or three homes. Surely, the entire town is ruined, but if there are no offices, schools, or churches buried by the slurry, then the statement on the title page is grossly misleading. This takes away greatly from the support of his purpose.

On the one hand, the article is extremely long and drawn out considering the point it is making, but it also changes gears on you, stays fresh, and spends much of its time answering questions that would likely be raised by the reader. Still, the article could have been condensed to perhaps half the size at which it was published, without losing a significant amount of the content. The author might have even gained additional interest.

Another likely complaint is that Flynn's opening did not have a hook, but also might not require one, as long as the reader has access to the title pages. If this essay is ever reprinted, however, the opening statement on the title page must be included with the rest, or else there is too much exposition with too little to interest the reader. Perhaps the author should have begun with something to start off the suspense, such as "when someone like Tom chooses to live near a coal power plant, they assume that it's safe to do so."

The opening describes the setting: community, river, people, and the dam. It builds suspense all the way, with statements like, "there was nothing but beautiful water," and telling us "there was no reason to fear" the power company wouldn't still take care of eastern Tennessee.

This reader's biggest complaint was Flynn's conclusion. It was terrible. It just trails off with the sad story of Terry Gupton, the cattle rancher. What are the readers supposed to do with that? He should have thrown something in that refers back to clean coal, or really anything at all from the first half of the article. Allusion would have been both easy and useful, especially for giving the feeling of satisfaction one might feel like they deserve after reading such a long, drawn-out essay.

As far as the issue of clean coal, I agree that people need to be aware of what it really means. It is not the answer to the climate shift, especially because as the author puts it, "carbon dioxide can be captured and stored, but in the same way that we can establish a colony on the moon: the science [barely] exists." I especially agree that ash in these quantities needs to be federally regulated as a hazardous substance.

Unfortunately, I also agree that we are stuck with the current system we have in place, and can't get away from coal anytime soon, no matter how dangerous it is. It is going to take more lawsuits to silence the lobbyists, and those lawsuits won't come from anywhere but the mouths of victims. Therefore, I personally expect there will be more accidents before anything significant will be done about this issue, and next time, lives might be taken.

In conclusion, the author's writing style far too drawn out for the average reader to even begin to enjoy, then by the end of it, left everyone else wanting more (in a bad way). His piece was, however thorough and informative, and is likely to drive the reader's need to take action. Flynn has failed to entertain, but has succeeded to make his point, and illuminate his cause. Awareness of this incident and the clean coal hoax is growing daily. I hope the clean coal lobbyists are worried. They should be.