Central Newsmagazine Letters To The Editor

Central Newsmagazine is Central St. Louis County's exclusive direct-mailed community newspaper.

Making sense?

To the editor:

Does it make any sense that the United States borrows money from foreign countries to occupy and reconstruct another foreign country - namely Iraq? That’s the Bush administration policy.

George W. Bush is the same guy who thinks it’s a good idea to pay the oil companies American taxpayer dollars to sell us $3 and $4 a gallon gasoline.

How much more dumbfounding can it get?

Fred Boeneker

Sowell lights and flights

To the editor:

This is in regard to Thomas Sowell’s column in the April 30, 2008 Central Newsmagazine issue that in part discussed the safety hazard of compact fluorescent lamps (CFL). All fluorescent lamps, including the 48-inch tubes you might have over the workbench or laundry area in your basement, contain a very small amount of Mercury. A small amount of Mercury has been in all fluorescent lamps ever since they were developed decades ago.

I am not aware of any concerns related to Mercury with the larger fluorescent lamps other than they should not be put in landfills. A large amount of fluorescent lamps in a landfill could allow Mercury to leach into the soil. Because of the small size of CFLs, I would suspect that they contain even less Mercury than the larger lamps and therefore would be no less hazardous.

I would like to find out from Mr. Sowell what source he used to determine that extra ordinary efforts would be required to clean up a broken CFL. There are occasions when a large amount of Mercury can get out of its container such as with a broken older thermometer or furnace thermostat that would be a true hazard but it is my opinion today’s CFL would not fall into that category. Possibly one of your other readers could verify this.

CFLs have their place in a homeowner’s effort to reduce energy consumption but, for various reasons, probably will not replace all incandescent lamps. When a CFL fails it should however be returned to a collection center just as we do with old rechargeable batteries.

Michael Sheridan

To the editor:

Thomas Sowell writing about the cancellation of thousands of airline flights, he says it was not the idea of the Federal Aviation Agency, “which usually cuts the airlines some slack on items that are not considered to be really dangerous.”

I say it was the FAA’s idea because the airlines have been abusing the gentle treatment they have been getting from the aviation regulator.

American Airlines was required to correct the wiring bundling in a punitive fashion because they falsely reported that the work was properly done, in defiance of the FAA. It was necessary to clamp down on them to remind American’s management that they are subject to federal safety regulations. The fact that the FAA’s lax enforcement policies had

been publicly exposed by Congress was not as important as the outrageous falsification of inspection reports by the airline.

Sowell should also be aware that it is his judgment that the items are not considered to be really dangerous. You could draw that conclusion from watching network news reports. But the fact that they are safety requirements that were not resisted when the regulations were proposed means that people in the industry recognized the danger better than we armchair observers.

The disgraceful handling of the flight cancellations by American Airlines was an attempt to inflate the problems of consumers and shift the blame to the FAA.

You should have looked elsewhere for an example of political crusaders charging like a bull through a china shop. There’s the recent proposal of a temporary repeal of the Federal Gasoline tax by two presidential candidates, and there are countless examples in the legacy of Newt Gingrich and his successors in the House of Representatives since the early 1990s.

I have been using compact fluorescent bulbs for several years now and have never had one break. When one burns out, which is not common, I seal it in a plastic bag and put it out with the trash. I would do the same if one broke. The silliness about CFL bulbs and the space Sowell gives it in his column reflects back on his own political crusading, not those of the advocates of CFL bulbs as a small step in energy conservation.

Bill Sullivan