Our readers speak

By The Standard Staff - 02/16/2007

Another view of the Butte housing market This is to respond to the recent harsh (and largely inaccurate) letter about our local housing market (published Feb. 9).

First, as to being forced to live in a hotel, while Butte does not yet have any national chain “extended stay” facilities, there are locally owned options. For example, my family and I have several luxury, furnished “corporate apartments” at The Maley Block in Uptown, and Dale Stein has six very fine “short stay” individual units nearby at The Scott. More to the point, both the Maley and the Scott run large ads every day in the Standard, complete with our Web sites. There are others, but their owners don’t always advertise, and (sadly) the hospital so far is not willing to allow any central postings, despite their obvious needs there.

As to all rental houses in Uptown being $400 to $700 yet undesirable, I have a neighbor in one like this owned by Gary Dryden, and it’s a very nice home (not quite as “all new” as Maley and Scott, but close).

As to “most people are looking to rent” three-bedroom, two-bathroom, two-car-garage ranchers for under $1,000, well, people may want this, but I am unaware of any area that offers this. These houses are for owners, and when you find one for rent, they are more than $1,000 a month anywhere in the country.

As to our lacking a good supply of such ranchers for sale that were built in the last 30 years, this is true due to the weak economy here then. However, of the ones available for sale, only the Country Club area has been consistently priced more than $200,000. And, both there and elsewhere, such a price range is usually for a rancher far bigger than 1,500 square feet.

As to difficulty finding a house to buy (especially that doesn’t need work), this is very true. However, I know that we at The Maley and The Scott (and the others) all offer a lot of mother hen/concierge-type help to our guests, including sage advice about Realtors, neighborhoods, inspectors, lenders and more (a challenging process for newcomers everywhere).

It seems to me that people in Mr. Fleshman’s shoes do face challenges, and would do well to do the simplest things first — pour through The Standard, call the biggest ads first, then work your way down to potential hidden gems, to rent or to buy.

Jim Kephart 827 West Mercury St.

Butte Much more to climate change than reported It must require just blind faith to be a believer.

On Saturday. Feb. 3, the U.S. Weather Service, part of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, predicted the high temperature for our place, 10 miles north of Cardwell, would be 35 degrees. It was 52. Last Sunday they predicted the low Monday morning would be 17 degrees. It was 46. This Sunday night they predicted one inch of snow, we got eight. I don’t know about you, but I have trouble believing these folks can predict the temperature 100 years from now within a fraction of a degree if they can’t predict tomorrow’s temperature or snowfall any better than that.

If the media would stop telling us how many folks have become true global warming believers and start actually looking at all the data, we would all be better off.

For example, did you know that NOAA reports that the average temperature of, at least, the top half-mile of the world’s ocean waters has cooled since 2003? The media keeps saying that the oceans are getting warmer and that is the cause of all the storms. How can that be? The latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report just released changed the predicted sea level rise by a factor of two, downward, from the previous report only five years ago. It may be as small as 5 inches by 2100.

What caused this change in their prediction? They have recently discovered that green plants produce up to 40 percent of the methane released into the air. Previously it was believed that green plants produced no methane. Since methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, this is significant. They now claim that cows produce more greenhouse gases than all of the transportation industry, but oops, they forgot the green plants and methane. We are now using our tax money to support ethanol production when many studies show ethanol has a greater negative effect on the environment than what we are doing today.

How can you accurately model something you clearly do not understand? How can you set national policy with models that are clearly flawed?

I don’t think I am ready to start throwing virgins into the volcano just yet. I will leave it to the true believers to jump in, instead.

Bob Sims 1554 N. Highway 69 Boulder Tennessee reader weighs in on dog beating To the person responsible for the beating of the dog found in the Dumpster: You should be ashamed of yourself.

I receive a mail subscription and receive my paper four to five days after publishing. Be very grateful you are not in the state of Tennessee, where, when you get convicted for the crime you did, two to four years would be the sentence for felony animal cruelty. What you did surely constitutes a felony.

I only hope that Steve Gallus or George Groesbeck introduces a bill to the Montana Legislature that would make the heinous crime that was administered to the puppy a felony, to where the punishment is more than a year in jail. And to Judge Steve Kambich, do not let the person responsible off with a slap on the hand. For they didn’t give a defenseless puppy a chance — even more so if the person is a dog breeder.

Brian LaDue 7731 Emory Road Corryton, Tenn.

Start up vigilantes if death penalty abolished Probably a person would be smart to just keep his opinions to himself — but I just can’t.

A recent paper (Feb. 5) was going on again that we must do away with the death penalty. I think that the paper should write, in detail, the story of that man who killed the man, woman and young man in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, a year or so ago — and then took a little boy and little girl. The little boy he brought over here in Montana and roasted him over the campfire. The little girl — will she ever be normal after witnessing most of this stuff? And prior to this, the animal (man?) had killed several other people.

Then, several years ago, we had a man go over to the State Nursery in Helena, where early in the morning he took a young lady and cut her throat — to see what it was like to do that!

But we should get rid of the death penalty? I’d go along with that if we start up the vigilantes again — we’d probably save quite a lot of money, too.

R. VanSice 3001 Greens Circle Butte The protection of life is everyone’s business On Feb. 6, your opinion page contained an excellent letter written by Dr. Robert M. St. John. Then, on Feb. 8, your opinion page contained a letter entitled “A brief rebuttal to recent anti-abortion letter.” First of all the latter letter is scarcely a rebuttal to the earlier letter. In fact, it was ridiculous to quote Hank Williams saying, “Mind your own business and you won’t be minding mine” as a way to discount very serious concerns about 4,000 babies who are killed by abortion each day in the United States, the land of the free and the brave.

On Feb. 8 the same opinion page has an article about Darfur describing some of the genocide taking place there. There is a statement that acknowledges that “tossing babies into a bonfire is a crime against humanity.” I wonder if anyone thinks they can make a significant distinction between the pain and horror an aborted baby experiences compared to those thrown in the fire and their future in this world? It is no wonder that the Roman Catholic Church states in its Catechism, “Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.” The column about Darfur also made reference to how the memory of the Rwandan genocide and the Holocaust were brushed aside. Do many of us, including Germans, question how the World War II Holocaust could take place without sufficient objection from many people?

Well, maybe the idea of minding one’s own business was grossly misapplied. Also, people like Margaret Sanger, who has been idolized by Planned Parenthood, should be known more for the ugliness she advocated and promoted as good for society.

Can’t each of us acknowledge our contribution to abortion on demand and help the cause of humanity by voting for the babies and making sure we never fall into this immoral pit again? In other words, get our heads out of the sand and listen to our hearts.

Thomas J. Worring 530 S. Alabama St.

Butte