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May 19 , 2004 - Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels March 30, 2004 EPA standards a must by 2008 The Bush administration proposes to not regulate mercury as a dangerous poison, but instead to allow power plants to emit mercury pollution 10 years longer than is necessary. The EPA was initially planning to require power plants to reduce mercury emissions by 90 percent by 2008. In December, the EPA announced a mercury plan that will expose our children to far more mercury, for far longer, than what the agency has said is achievable and cost-effective. The proposal also is less stringent than was recommended by the majority of the EPA's own panel of experts who spent more than two years working on this problem. The EPA now proposes to regulate mercury from utility companies as if it were a non-hazardous pollutant, demanding only a 30 percent emission reduction and allowing some sources to avoid controls entirely by buying pollution "credits." The proposal also would give polluters at least 15 years to make the reductions rather than the three years currently required by law. This is outrageous. The bottom line must be: The EPA must protect our children by making all power plants install controls to stop mercury pollution by 2008! An angry: Pamela Goodwin Ashland Honoring Robert V. Sullivan, 1931-2004 Novelist John D. MacDonald, in his Travis McGee series, wrote about "the good ones." The people that you run into once in a while that make the difference in this world. The people who do good works, minister to the sick, feed the hungry, house the poor, help the unfortunate. We need to support, protect, cherish, and honor the good ones, because they are the people that eventually will save our world. Bob Sullivan was one of the good ones. I first met Bob Sullivan on a Sunday in September 2001 at Our Lady of the Mountain Catholic Church. I had been invited to join a senior discussion group there, and here was this big Irishman with a twinkle in his eye that betrayed intelligence and a sense of humor. Over a period of time, I learned that he and his wife Pauline had successfully managed to raise eight children to adulthood, had about fifteen grandchildren, and he was quite successful as a realtor. In fact, Bob was successful at about anything he ever tried, a true winner in all respects. When he and Pauline went on a couple of vacation trips, I became the Sullivan's cat sitter in their grand old house with the wrap-around porch on an Ashland hilltop. You feel comfortable in that house because you can feel the love that permeates it. The more you get to know the Sullivan family, the more you learn that love is the main ingredient that made it successful, generously applied and nurtured by Bob. We need to honor the good ones, and Bob was one of them. Now he is gone, passed away in his sleep on the night of March 9th. There was not a dry eye amongst the hundreds who attended his funeral service on March 13th. I feel fortunate that I got to know him. Good-bye Bob, we will miss you. Art Tetrault Ashland The Journal's position is a laugh Surely John Harwood of The Wall Street Journal was writing tongue in cheek when he said, "Democratic candidate John Kerry rails against 'Benedict Arnold CEOs' who ship jobs overseas, as if seeking lower costs weren't what any sensible (and patriotic) business executive is supposed to do (Daily Tidings March 17, page 5). Firing American workers and hiring Chinese or Indians or Pakistanis, etc. at lower wages in order to line the company's and CEO's pockets is patriotic? What does this do for America except to enrich the few at the expense of the many? Harwood's statement is perhaps the most damning I've seen since Leona Helmsley's "Only the little people pay taxes." Addie Greene Ashland Women cursed by Original Sin Unless all women of the world are free, nowhere is a woman free. We are sisters, the keepers of one another. In unison we grieve for the injustices foisted upon our gender, authorized in pulpits everywhere by that dogma called "original sin." Down the centuries, the Church has failed to promote equality for women. Its Bible is filled with passages demeaning her dignity. Yet clergy claim that "women owe their progress entirely to the Church." This is true of one woman. Just one. Up there on her bejeweled throne, glistening stars surround her head; a red velvet robe envelops her. Those sapphire blue eyes gaze wistfully into the eternal realms of Heaven. As long as the Virgin Mary is beatified, is that a cover for the rest of us women? We, whom preachers blame as instigators, through Eve, of all the world's evil? We cohorts of Satan? We women, unworthy of equal pay for equal work done by men? We victims of men in clerical collars who refuse us our basic reproductive rights? We "inferiors" barred in most churches from wearing that white collar? Can we ever forget our sisters in Kosovo forced to carry to term the fetus resulting from a barbaric, brutalizing rape? Told by the Pope: "It is God's will!" Oh, you poster-Queen of Heaven, compared to most of us you have it pretty good! You escaped the stigma of "Original Sin!" Nancy Littell Fox Ashland DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams