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Love is Respect hot line tackles teen dating abuse
There’s an organization that I’d like to bring to the community’s attention.
Love is Respect, in Austin, Texas, is an around-the-clock national dating abuse hot line founded with help from its sponsor, Liz Claiborne Inc.
Love is Respect, while open to anyone, focuses on helping teenagers experiencing unhealthy relationships and dating abuse. Some polls have found that one in five teenagers has reported being hit, slapped, pushed and/or punched by partners with whom they were in a serious relationship.
I hope that people who read this and know of someone in this situation will either go to the Love is Respect website, at www.loveisrespect.org, or call 1-866-331-9474.
Love is not abusive or controlling; love is caring and respectful and knowing that there are still good people in the world.
Writer: Offer your input on ex-judge’s sentencing
There probably will be people contacting U.S. District Judge Edwin Kosik, asking for a light sentence for former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella.
If you are interested in trying to get a stiff sentence for Ciavarella, please write: The Honorable Judge Edwin M. Kosik, U.S. Courthouse, P.O. Box 856, Scranton, PA 18501. Let’s show the citizens of the area that we have a voice.
This should be a wake-up call for the area’s other elected officials.
Corbett best cheerleader for greedy gas industry
Investing in Big Gas, like torturing babies, is something my conscience forbids. But if I owned natural gas stock, I’d frantically hound the suits in charge to rethink their public relations spending.
That spending is gargantuan, but pollsters say activists still have tarnished the industry’s image – a staggering feat, when the industry claims there are so few of us. So the industry, desperately, has redoubled its PR spending.
As an investor, I’d be furious that companies in which I held stock were throwing good money after bad. See, PR pays so slowly. And it’s risky fighting inconvenient truths – such as scientists revealing your “clean” industry actually worsens climate change.
Instead, why not buy more assets that pay instant dividends and never confront you with truth – assets such as Gov. Tom Corbett?
Pennsylvania’s “gasocracy” is so brazen, even highly visible state Sen. Joe Scarnati blithely accepted Consol Energy’s Super Bowl junket and expected no one to squawk.
But it is unbelievable how fast “Tom Corporate,” scarcely sworn in, has shown his hand. Not only has he opposed any severance tax on a rich-as-Croesus industry, but he’s openly scorned expert land management studies by former Department of Conservation and Natural Resources chief John Quigley – and stiff opposition from even moderate environmentalists – to renew drilling in state forests.
What’s worse, Corbett’s tabbed as his energy czar Patrick Henderson, a legend for drilling cheerleading and tone-deafness to the environment.
So, gas execs, invest in more puppets such as Corbett. The payback’s far faster and surer than PR.
State legislators should take 10% cuts in pay
It seems the people who led the charge for fiscal responsibility are a bunch of phonies. Consider the cost of government.
When was the last time the folks in either Harrisburg or Washington turned down a pay raise?
The people on Social Security haven’t had a raise in two years. With the increase in some prices, no pay increase, in effect, becomes a pay decrease.
Here is my suggestion: Let us encourage our lawmakers to enact legislation that would reduce their pay by 10 percent. I am certain that once such legislation was introduced, no one would be able to vote against it.
Additionally, why don’t the legislators contribute to their health care plans the way most working people do? Why don’t they pay a part of their premiums as most of us do?
Poor planning, drilling bringing down Back Mt.
Is the Back Mountain quickly becoming an area to which you do not want to relocate? Is it becoming an area that potential home buyers should cross off their search lists?
The answer lies with the decisions being made today that will surely determine its future. And many people fear these decisions, apparently born of greed and rash judgment, will irrevocably alter our direction for generations.
Power lines with a dangerously nebulous potential greet you at our doorstep. Tanker trucks carrying “frack water” roll along our main corridors, keeping company with the ever-growing auto traffic that backs up for miles during peak hours. Housing developments spring up seemingly overnight, moved along by inept planning. Subsequently, there is a lack of meaningful storm water management regulation, which should be mandated to go beyond state minimum requirements.
Now the gas industry comes strolling in with fists full of money, which quickly seems to make landowners forget about their neighbors and friends. The fact that a gas company can arrogantly assume to put a potentially dangerous facility close to a school campus, and also in the midst of homes, is a good indication of what the future holds.
It seems too logical that the leadership of the Back Mountain should be dictating to the gas companies how we expect them to do business, not the other way around. Gas operations such as that should not be allowed in proximity to people, period. But also they should be required to be built in wooded areas of minimal acreage as to minimize noise, preserve aesthetics of the area and to create a substantial blast zone. But planning to build it next to homes and the school was actually thought to be acceptable by these gas bags.
We also have a school district seemingly poised on the precipice of running out of control. Today it plans to appeal to the state to surpass state-mandated maximum tax rates in an attempt to fund the overly indulged new high school. But what about tomorrow?
In the end, shall our taxes soar, the pipelines be laid, the “frack” trucks rumble, more cars sit in traffic, trees and farms disappear and well water become suspect?
Probably. Welcome to the new Back Mountain.
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