Community power rolling out

By now many readers may have heard about local efforts concerning municipal electric power. People in Lebanon, Hanover, Plainfield and Enfield now have a say in where their electricity supply comes from and how much it costs. We have gained local control over our own electric energy future. Building on laws enabled at the state level, we are now part of a statewide coalition (Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire, or CPCNH) of over 25 municipalities ready to supply electricity that is less expensive and cleaner than what the large utilities and many competitive suppliers provide.

We’ve learned from similar efforts nationwide and have hired experienced professionals to run our coalition.

In the next few weeks, Lebanon customers who get their electric supply from Liberty Utilities will automatically join Lebanon Community Power (LCP) with the option of switching back to Liberty at any time for their electric supply. Liberty will continue to deliver and bill us, but LCP will be our new source of electricity.

We encourage everyone to stay with LCP. Our Granite basic rate will save us and our municipalities money. We also offer a menu of up to 100% renewable power and we’ve maintained the income-based Electric Assistance Program.

You can opt out of LCP and buy your electricity from a commercial broker, but the profits go to that business and you will have to keep track of what rate and term to choose. Stay with LCP for the long term and your money will go towards stable electric rates from our own nonprofit coalition.

Woody Rothe

member, Lebanon Energy Advisory Committee

Fund Meals on Wheels

Liz Sauchelli’s excellent article (“Vermont bill would increase reimbursement for Meals on Wheels” Feb. 8) about Vermont state Rep. Daniel Noyes’ proposal (HB 109) to help support the Meals on Wheels program brings to light the critical need for more funding for this worthy program. The Bugbee Senior Center in White River Junction serves over 30,000 meals each year in the towns of Hartford, Norwich and Thetford. These meals are reimbursed at a rate well below their cost to produce. To make up the difference, Bugbee, and every other meal provider in the state, must raise money.

Please let your elected representatives know that you support HB 109. Also, please consider a contribution to the Bugbee Senior Center. Much of its budget comes from individuals and companies who recognize the need for a nutritious lunch, a daily “wellness check” and brief visit to someone who is homebound. The service is not limited to seniors, but for anyone who needs it.

Mark Bradley

executive director, Bugbee Senior Center

Emily Santaw

chair, Bugbee Senior Center Board of Directors

Patti Crimmin-Greenan

secretary, Bugbee Senior Center Board of Directors

Marieke Sperry

member, Bugbee Senior Center Board of Directors

Alec Struver

administrator, White River Council on Aging

Steve Tofel

member, Bugbee Senior Center Board of Directors

The truth about the debt ceiling fight

In an effort at both-siderism, mainstream media has hidden the truth about what the Republican Party is doing regarding the debt ceiling. Here’s what they’ve failed to cover:

■The fight is being waged solely by the Republican Party. When Trump occupied the White House, Republicans voted to increase the debt limit three times without incident. Over the last 25 years, it’s been raised over a dozen times.

■The fight has nothing to do with controlling the national debt. It’s about paying our nation’s bills. The debt ceiling is just an accounting term. Our national debt comprises obligations already incurred. If Republicans really wanted to control the national debt, they be willing to implement tax increases — including repealing the huge Trump tax cut given to the large corporations and the wealthy.

■For the last 50 years, Democratic administrations have been more fiscally responsible than Republican ones. The Clinton administration balanced the federal budget after Reagan and George H.W. Bush had created huge deficits. Obama reduced the deficit after George Bush reduced taxes while greatly increasing spending. Huge tax cuts for the wealthy led it to increase dramatically during Trump’s presidency. It’s fallen under the Biden administration.

■The real reason Republicans have started this fight is that they hope to use it to cut Medicare and Social Security, the two most popular safety nets in the federal government. They hope that negotiating over the debt ceiling will provide an opportunity to shrink these programs.

■The act of holding the full faith and credit of the U.S. hostage is like pointing a shotgun at the American and world economies and demanding concession to put it away. It’s a terrorist tactic, not a bargaining one.

Democrats and the Biden administration aren’t negotiating because raising the debt ceiling should be non-negotiable. It’s time that the media get that right!

Steve Gehlert

West Newbury, Vt.

DH CEO Conroy not accessible, compassionate to everyone

In reply to Peter Magoon’s letter on Feb. 10 (“Kenyon too critical of DH executives”), I would like to say that though Joanne Conroy may have been “the most accessible and compassionate executive” with whom Mr. Magoon has worked, his experience, from within the hierarchy, is not definitive.

Until my daughter, a Type 1 Diabetic, wrote a detailed and well-reasoned letter that appeared in the Valley News, no action was taken on an administrative issue that concerned her and other patients.

She wrote to Joanne Conroy amongst others but received no response from Dr. Conroy or from staff in her office. When she finally received a response (not from Joanne Conroy or her office) the individual who responded said that nothing could be done relating to the issue.

Only after my daughter’s letter regarding the issue appeared in the Valley News, was action suddenly taken. “Accessible and compassionate”? I’m not sure about that.

Sylvia E. Scherr

Norwich

Op-ed minimizes folly of ‘pro-life’ movement

James Heffernan’s “Two new rays of light on the abortion war” (Feb. 12, Page C1) is a misreading of the nature and intent of the so-called “pro-life” movement and only inadvertently serves to confirm its mission as a dysfunctional self-help group.

To begin with, a syndrome is a collection of symptoms that indicate the existence of a disease. According to the literature, anti-abortionists generally display: 1) a hatred of abortion that often crosses from the unreasoning to the deliberately cruel, and 2) a lower than average level of care for others’ children — e.g., adoption, fostering, guardian ad litem work, mentoring, public school volunteerism, etc. (There are other symptoms as well.)

Eric Scheidler is no “ray of light.” As with most so-called “pro-lifers” he would force a stranger to raise a child, but he would not trust that stranger with his dog. And rather than expend his time, money and talent caring one-on-one, his proposal shifts the burden of actually caring to the general public.

What does this say? It shows that the movement is “aborticentric,” so focused on abortion that it excludes care for human life. If concern about abortion is nothing more than aborticentrism, then what is the underlying cause?

Philosopher Ernest Becker hinted at it in his book, The Denial of Death. We are, he pointed out, the only species with the awareness of death and a need to cope with our inevitable non-existence and complete insignificance thereby. He said that in order to function we have to develop a coping mechanism to deal with this paralyzing terror: Philosophy and religion serve well, but heroism also works. “The hero,” he states, “is the one who pays the price society specifies” in order to live forever, like Caesar or George Washington.

The reader who considers the situation will easily see the movement as an allegory— abortion is Death, the fetus represents the so-called “pro-lifer” and the so-called “pro-lifer” plays the role of God. By advertising himself as a “rescuer,” he sells society on his heroism.

Chuck Gregory

Springfield, Vt.

No religious denomination should decide for all of us

If I understand James Heffernan’s opinion piece (“Two new rays of light on the abortion war,” Feb. 12), Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League, has earned the right to “call himself pro-life” because he supports spending government money on prenatal and postnatal care. Further on, we learn about Catholic doctrine, and that abortion should be considered a “sin” and not a “crime.”

I realize that the Sunday op-ed page often addresses religious questions, and, in this case, it addressed Catholic dogma.

My takeaway remains, however, no matter what and whom I am reading on questions of abortion rights and laws, no religious denomination should be involved in deciding for all of us. What “pro-life” really means is “pro-my interpretation of religion.” Whether it be Catholic (abortion is a sin not a crime) or some fundamentalist iteration of protestant (abortion is a crime), “pro-life” means, “do what I believe.” I don’t understand why laws in this country are drafted based on beliefs. Laws should be drafted based on evidence.

Meanwhile, women don’t have time to wait for religious dogma to be argued one way or another (I imagine a Monty Python scene where men are arguing about the correct religious dogma while a woman bleeds in agony near them). And as for Scheidler, his pro-life stance amounts to conditional love (We will love and support women as long as they don’t have abortions). Love for women — as for all creatures — needs to be unconditional. Subsidize prenatal and postnatal care, and give women access to abortion.

Annabelle Cone

Lebanon

Nelson wrong about white privilege

I doubt that Steve Nelson’s recent impassioned words (“The arc is bending toward whitewashed history,” Feb. 12) will persuade many people. His attempt, like that of others, to push white male privilege as the new version of Original Sin runs up against some problems, first of which is Franklin Delano Roosevelt — nothing if not a privileged white male; yet surely even Nelson might admit that he — and some others like him — did right by the country. At the other extreme there’s the matter of my Pennsylvania small-town parents, each with one parent fresh off the boat: privilege is hardly the word that would spring to mind on meeting them. And I like to think that gratitude, work, and maybe even merit describe the ways I responded to the college and medical school education they made possible for me. That process used to be called the American dream, and I don’t recall its being considered sinful.

It may appear easier to harangue people than to try directly to alter society’s mechanisms yourself, but the problem with harping on how bad certain groups of people are, when they don’t feel that they are, is that a certain number of them will, out of sheer cussedness, go off and behave in the way they’ve been told not to. “Cut off your nose to spite your face,” was the old figure of speech. Which is what a fair number of people did — a couple of drinks will elicit confessions from the most shocking sources — in the 2016 election after hearing themselves talked down to over and over again. If Mr. Trump ends up president again, will it dawn on the preachers that they’ve helped put him there?

What we need instead of being told how bad we all are is someone to explain stuff like why it took $1,400 a year to educate me and now costs 50 times as much; or whether it really is cheaper to have everything made in China. The D.C. rioters were telling us they had no privileges of any color. How’d they get into such a fix?

Original sin won’t sell.

Jack Barrett

Lebanon

A compromise on the Lyme-Thetford bridge

The Lyme-Thetford bridge clearly needs attention. Its structural decay is visually apparent and worrisome to all of us who cross it. The NHDOT has articulated their plan for renovating the bridge and seems resistant to alternatives at this late date. So the bridge will be shut down for 18 months or so, the public be damned, and will be refurbished as is, rather than replaced by a new structure with improved capacity.

Can we at least make lemonade? Why not reconfigure the deck of the rebuilt bridge with a generous one-way lane for cars and trucks and a narrower lane for bicycles and pedestrians, separating the two by a physical barrier? A one-way lane for powered vehicles would require alternating traffic flow, managed by an automated light system, just as many road construction projects are managed. I have never experienced this bridge as heavily traveled when I’ve crossed. The management system could sense vehicle presence and manage the light to minimize anyone’s delay.

Going further, might work be managed during the 18-month active reconstruction period to allow single-lane traffic across the bridge during limited time windows that aligned with established periods of maximum traffic demand for work and school commutes? This seems like an area where NHDOT and the communities most impacted by a prolonged closure might reach a reasonable accommodation. Do we even know the amount and type of traffic crossing this bridge at various times and days of the week? Some publicized data would surely help us come up with a reasonable way forward.

Dodd Stacy

Etna

Vote to move Cornish library

At March Town Meeting, Cornish has the chance to vote to accept a completely renovated building in Cornish Flat on Route 120. This building had traditionally been a store, prosperous years ago but for the last several years has been empty. With three stores currently surrounding our town, how could it survive?

Something new needed to happen, and so it did! Our small library, not handicapped-accessible or with enough room for more books or activities, will be able to move into this renewed building, if we vote to accept this generous gift. It will have the potential to become a vibrant library with room for various activities and as such, a community center for the town.

Please come to the Cornish Elementary School gym March 18 and cast your vote to accept this gift of a renovated store ready for our Town Library.

Nancy Wightman

Cornish

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