Readers on grammar, fossil fuels and guns

White House in need of a good copy editor

Former President Harry Truman famously kept a sign on his Oval Office desk announcing, “The Buck Stops Here.” It meant that the president accepted responsibility for the actions of his administration. No passing of the buck.

Compared to issues such as world peace, public safety and a healthy national economy, clear writing and proper grammar might seem a minor concern in communications sent out from the world’s most powerful office. And yet it’s not a trivial matter. Poor wording and bad grammar make a bad impression and detract from an effective message.

With respect, I propose a small sign for President Trump’s desk: “Great Grammar Also Starts Here.” And maybe concerned citizens could start a GoFundMe account to hire an old-fashioned, cranky, passionate proofreader to check all White House communications.

This tempest in a grammar book recently became what passes for news when a retired English teacher complained about bad grammar and, she felt, poor wording in a letter she had received from the White House.

Here is something that all citizens, proand anti-Trumpers alike, could get behind — out of respect for the office and out of pride in the nation.

Fossil fuels’ ultimate costs too high to pay

Basically, the reason fossil fuels have been preeminent up until now is because in the short run, they are the cheapest, most convenient source of energy, and we prize both of those qualities. But energy production has long-term costs as well as short-term ones. Nobody expected that there would be widespread pollution, let alone climate change, when the first American oil well was drilled in 1859.

Basically, fossil fuels are attractive in the short run, not so much in the long one. It turns out that while the availability of cheap, plentiful energy has allowed amazing improvements in our standard of living, we have basically been borrowing from the future. We have been running up a tremendous debt, in the form of climate change and pollution, which is now coming due for payment. Will we continue to borrow and run our debt up higher? We have reached the point at which renewable sources of energy are only slightly more expensive in the short run and cost infinitely less in the long one.

Just because fossil fuels powered the past doesn’t mean they have to power the future as well.

2nd Amendment’s first words matter

I believe the first four words of the 27 words in the Second Amendment are why that amendment was inserted in the Constitution. “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Our country was poor then, and there was little money for a full-time national army. Instead, citizens with their own muskets joined militias to protect their country from foreign or domestic enemies. Muskets were primitive weapons. It took at least 30 seconds to reload one each time it was fired. One wonders how the Second Amendment would have been written if assault weapons were available at that time.