Program nurtures patriotism
Chatham County school teachers have been taking advantage of a remarkable program offered at the Massie Heritage Center through the Teaching American History grant for the past four years.
Thanks to the grant writing efforts of Candy Lowe and Leah Colby, teachers have been able to study the lives of our founding fathers and other significant historical figures, familiarize themselves with primary source documents, attend lectures, and take advantage of travel opportunities to places such as Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., to learn firsthand about America's history.
This program incites a passion and patriotism in our educators that is passed on to our students and colleagues as teachers return to classrooms to share the information, pictures, documents, books, digital presentations and personal accounts.
First-grade students sit spellbound listening to factual accounts of people such as Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Lewis and Clark, Abigail Adams, Harriett Tubman, George Washington Carver, and many others. The enthusiasm for learning is evident when the children learn that our early great Americans were individuals who struggled, made mistakes, and had the same emotions we do today.
The third-graders have a general understanding of documents such as the Declaration of Independence and its Preamble, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. They recognize and understand the significance of our national symbols and the relevance of the phrase "E pluribus unum."
The staff at the Massie Heritage Center and the teachers who participate in the program spend hours reading, studying, and sharing practices that have been successful in the classroom to better serve the students of Chatham County. It is our goal that the students will be armed with accurate historical information and a renewed sense of patriotism.
New nuclear plants much safer
One often reads of calls for alternative energy sources to replace oil and coal with biofuels such as ethanol.
But biofuels still burn carbon and thus are sources of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Non-carbon containing sources are being developed to avoid such atmospheric contamination, including those using moving water such as waves, rivers, water falls and even the Gulf Stream, wind mills and solar energy cells.
Nuclear energy is also much safer these days.
An atomic energy plant currently in its third year of construction in Andrews County in west Texas is meltdown proof. It uses tiny particles of uranium or other nuclear source coated with ceramics, separating each from the others. It generates heat up to 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, and is cooled by helium gas rather than water. This distributes heat to several laboratories.
Using the high temperatures, it is capable of generating electricity or hydrogen (potentially for automobile fuel) or desalinating water, all at considerably less expense than now.
The spent fuel is like sand and can be packaged and coated with three layers of ceramics, rendering it safe however stored for 500 years. The projected cost is $200 million to $300 million, which is much less than other atomic energy plants, of which there are about 108 in the U.S. now.
JULIAN K. QUATTLEBAUM JR.
Mallaby mistaken on speculators' impact
When it comes to understanding how commodities markets work, Sebastian Mallaby ("Folly of price controls," July 2) doesn't seem to have any idea.
Mallaby states speculators don't have anything to do with the actual market price, because for every buyer there is a seller. While that is true, if the buyers aren't willing to pay the price the sellers are asking, then the price comes down. Additionally, if there are more speculators willing to buy than there are speculators willing to sell at a given moment, then the price goes up.
Mallaby also writes that "an increase in the number of speculative players does not show whether prices will move up or down." This does not square with historical observation. The higher the number of trades, the higher the price of the commodity usually goes.
If speculators were eliminated from the markets, some fear that prices would go higher because fewer traders would make manipulation easier.
Not only does this make no sense in light of the historical observation I already pointed out, but actual buyers have no incentive to bid up prices. As further evidence, according to TrimTabs Investment Research, oil prices would "collapse" if speculation were greatly reduced.
Commodities markets, as they stand today, are broken. Only when speculation is greatly reduced will prices reflect true market conditions of supply and demand.
U.S. economic future grim
The U.S. economic plight over the next five years will be a wild ride. Here's why:
Spending: Georgia W. Bush has borrowed $1 trillion. Borrowing by all previous presidents totaled $1 trillion and Bush, the modern-day "conservative," doubled this figure in his first six years. This cancer is fed by the Federal Reserve/Treasury running the dollar presses 24/7, the number of dollars in circulation throughout the world exploding by more than 15 percent annually. The bucks in your wallet will be worth less and less as the supply of dollars increases, resulting in rising commodity prices.
Demographics: Baby-boomers are retiring, thus demand for big-ticket items is decreasing significantly. Boomers don't need a lot of new stuff. In fact, many want to lighten-up. Unfortunately, retiring on dollars that are worth less and less will pare-down boomers' standard of living drastically.
Corruption: Congress has lost principles being bribe-laden. Lobbyist's billings have skyrocketed. Label this the "Piratization of America" by large multinationals supplying out-sourced services to our government at huge costs, these companies employing and supporting politicians, their relatives and friends.
Energy: You can't ship $700 billion overseas for oil each year. Before long you're bankrupt with your currency tanking as the presses hum. We must shift to wind power, more oil drilling, coal gasification, solar and nuclear --- now.
We are likely in for an inflationary recession, with commodity prices spiraling up while asset prices spiral down, or at best stagnate.
SHERMAN A. OLSEN JR.
Hilton Head, S.C.