This bill will develop sorely needed energy resources

After 30 years of inaction to develop America's energy capacity, we are now paying a high price. Literally. The Post-Gazette's Oct. 6 editorial "Pious Sermons: Bush Is Not Doing Enough for Energy Conservation" argues it is the current administration's fault. We knew back in the 1970s that we needed to increase American energy capacity or face a crisis. Just now, we are starting to do something about it.

In the past three decades, we have restricted drilling, not built any nuclear facilities, failed to develop alternative fuels and ignored the potential of clean coal technology. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita showed we can no longer maintain the status quo, expecting different results.

The United States has increased its dependence on foreign energy from 24 percent to 62 percent. We spend more than $20 billion each month to import oil from foreign countries, many of which are not friendly.

European countries are using technology made by American companies to generate efficient and environmentally friendly nuclear energy. France receives more than 78 percent of its power from nuclear energy. The United States has failed to capitalize on this same technology.

Many U.S. power plants are run on natural gas. The price of natural gas has tripled in the past decade, costing 90,000 jobs in the chemical industry and 3 million manufacturing jobs.

Why not coal? Plants are switching from coal because they do not have adequate equipment for cleaning the air. We are sitting on 300 years' worth of coal but have not taken advantage of clean coal technology, which generates more power at a lower cost, both financially and environmentally.

The energy bill encourages the development of American energy sources and provides thousands of jobs. If done right, jobs will grow at local companies, including Westinghouse, Siemens, Consol Energy, Eaton, Joy Manufacturing and Air Products.

Conservation is also critically important, and more needs to be done. But let us not lose sight that the energy bill will have a direct and positive effect on Pennsylvania.

U.S. REP. TIM MURPHY
Washington, D.C.
Editor's note: The writer, a Republican from Upper St. Clair, is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

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Bad government

Regarding the state Legislature, both the size of the body and its pay raise, and Brian O'Neill's Oct. 9 column ("It's Up to Us to Stop the Nonsense"): Mr. O'Neill is right on the button. His succinct overview and comparisons are real eye-openers. If you haven't read it, do so.

We know our Legislature will not downsize itself. Couldn't the downsizing question be covered by a referendum on the ballot? Let the voters decide.

The pay raise was done in a shameful manner; it reflects badly on our state government. The people we elected and trusted betrayed us. Let us perhaps elect a smaller group that will serve us better.

AUDREY KACZMARSKI
Scott

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Contrary to '64 law

In response to the Sept. 28 editorial "Forest Folly: Arbitrary Lines Hurt Pennsylvania Preservation," the half-mile-wide buffer zone referred to, which the regional director in Milwaukee in 1997 imposed on all roadless areas in Eastern national forests, is a contradiction of the 1964 Wilderness Act. Nowhere in the act is there a reference to any buffer zone, whether 10 feet or, as in the 1997 directive, a half-mile.

In the two current wilderness areas in the Allegheny National Forest, Hickory Creek and the Allegheny Islands, there is no buffer zone. One of the boundaries for the Hickory Creek Wilderness, in fact, is a road. With less than 2 percent of the Allegheny National Forest designated as wilderness, there is a real need to give fair consideration to all areas in the forest that qualify for such designation under the Wilderness Act.

The 1997 directive, with a half-mile buffer and 2,500-acre minimum, has had the effect of eliminating the last best places in the Allegheny National Forest that under the congressionally intended interpretation of the Wilderness Act do qualify for consideration as wilderness.

An arbitrary bureaucratic directive should not stand in the way of the Allegheny Front and Clarion River tracts along with other citizen-proposed areas from being fairly considered for inclusion in our National Wilderness Preservation System.

JOE HARDISKY
New Castle

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Get their attention

The editorial "Turkey's Talks: Everyone Wins if the Country Enters the EU" (Oct. 10) summed up the hopefulness that Greek Americans see in a fully democratic, Europeanized Turkey.

Despite serious reservations, we applauded the governments of Greece and Cyprus, which are European Union members, for voting against Austria on Oct. 3, granting Turkey the official start of her European journey. Our hope, however, was immediately dashed the next day as Ankara's pledges and promises remained just that.

On religious freedoms, Ankara immediately withdrew its promise to re-open the Seminary of Halki in Istanbul, which is home to the Ecumenical Patriarchate -- the spiritual center of Orthodox Christians worldwide. It shelved its promise to return illegally appropriated assets of Turkish Christians to their rightful owners. The decades-old practice of violating Greek airspace and international law with fully armed warplanes resumed on Oct. 4. Finally, Ankara violated one of the non-negotiable elements of her EU accession framework in refusing to grant full recognition to Cyprus and the complete withdrawal of the 40,000 troops illegally occupying the north since 1974.

On its long path toward Europeanization, Turkey's citizens and leaders will have to choose between European democratic principles and practices and a militarist state with expansionist Ottoman ambitions with a growing anti-West radical Islamism.

America can ensure its regional interests only by insisting that Ankara abide by the EU framework and all its conditions. America has to impress upon Ankara the meaning of the rule of law by demanding complete and full implementation of all EU norms as part of Ankara's EU journey.

NICK GIANNOUKAKIS
Coordinator
American-Hellenic Affairs Committee
American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association
Chapter 34
Oakland

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Sad intolerance

Thank you for the Oct. 13 editorial concerning the gay community ("Open and Honest: When Gays Come Out, Stereotypes Are Broken"). As parents of a very successful (and out) gay professional, my wife and I know the hardships and obstacles that those who are gay face every day. We also deal with the ignorance and intolerance generated by the stereotyping of the gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender life.

I wonder what great accomplishments have been missed because someone was forced by society to hide his or her true self.

WILLIAM R. CASEY
West Mifflin

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Not so smart

So let's look at the facts: earthquakes, famine, hurricanes, erupting volcanoes, floods, epidemic disease -- horrors that indiscriminately kill the young and old, the good and bad, men and women.

Intelligent design? Some design. Some intelligence.

J.H. KILWEIN
Bethel Park

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It doesn't have to be this way

I read every word of your Oct. 3 coverage of the life of August Wilson ("August Wilson, 1945-2005: Pittsburgh Playwright Who Chronicled Black Experience"). It caused me to relive a childhood memory.

During the Depression years of the '30's, my father packed us children up in the car on Saturday afternoons in the autumn. We were on our way from the "North Boroughs" to Pitt Stadium to attend football games. My father was great for short cuts. This one took us up Webster Avenue through the Hill District. The shock of the contrast of what I saw and our neighborhood in Avalon lives in my memory and changed my life. No green lawns, flowers or trees. Nothing else of visual beauty. The streets and buildings were stark and dark. Everything I saw spoke of poverty. I recognized it as a worse poverty than relatives of mine were suffering through at the time.

Later in my life, I touched this same localized poverty as a young Sister of Mercy staying at St. Richard's Convent and studying to be a nurse at Mercy Hospital. In the emergency room, most patients were down from the Hill. Yes, I identified with August Wilson's plays when I saw them: "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson."

From a distance in Erie, I still ask, but now from a wider horizon than the Hill, the same question I pondered as a child, "Why does it have to be this way?" Who is going to tackle racism and poverty in our country? In the world? I will say clearly, "It does not have to be this way." We need to take responsibility for our "free" enterprise system.

We need to face the fact that our free enterprise system is racist and causing poverty now globally. There are other ways to do things. Consult the creative individuals like an August Wilson. You will be amazed at the ideas and solutions they will share with you. After New Orleans, we can no longer tolerate racism and poverty in the richest nation in the world.

SISTER RITA BROCKE
House of Mercy
Erie