This is Viewpoints for Saturday, March 19, 2016

Reasons for Trump

As Donald Trump barrels closer to a presidential nomination, many are asking themselves, "How could this happen? How could a deluded, bigoted racist have gotten to this point?" Simple, a cascade of failures on every conceivable level.

The Republican Party failed us when they refused to compromise under any circumstances. This is the party that refused to consider gun legislation after children were killed by mass shooters, the party that refuses to acknowledge overwhelming scientific evidence for global warming. Their stubbornness and irrationality created all of the frustrated Republicans who turned to a loudmouthed bully because he wasn't "part of the system."

Responsible journalists, if there are any left, failed us by treating Trump like a sideshow act, a spray-tanned clown they could use for easy ratings. Long before he won any primaries, his rhetoric was hateful and divisive. They should have condemned him, early and loudly, as the mean-spirited fascist he is, and focused on men like Marco Rubio, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush, who might actually have helped this country.

Those are just two of the groups that carry a share of the blame for Donald Trump's ascendancy. But come November, if he manages to squirm into the White House, the only ones who will have failed will have been us.

-- Ross C. Hardy

Macon

Agrees with Vaughn

This letter is in response to Bob Vaughn's letter. Ditto, ditto, ditto. Thank you for taking the time to let the people of Macon know your impression of our once "fair city." I am not too far behind you in age, and I appreciate your comments and viewpoint. When an institution or business desires change, they will often bring in an outside consultant in order to get an unbiased and true assessment of the situation. You have done that for the city of Macon.

Our highways and roadsides are covered with debris and blight is spreading. We want more revenue and we desire good law abiding citizens within our borders. Who are we kidding? Vaughn "hit the nail on the head." This man is a Maconite desiring to return. He is not coming back.

Our mayor and local officials need to wake up. As Vaughn stated, our property taxes are high and many of our roads are in disrepair. "Where is the money going?" We do have groups that are concerned and help people rebuild/paint their homes, and I applaud them for their efforts. However, we have a high unemployment rate in Macon. Let's put our unemployed to work improving our city and remove them from the state payroll. This would be a win-win situation for all concerned. A day of honest work for wages and an improvement of affairs so people will desire to live in our "fair city" again.

-- Tina Bowker

Macon

Macon's (not seasonally adjusted) unemployment rate is 5.8 percent according to the Georgia Department of Labor, the state has a (seasonally adjusted) unemployment rate of 5.4 percent.

-- Editors

Uncollected, collected trash

I would just like to know why the county wastes time and money having inmates clean up the sides of roads when the bags are left on the side of the roads for weeks after? How long does it take for them to pick them up and why don't they just do it as they are picking up the trash? I pass by the trash bags every day on my way to work and there are several that are broken open and trash is spreading all over again.

-- P. Schultz

Macon

Upsetting the apple cart

Why has so many politicians jumped on the hate Trump bandwagon? What has he done to deserve it? The answer is, he has done nothing wrong. The answer to the first question is that many members of the prior mentioned group are horrified that he might get elected, even to the point of soiling their underwear. They are petrified that since he is self-financing his run for the White House he can't be bribed. This puts them in a unique situation since most of the congressional seats are occupied by corrupt professional politicos who will do anything to win an election with bribery of one type or another being common. Now, all they can see is a man standing before them that, despite his surface roughness, could and would kick their corrupt apple carts over. As bad as it sounds, this corruption also might be influencing decisions made in the White House.

-- Walter Huckeba

Perry

No data

I am astonished to hear that Loretta Lynch, U.S. Attorney General, has made threats towards those who would doubt anthropogenic climate change. There are legitimate doubts especially considering recent data that do not confirm climate modeling that was done in the 1990s. The global warming climate modelers have always depended on the feedback effect of higher humidity and temperature in the tropics for their models to work. The feedbacks account for two-thirds of the proposed global warming. More recent measurements of ocean temperatures, upper tropospheric temperatures and ice core samples do not fit with the models put forward in the 1990s.

One of the key elements for global temperatures to increase is for increased CO² to cause the atmospheric temperatures at 10 KM above the equatorial regions to increase. We've been sending weather balloons up into the atmosphere for the last four or five decades. The data from those soundings indicate that there has been no increase in temperature.

Secondly, in the early 2000s, we placed thousands of buoys to measure ocean temperatures around the world. Climate models indicated that ocean temperatures should increase as air temperatures increase. Apparently, this is not the case according to the data. Ocean temperatures have not increased.

In the 1990s, ice core samples were being taken from Greenland and Antarctica that span at least 300,000 years. Samples of the CO² at that time seemed to indicate that CO² and temperatures increase at the same time. Later in the 2000s, these ice cores were examined closer and found the CO² was correlated with global temperatures, but CO² levels on the average increased 800 years after temperatures increased. Apparently, the solubility of CO² in ocean water decreases with increasing temperature not the other way around. This is the same concept of trout stream temperatures and dissolved O².

In conclusion, the data is not there. What is really frightening is that people can lose their jobs or government funding if they disagree with man caused global warming theory. This is like what happened to Galileo when he disagreed with the church. Disagreeing with a left-wing politician can have consequences. This should all give us pause when we vote to give politicians more power over us. We need to remember the old dictum that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

-- Chuck Fore

Eastman

This story was originally published March 18, 2016 at 8:49 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Saturday, March 19, 2016 ."