I would like to personally thank Mountain Xpress and Commissioner Mike Fryar for highlighting everything that is wrong with, and will spell the ultimate demise of the Republican Party [“Building Knowledge,” Feb. 27 Xpress].
Fryar makes the woefully ignorant statement: "In the Kentucky coal mining town where [I] attended elementary school, if a breeze blew through a window, we were lucky … because the windows were open; we had no air conditioning. I want kids to have a safe place. Do they need a McMansion to go to?"
First of all, it isn't 1907. The school designs up for debate are asking for efficient windows and a mold-free environment, much like you would find in the rest of the industrialized world. Fryar is one of the “fiscal conservatives” who seem incapable of understanding that an initial investment can pay dividends in the long-term. If you were building a house, you would pay more for insulation and double-pane windows, with the knowledge that the savings in power bills over the next decade would more than pay for the investment. These self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives are more than happy to skimp now, and have the children foot the bill in the future.
He goes on to make the even more ludicrous statement: "I get the cutting-edge thing: Everyone wants the best, but you have to balance this with the budget.” Maybe he could see the solar array on the side of the road that the Biltmore Estate uses to power its facilities. Maybe, on a trip down I-40 or I-26, he could note the many solar farms that are responsible for North Carolina going from producing 1 MW in 2007 to 40 MW in 2010, including 17.2 MW farm in Davidson County. Critics say solar gets propped up by tax dollars that other forms of energy don't enjoy. Unless, of course, you count the millions given to oil and coal in the form of tax payer subsidies.
I implore moderate Republicans to take your party back from people who would have you remain in early 1900's Kentucky school houses.
— Joe Dawson
Asheville
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