Two years ago, our state had a surplus of almost $1 billion. Putting prudence aside, our governor and his cohorts spent it all — on a train and "pork." While the train is nice, so is a Rolls Royce and a Bentley.

Responsible people invest and save for a rainy day. Instead of the governor taking the lead to trim state expenses by eliminating/trimming exempt/reward positions, now at a record high, he blames the Legislature. Two additional highway lanes between Santa Fe and Albuquerque would have cost a fraction of the Railrunner, and would have been cheaper to maintain. But, as President Obama, our preacher, also enticed, "Eat some ice cream I will give you," and the taxpayers will pay for the cow and the hay.


Plenty of gold

"Gold's day as currency standard is over" (Nov. 3), states that "There simply isn't enough gold to accomplish the job" (to be used as a standard for major currencies). This reasoning is often encountered in opinion pieces by financial gurus, but what they really mean is that there isn't enough gold at its current valuation.

If gold were priced at $5,000 per ounce, rather than at about $1,100 per ounce as it is today, there would be adequate backing to finance all the world's transactions. To put it another way, if the world's currencies were to have their purchasing power reduced by a factor of 5, there would be plenty of gold for that purpose. I'm not knowledgeable enough to evaluate the other reasons for gold's deficiencies, but the argument that there just isn't enough gold is specious (no pun intended).


Seen $4 gas before

I was dumfounded to see a pro-Big Oil commercial that warned about $4 per gallon gasoline. It intimated that responsible environmental legislation would cause $4 gas. We had $4 gas in the past. Was it because of environmental legislation?

No, the oil companies blamed global demand while banking the largest profits ever recorded by any American corporations. Did the commercial mention that we are at ''peak oil'' and that our demand will outstrip our ability to produce causing the price to rise? No, it just blamed proposed legislation that would require Big Oil to shoulder some of the cost to clean up the mess they created. We must call our congressional representatives and tell them to support ''The Clean Energy and American Power Act'' because if we're going to have $4 gas, we might as well pay it to help the environment rather than to enlarge the record profits of Big Oil.


Need reinforcements now

Regarding the Oct. 30 letter, "Poor reasoning," in which Robert Foster writes against increasing our military presence in Afghanistan: President Barack Obama already sent an entire Stryker Brigade to Afghanistan in March. These soldiers need reinforcements. Reinforcements that, I might add, volunteered for this duty.

My nephew and all his brothers and sisters in arms don't have the luxury of "a lot of time" for the president to decide, as Mr. Foster requests. With all due respect, the families of these soldiers feel as if every day is a lifetime, and time is not a luxury for us!

It's easy for someone with no skin in the game to pontificate. I pray he never has to wonder if his loved ones are safe every time he hears about a bombing in Afghanistan or Iraq. These soldiers all volunteered, and we cannot leave them hanging.


Cold War realities

Thanks to Rich Lowry for reminding us in his Nov. 5 commentary, "Why Obama won't go to Berlin," of the good old days of the Cold War, when the U.S. undermined its enemies "by shining a bright light on their oppression" and stood as a "beacon of liberty" in the world.

As I am the same age as President Obama, I remember those days well (while the younger Lowry apparently does not): the death squads we funded throughout Central America, our unwavering support of South African apartheid, the CIA overthrow of Chile's President Salvador Allende and numerous other elected leaders —- just a few examples of our nation's actions as a "beacon of liberty."

Ich bin Amerikanerin, and I challenge Lowry to take a more honest look at our Cold War record. He appears to be the naive one, not Obama.


Tax sins equitably

It's time to put a significant alcohol tax increase on the front burner and stop looking at the tobacco smoker as the only health culprit worthy of fiscal punishment. State Rep. Brian Egolf's introduction of excise taxes on cigarettes, alcohol and motor vehicles ignores the elephant in the room and goes after the easy target. Egolf's logic of raising the cigarette tax by $1 per pack should also be applied to alcohol per drink.

Egolf states a dime per drink would raise $66 million annually. A dollar a drink would raise $666 million annually. The anti-DUI contingency, among others, can appreciate this logic. Alcohol addiction at all levels and ages is the most serious health issue in our state. When it comes to a tax increase, the alcohol-imbibing community needs to take responsibility and pony up along with the rest us sinners.


Immoral war

Regarding William Stewart's Oct. 31 column, "Stability paramount in Afghan region": It is insufficient to argue, as Stewart does, that we owe it to the Afghanis to stay there to stabilize their country.

Instead, Mr. Stewart should read diplomat Matthew Hoh's eloquent letter of resignation, reprinted Nov. 1 in the Opinions section, in which he demolishes each of the proffered rationales for continuing the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. It is arrogant to think that we can, or should, attempt futilely to dictate the outcome of a civil war in another country with a culture far different from ours. We must also recognize that modern warfare, as Howard Zinn argues, is inevitably warfare against civilians, who suffer the vast majority of casualties. Even if there were a political case for remaining in Afghanistan, much less for increasing our military presence there, it would be far outweighed by the moral case against doing so.