Opinion

Everyone seems so caught up by Romney’s “47%” comments. With a secret hidden camera the twisted press sensationalized it by taking Romney’s comments out of context to generate “breaking news” and “serious investigative journalism” which gave the talking heads weeks of fodder.

Measure E will callously squeeze a large percentage of income from the poor, seniors, the disabled and families who have lost jobs, health insurance, even their homes, than of the affluent.

This was a debate for the green-eyeshade crowd. If you tuned in Wednesday night to see President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney offer inspiring visions for the future, you heard more numbers than you did paeans to America.

I cannot believe the San Benito Public Works Department gave permission to a company to do seismic testing all along our county roads and then allowed them to begin pounding the ground with huge trucks. The pounding was so powerful that windows rattled and almost shattered. Someone was hiking along the road and they said it was so powerful that it could have knocked them down, but they saw her and stopped pounding until she went past the truck. The road bed was destroyed in some places. They told us they were testing for earthquake activity. The public works department gave permission without even investigating who this company was and what they were really doing. Perhaps they did know and just didn’t care! Big money talks. Shame on them for deceiving the taxpayers of this county who pay their salaries. They were really testing to see if they could extract oil and gas with a method called fracking. If this company is allowed to do this it will affect all of San Benito County.

I recall attending city budget hearings back in June of 2003 when former City Manager Dale Shaddox had to find a way to scale back department requests that exceeded $1.8 million dollars above projected revenues.

Earlier this year, President Obama's Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told Congress: "There's a lot of hysteria that takes place now with respect to hydraulic fracking, and you see that happening in many of the states." Salazar then added: "It can be done safely and has been done safely hundreds of thousands of times."

As a current student who majors in Health Information Management or “medical records”, I am compelled to respond to the Guest View by John and Tess Ucovich in the Friday issue of the Hollister Free Lance. In my current class, Principles of Healthcare Reimbursement, it is mandatory that students do copious weekly research in order to fully participate in weekly discussions of the healthcare industry.