It began with a couple letters submitted by others:
Not only Santos economical with the truth
In the recently elected 118th United States Congress, the House of Representatives currently consists of 222 Republican members and 212 Democrats [with one open seat]. One of the more noteworthy congressmen is a young man named George Santos, who represents New York’s 3rd Congressional District, here on Long Island, and was elected as a Republican.
During his campaign, Santos found it helpful to “identify” himself with a number of desirable attributes, none of which seem to be based on factual objective reality. For example, he claimed to be a graduate of Baruch College, while his highest level of academic achievement is a GED high school diploma. He claimed to have been employed by Goldman Sachs, although the investment bank has no record of this. He claimed to be of Jewish heritage, although this has turned out to be untrue. Why would any rational person believe that identifying himself, or herself, as something other than what he, or she, actually is, can lead to a successful political career?
Might he have been thinking about Sen. Elizabeth Warren [D-MAJ, who identified as having Indian ancestry, when she took a DNA test that proved otherwise? Or Sen. Richard Blumenthal [D-CT], who identified as a Vietnam veteran, while he actually never set foot there?
Or perhaps Santos took the time to familiarize himself with the career of our president, Joe Biden [DJ, who is the master of embellishments. Biden claimed that, when he was young, he drove an 18-wheeler tractor trailer, which is a complete fabrication. He claimed that, in law school, he finished in the top of his class, when he was actually 76th out of 85. He claimed that, after he became vice president, he gave his Uncle Frank a Purple Heart medal that Uncle Frank had earned in World War II. Actually, his uncle had died nine years earlier, and he had never earned a Purple Heart. Biden claimed that he had been arrested in his youth while protesting for civil rights — this never happened. The list goes on and on.
Some individuals, including Republicans, Democrats and voters in New York’s 3rd District, have suggested that it might be a good idea to remove Santos from his congressional seat, and even to prosecute him for financial irregularities.
It is interesting to note that many of these people display their righteous indignation for offenses committed prior to one’s election, and yet show virtually unlimited forbearance for harmful, and even criminal, acts committed by persons actually “serving” in office.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton [DJ was caught with classified emails on her private server, in clear violation of federal law. Rep. Adam Schiff [D-CA-28] repeatedly lied about having “smoking gun” evidence proving that President Donald Trump [R] had colluded with Russian operatives to throw the 2016 election. Neither of these has been prosecuted, and both continue on their journeys, hopping down the bunny trail to fame and fortune. If we are going to prosecute people and throw them out of office, let us start with the ones who have done the most harm to our great country.
George AItemose
Setauket
No electric car for me
Cut greenhouse gasses! Save the planet! A better vehicle! Really?
I didn’t know electric vehicles are about 1,000 pounds heavier than their petroleum equivalents and therefore have higher brake wear (increased particulates), tire wear (increased nanoparticles) and require more energy.
I didn’t know EV batteries lose power in the cold and reduce their range, and the batteries need replacing after several years approaching half the cost of the vehicle.
I didn’t know the rare elements needed in EVs like lithium, cobalt, copper, nickel are mined in Third World countries where child slave labor is used to mine the metals. And the metals obtained are refined resulting in mass poisoning of the land and water, and massive greenhouse gas emissions are emitted in the refining.
I didn’t know the grid doesn’t have the capacity to charge EVs on a massive scale which will lead to rolling blackouts like California and Texas when many families are charging at the same time.
I didn’t know that electricity providers will boost rates significantly higher to charge EVs at home resulting in a cost of operation higher than a gasoline car.
I didn’t know that if EVs were really viable they wouldn’t need thousands of dollars of taxpayer subsidies.
I didn’t know EV batteries can suddenly explode in an unstoppable fire that emits toxic gasses. This results in ordinances requiring EVs to not park in garages.
I didn’t know the EV components are not easily recyclable and end-of-life disposition is a major problem for landfills, recyclers and incinerators.
I’ll stay with my gasoline-powered car.
Mark Sertoff
East Northport
Published January 19, 2023 in The Village Times Herald
Flooding the zone
Two letters in the Jan. 19 TBR News Media newspapers — by George Altemose [“Not only Santos economical with the truth”] and Mark Sertoff [“No electric car for me”] — are flagrant examples of a tactic dubbed by right-wing ideologue Steve Bannon as “flooding the zone with BS.” The strategy aims to overwhelm readers with long lists of false, misleading and irrelevant information, making it difficult for readers to separate fact from fiction.
Sertoff’s letter omits the most crucial fact about electric vehicles: They are dramatically more energy efficient than internal combustion engines. EVs convert about 60% of their battery energy into movement, while internal combustion engines convert just 20% — the rest is lost as heat. Large power plants are about 45% efficient. So, even with energy losses along the path, most electric vehicles still get more than 100 miles-per-gallon equivalent, which means fill-ups for $15.
Recycling, battery performance and power distribution are indeed challenges, but all are being addressed and are perfectly solvable. But Sertoff doesn’t really care about the environmental or social impacts of lithium mining, given the overwhelming impacts of fossil fuel extraction and climate change. The purpose of his letter is to stoke the flames of the culture war on behalf of a Republican Party and conservative media heavily funded by the energy industry.
The letter by George Altemose drew a false equivalency between embellishments — some minor, some serious — and the outright fabrication of an entire identity by recently elected U.S. Rep. George Santos [R-NY3]. Santos claimed education, degrees, finances and work history that were completely false, along with a host of other personal attributes that appear to be utter fabrications.
Altemose accused Rep. Adam Schiff [D-CA30] of “lying” about having evidence of Trump campaign collusion with Russia. However, the evidence Schiff referred to includes emails showing that Russian agents offered the campaign “dirt” on Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Trump.” Then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump [actually Don Jr.] wrote back, “If it’s what you say I love it,” and the campaign eagerly took the meeting. Later, 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort shared internal Trump campaign polling data and strategy with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The only plausible reason to do that would be to allow Russia to coordinate its U.S. election influence operations. That Trump himself wasn’t charged with being a foreign agent doesn’t change the documented facts of multiple Trump associates’ numerous illicit contacts with Russian representatives. Even if legal, what else can all this be called but “collusion”?
But Altemose doesn’t really care about politicians’ honesty. The purpose of his letter is to draw attention away from the Republican failure to expel Santos from the party and force his resignation.
Why docs TBR News Media continue to publish such transparently misleading letters? By all means let’s argue about which facts are more important, and what our national energy goals should be. But the media have a responsibility to exercise some judgment about the veracity and honesty of what they publish.
John Hover
East Setauket
Published February 2, 2023 in The Village Times Herald
Sign of our times
It is a sign of our times that some people believe that it is entirely reasonable to have those with whom they do not agree to be banished from public discourse, or in the modern parlance, to be “canceled.” Such a person is John Hover, who, in a Feb. 2 letter to The Village Times Herald [“Flooding the zone”], recommended the banishment of Mark Sertoff for pointing out a few of the many shortcomings of electric vehicles, and of me, for suggesting that the transgressions of Rep. George Santos [R-NY3] may have been inspired by the successful mendacity of several prominent politicians, all of whom happen to be Democrats.
Sertoff’s fatal offense, according to Hover, is that he failed to state that electric vehicles are “dramatically more energy efficient than internal combustion engines.” The truth is that some EVs may be more efficient at some times and under some conditions than internal combustion engine vehicles, but this is not “dramatically” true in all cases.
And so, we are told that a writer needs to be canceled, not for something he wrote, but because he failed to promote the talking points of a group with which he does not agree. For those who are interested, the highly respected Anderson Economic Group recently published a report entitled “Gas-powered cars cheaper to fuel than electric in late 2022.” Maybe AEG needs to be canceled as well, along with Mark Sertoff.
After having terminated the writing career of Sertoff, I was next. My apparent sin was stating that Rep. Adam Schiflf [D-CA30] “repeatedly lied about having ‘smoking gun’ evidence proving that President Donald Trump [R] had colluded with Russian operatives to throw the 2016 election.” To prove me wrong, Hover claimed that Russian agents offered campaign dirt on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton [D], and campaign manager Paul Manafort shared campaign polling data with the Russian ambassador.
One of Schiffs most famous lies was that he himself was in personal possession of a “smoking gun,” although he never did share this alleged information with the public. When asked about it at a later date, Schiff' declared that it had been “in plain sight” the whole time. This was only the tip of the Schiff iceberg, and we can thank House Speaker Kevin McCarthy [R-CA20] for removing this bad apple from the tree of Congress.
With regard to Santos, if I choose to suggest that his meteoric rise may have been inspired by the successful disregard of the truth by politicians who preceded him, why is that not my prerogative?
If John Hover is so concerned about “veracity and honesty,” as he sanctimoniously claimed in his letter, he should take a look at the current occupant of the White House and leave the First Amendment alone.
George Altemose
Setauket
Published Feb 9, 2023 in The Village Times Herald
How to tackle carbon dioxide emissions
Virtually every rational person agrees that it would be a good idea to reduce our emissions of carbon dioxide, thereby reducing the contribution of civilization to the phenomenon of global warming.
Perhaps the most obvious way to achieve this goal would be to convert some, or most, or all of our motor vehicles using internal combustion engines to electric vehicles. To accomplish this monumental task, the vast amount of energy currently provided by hydrocarbon fuels must be replaced by an approximately equal amount of electrical energy.
But what is the best way to produce this energy, using technology that is available today? On the one hand, we have our renewable energy, consisting primarily of solar arrays, windmills and hydroelectric generators. But these have serious limitations, primarily due to the intermittent availability of sun and wind, and also the mind-boggling cost and technical problems associated with batteries or other technologies to fill in the gaps.
The obvious solution to this problem would appear to be nuclear power, which provides clean energy all day and all night, in good weather and bad, with zero emission of carbon dioxide.
Nuclear power has been used to generate electrical power in France for 60 years, and now provides approximately 72% of their requirements. The worldwide leader is the United States, which generates more than 30% of the world’s nuclear power, but only about 19% of our own domestic usage. We have some 70,000 wind turbines, which provide about 7% of our power, when the wind is blowing. We also have a lot of solar panels, which supply some 2% of our power, when the sun is shining.
We now have a government that claims to believe in “science,” as only they can define it. At the same time, they tell us the following:
- We must get rid of our ICE vehicles.
- We must replace them with EVs.
- To ensure conformance, gasoline will become increasingly less plentiful and more expensive.
- We will build as many windmills and solar arrays as we can.
- We will deal with the battery problem at some time in the future.
- We will shut down nuclear plants, c.g., Diablo Canyon in California and Indian Point, as soon as we can.
- We will make it as difficult as possible to obtain a license to build a new nuclear plant.
- We will redefine or reinterpret inflation to prove that we had no part in causing it to increase.
Thank goodness that we have a government to understand science and regulate technology. What would we do without them?
George Altemose
Setauket
Published Feb 23, 2023 in The Village Times Herald
No cancellation requested
In one of his recent letters [“Sign of our times”, Feb. 9], George Altemose accused me of wanting to “cancel” him and letter writer Mark Scrtoff, supposedly because I disagree with their opinions about Rep. George Santos’ [R-NY3] election and electric vehicle efficiency [“Not only Santos economical with the truth”, “No electric car for me”, Jan. 19].
For the record, I don’t want to “cancel” anyone, and actually agree with them that politicians lie and EV technology is immature. I questioned the value of their letters because their arguments were disingenuous and therefore merely performative. If Altemose doesn’t care how Santos got elected, he should say so, rather than pretend that Santos’ lies are equivalent to the exaggeration and hype that politicians of both parties have always engaged in.
If Sertoff doesn’t think we can — or should — mitigate fossil fuel emissions, he should say so, rather than pretend to be concerned about the maturity of EV technology.
It would be wonderful to see thoughtful, good-faith letters from the right, but instead we regularly see disingenuous, sarcastic rants about “wokism,” “cancel culture,” “socialism” and “CRT” with no facts or logic to be found. Until we see more intellectually honest letters, we should continue to point out bogus rhetorical tactics. In any case, the First Amendment rights of Altemose and Sertoff will remain uninfringed since TBR Media, as a private company, can print — or not print — whatever it chooses.
Refreshingly, Altemose’s latest letter [“How to tackle carbon dioxide emissions”, Feb. 23] frankly acknowledges the reality of human-caused climate change and makes a concrete, fact-based policy proposal: Use more nuclear power production to supplement renewable energy sources.
Although we could do without the sarcasm, he correctly points out the hypocrisy of some on the left for rejecting nuclear out of hand. I agree we should strive to make policy decisions based on science and evidence.
But the nuclear power programs of France and South Korea have been more successful than ours because they are both run by nation-level, state-owned utilities. This has allowed them to standardize reactor technology, build multiple plants simultaneously, consolidate technical and operations expertise, avoid the need for an adversarial regulatory framework and ensure accountability via high-profile political oversight. While not perfect, this approach has made French and South Korean nuclear plants safer and more economical than those produced under the one-off, state-by-state, externally regulated, private for-profit contractor model used in the U.S.
Would Americans support a federally owned nuclear utility (“socialism”!) if it meant a safer, cheaper and emissions-free energy supply? That’s a good question worth some vigorous, fact-based debate.
John Hover
East Setauket
Published March 2, 2023 in The Village Times Herald
Two weeks later, the Three Village Times Herald changed its letters-to-the-editor policy to a strictly-local topics. No more wide-ranging national-level philosophy and ideology debates.
Just local topics:
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