To the Editor:

A recent letter suggested that its author does not believe in economic projections. He may not realize “estimates” of future economic outcomes is a vital part of planning that any organization — whether private businesses or governments — would have to do to make wise decisions. Or it may just be that he is not happy that overwhelming data support the basic tenant that any state that expands Medicaid under the present Affordable Care Act is going to reap huge economic benefits for its citizens.  

Not only do both of the studies that he wrote about about (REMI and George Washington University study) show huge economic benefits for North Carolina, but there have been 32 other studies in 26 states that have analyzed the anticipated impact of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion on state and local economies. These studies used at least six different economic impact models, all of which have been examined by experts in the field for accuracy. Every single one of these studies has shown that states that expand Medicaid would reap tens of billions of dollars in economic growth (Gross State Product), tens of thousands of new jobs created both in health care and in other areas, and millions of dollars of increased state revenues (https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/8522-the-role-of-medicaid-in-state-economies-looking-forward-to-the-aca.pdf).

I could not find a single study that looked at the economics on a state level under the current Affordable Care Act that did not show huge economic benefits to those states that expand Medicaid.  I need someone to show me the studies that show no economic growth for states that expand Medicaid.

Dr. Ed Morris

Franklin

To the Editor:

An earlier letter requires concrete proof of the success of the Affordable Care Act. Those truly interested in facts need to research the impact of expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act in the Republican dominated states of

Arkansas, Arizona and Kentucky, as well as its impact in Washington state. All of these states have experienced a dramatic decrease in the number of uninsured people, vast economic benefits to their health care systems and economic growth. 

North Carolina has 500,000 uninsured citizens and each day this state returns $4.9 million to the federal government. It is unproductive to speculate about future outcomes since no one of us can predict the future. 

What is the current status of North Carolina’s healthcare system resulting from the state’s rejection of the Affordable Care Act? Describing present conditions, avoiding generalizations, speculation and unpredictable future possibilities, the writer needs to provide factual examples demonstratinghow rejecting the ACA is benefitting our state and its citizens. Give us the facts only, please.

Margery Abel 

Franklin

To the Editor:

Thank you, Jackson County Commissioners for your courage in passing a resolution calling on the North Carolina General Assembly to petition Congress for the creation of the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that will end corporate personhood, declare that money is not free speech and that will reverse the 2010 Supreme Court decision on Citizens United vs. the U.S. Board of Elections.

Jackson County joins many organizations in North Carolina and nationwide — locally, the towns of Webster, Forest Hills, Highlands, Franklin and Bryson City, and Asheville — in standing up for the rights of individual citizens versus corporations. For those who might not be familiar with the case of Citizens United vs. the U.S. Board of Elections, the decision basically allowed corporations to be treated as people, which gave them the right to donate as much as they wanted toward the goal of electing a candidate from the political party of their choice — not directly to the candidate (which still is illegal) — but in “independent expenditures” and “electioneering communications.”

One such organization very much in the news these days is Koch Brothers Industries, which has committed almost a billion (yes, billion) dollars toward expenditures of their chosen party during the 2016 election. In my opinion, this totally unbalances elections. Since many voters see only the media advertisements for and against certain candidates, a flood of such advertisements in favor of one person could easily sway voters who have not looked outside the media for facts to assist in their voting decisions.

 So, thank you again, commissioners, for standing up for us.

 Marti Senterfit

Cashiers

By Martin Dyckman • Guest Columnist

Whether they strut across schoolyards or along the polished halls of a state capital, all bullies are alike. They have to be the boss of everything. They can’t stand anyone who talks back. But they can be beaten.

For now, though, the bullies are on a roll in North Carolina.

A draft plan to revamp the old Drexel furniture factory property in Whittier into an agricultural center will be presented at a community meeting 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 3, at Smoky Mountain Elementary School.

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission is working on a plan to guide management at the Cold Mountain Game Land in Haywood County for the next 10 years.

An agritourism guide for Haywood County is looking for new listings to help visitors and locals alike explore everything from pick-your-own berry farms to farm-to-table restaurants.

Smokies rangers are looking for tree-lovers who want to try their hand at science to adopt a tree monitoring plot on the North Carolina side of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

A speaker series featuring outdoor adventurers at Western Carolina University will kick off at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 3, with a presentation by Mark Singleton, executive director of American Whitewater with a headquarters in Sylva. 

The season’s first hike in Friends of the Smokies’ “Classic Hikes of the Smokies” series will explore Smokemont Loop Trail in a 6.2-mile hike led by hiking guide and author Danny Bernstein.

Western Carolina University history department faculty members Sue Abram and Andrew Denson are overseeing a public history project that recently received a $5,000 development grant from the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area Partnership.

The impact of successful festivals and events on the economy of the 26 westernmost counties of North Carolina will be the subject of a daylong tourism industry conference from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 21, in the Liston B. Ramsey Regional Activity Center at Western Carolina University.

“Golden Threads,” a dramatic 24-foot art mural created by Doreyl Ammons Cain for the Shindig on the Green in Asheville, is currently seeking donors to make its installment a reality.

Country star Wade Hayes will perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 7, at the Smoky Mountain Center for the Performing Arts in Franklin.

Acclaimed bluegrass act Balsam Range will welcome the Snyder Family Band as part of their Winter Concert Series at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 7, at the Colonial Theatre in Canton.

QUESTION: I have lactose intolerance. Is it better for me to buy goat's milk and cheeses than cow's milk and cheeses?

ANSWER: Lactose is the naturally occurring sugar found in milk from mammals whether cow, sheep or goats. Some individuals have lactose intolerance or acquire this as they grow older. Their bodies do not produce enough of the enzyme (lactase) to help digest the lactose so they have gastrointestinal issues like gas, bloating and diarrhea.

To the Editor:

Jackson County Commissioners, I want to congratulate you on the entertaining meeting on Jan. 29 and your resolution to support the “Move to Amend” proposed 28th amendment to the U. S. Constitution. Surely you know of at least some of the organizations that are supporting it and their ultra-radical politics? Don’t you? 

Here’s some of them in case you’re ignorant. There’s Code Pink, the radical feminist group which recently tried to arrest 91-year-old Henry Kissinger for war crimes at a Senate hearing on Thursday, Jan. 29, prompting Sen. John McCain to shout “get out of here you low-life scum” before the capitol police could remove said radicals. 

Then there’s the American Humanist Association who is “Good Without A God.” I wonder how all the good folks in the churches of Jackson County would feel about you aligning yourselves with an organization who is “good without a God?” 

Let’s not forget the Young Democratic Socialists (a division of the Democratic Socialists of America). A former communist friend of mine told me once that a socialist is someone who hasn’t picked up an AK-47 assault rifle to kill capitalists … yet. 

Oh, I know that you’ve heard of GreenPeace, whom many would say is an eco-terrorist group that tries mightily to compete with other nefarious sea dogs in the piracy-on-the-high-seas department.

 Then there’s MoveOn, the organization who is spending $1 million to draft the ultra-radical Sen. Liz Warren of Massachusetts to become our first socialist president in 2017. Last, but certainly not least, is the Rainbow Push Coalition run by Jesse Jackson, whom many would say is one of our country’s top two race hustlers who, after receiving contributions from certain corporations, interestingly enough those corporations don’t get harassed anymore by Jesse.

I could go on (see www.united4thepeople.org) with the racist, radical, socialist, and communist organizations who are supporting the proposed 28th amendment that you affiliated yourself with by passing your resolution last Thursday, but sadly there’s not enough space to print them all. Ultimately, it’s all about the company you keep in this life. For those of you seeking re-election anytime in the next decade or so, how will you defend yourselves to the citizens of Jackson County by your becoming willing, useful idiots to these organizations that want to destroy our republic? 

The French have a saying, “bad companions lead to bad ends.” Aligning yourselves politically with bad companions who are haters of freedom and American exceptionalism is not a ‘return to common sense.’ Thanks for the free entertainment. I look forward to more of it. By the way, which side are you on — ours or the enemies of the republic?

Carl Iobst

Cullowhee

To the Editor:

Ed Morris’s recent letter to this newspaper criticized a letter I had written to The Franklin Press regarding a front page article they published. That article used information from a report titled “The Economic and Employment Costs of Not Expanding Medicaid in North Carolina: A County-Level Analysis” written by a George Washington University (GWU) professor.

It forecast an economic boom for N.C. if N.C. would add an estimated 500,000 N.C. residents to Medicaid under ObamaCare. After reading the report, I felt that article citing the report was opinion, not news, and should have been on that paper’s opinion page.

Morris complained I can’t separate fact from opinion. He apparently believes everything in the report is a fact and challenged me to “report to readers of this newspaper the precise, actual factual information that is wrong in the study…”

That’s a tough challenge since there is very little factual information in the report! Simple things like how many people will use expanded Medicaid, or how much N.C. will receive in federal Medicaid reimbursements are estimates, projections or forecasts, not facts.

Nearly every statement, starting on the first page of the report, is an estimate. The words “estimate,” “estimates,” and “estimated” appear 102 times in the poorly written report, but not everywhere they should have appeared. The “Executive Summary” didn’t even state that the REMI economic model generated the reported estimates.

It was not until page 29 in the “Appendix: Methods and Data Sources” that the report stated “The estimates in this report are based on multiple sources of information and a widely-used regional economic model [REMI] to estimate the economic and employment effects of Medicaid expansion.”

Consider the REMI economic model. It is based on flawed Keynesian economic theory that every dollar spent by government generates a multi-dollar economic impact. The same theory that didn’t work with the nearly $1 trillion Obama “stimulus” program.

This report, and Keynesian theory, ignores that every dollar government spends has been taken out of a taxpayer’s pocket, or added to the national debt, and has a negative economic impact when taken. This is “economic redistribution” at work.

Projections from REMI and other economic models are rarely checked for accuracy. The Congressional Budget Office’s complex economic model projections can be checked. Their short- and long-term forecasts show they are rarely accurate. REMI’s much simpler model should be expected to perform worse.

In January 2013, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services received a report, “A Contrast: Modeling the Macroeconomic Impact of ‘Medicaid Expansion’ in North Carolina,” they had contracted for from the REMI corporation. This corporation programs the REMI economic model and is the true REMI expert. 

The economic estimates from the GMU report are from 80-100 percent higher than the HHS report. The estimates from the same model aren’t reproducible.

Vic Drummond

Franklin

To the Editor:

This Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, the 40-day period before Easter, when many Christians abstain from animal foods in remembrance of Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the desert before launching his ministry. 

But meat-free Lent is much more than a symbol of religious devotion to Christ. It helps reduce the risk of chronic disease, environmental degradation, and animal abuse. 

Our supermarket offers a rich array of plant-based meat and dairy alternatives, as well as the more traditional vegetables, fruits, and grains. Entering “vegan recipes” in our favorite Internet search engine offers more products, recipes, and transition tips than we can use.

Weston Madrigal

Waynesville

To the Editor:

On behalf of Dryman’s Chapel United Methodist Church please allow me to express thanks and grateful appreciation for the community and sponsor support we received during our Love Is in the Air 5K Run/Walk to raise funds for MS research. We especially thank our Macon County Sheriff Department, Macon County EMS, the Otto Fire Department, Burt and Deanie Raby and the Addington Bridge neighborhoods for their help and involvement.

We are deeply grateful to Dave Linn for his time, energy and expertise which gave guidance and help to our church members in this effort. He met with us many times to make sure we conducted a responsible race. We thank our runners and walkers who came out to enjoy the beautiful day with us and all those who cheered us on. 

Rev. Janet J. Greene

Franklin

To the Editor:

Have you ever heard the expression “waiting for the other shoe to drop”? I thought of it as I was reading all the recent news and opinions about the U.S. Forest Service studies on wood harvesting in Western North Carolian. I felt there was something not being said. Well, the answer came in a Jan. 29 article by Politico reporter Michael Grunwald.

Grunwald writes about a Nov. 19 memo from the EPA stating the Obama administration is looking to declare forestry products “carbon neutral.” In keeping with Obama’s on-again-off-again position on climate change and his “all-the-above” energy policies, declaring wood products carbon neutral opens the door to massive new exploitation of our forests. Thus the rush to re-evaluate forestry practices across the country. 

But burning trees for energy is not carbon neutral. It is true that a tree soaks up carbon and seals it in the wood, but burning it in a matter of minutes is a sudden rush of carbon. And even if you buy the premise that the gain is neutral, we have already gone over 400 parts per million of CO2 in the air, and we surely don’t need to go any higher.

According to Tim Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton University, burning wood (and other “biomass” sources of energy) is appealing to policy makers but is totally unrealistic. The oft-cited goal of 20 percent energy from biomass by 2050 would require burning every tree in our forests and all our food stocks as well. Searchinger also calculates that just the current policy proposal alone would require a 70 percent increase in American forestry production. 

And do you get the scent of money in all that smoke? Politicians on both sides of the aisle are lining up to support the increased denuding of our woods, and to take big campaign gifts from the people who will profit from it. Chipper mill owners are already increasing production in order to ship our forests to eager energy consumers in Europe, nations willing to make similar declarations of carbon neutrality.

Boyd Holliday

Lake Junaluska

To the Editor:

At first blush the idea of a 200-foot cross seemed kind of cool. It could make Maggie Valley famous for having the tallest cross. 

But I’ve been mulling it around in my head because there’s just something not right. First, having the tallest cross is a vanity thing. Vanity is a sin. You don’t have to build a bigger cross to be closer to God. Look how that Babel tower thing worked out.

Secondly, and more important to me, I absolutely do not want a 200-foot night light blocking out the sky! Nearly everyone in Maggie Valley can see the roller coaster from their front porch. It’s practically over our heads. Now imagine 200 feet up from there is a well-lit cross.

We moved to the country over 15 years ago to get away from noise and light pollution. There’s nothing more beautiful than a sky full of stars on a clear dark night. But in the city you’re likely to forget there are stars.

It’s an urban blight. Appreciate what you have and stop messing it up. Having the world’s tallest cross is a grand idea. But it’s not a good idea.

Larry Wright

Maggie Valley

Bills to get rid of the oil and gas extraction rules developed by the N.C. Mining and Energy Commission have been introduced in both the House and Senate of the N.C. General Assembly, with Rep. Joe Sam Queen, D-Waynesville, signing on as a co-sponsor of the House version.

A $30,000 grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation will help the N.C. Wildlife Federation further its mission of conserving and protecting wildlife and their habitats. 

Learn about the Highland Plateau Greenway’s vision to build a public trail to the top of Satulah Mountain at a public meeting held 4 to 5:30 p.m. Monday, March 2, at the Highlands Civic Center.

An annual Wild Game Dinner hosted by the Wildlife Club at Haywood Community College will serve up a meal of home-cooked wild game dishes while raising money for the student group.

The weather is wintry, but spring is just around the corner. Mark your calendar for some of these upcoming springtime events.

A “buy local” directory for wood-related products from Western North Carolina is looking for more businesses, artisans and organizations to add to its listings before launching a searchable database version of the directory later this year.

Haywood Tourism Development Authority is currently looking for volunteer guest travel bloggers to contribute articles to its Homegrown Blog on www.visitncsmokies.com.

Haywood Community College’s Workforce Continuing Education Creative Arts Department will offer an Introduction to Sound Recording/Engineering class on Mondays from March 2 through May 18.

Boojum Brewing Company, Waynesville’s newest (and fourth) brewery, will officially open its downtown taproom at 11 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 21, at 50 North Main Street.

The Galaxy of Stars Series will present the one-man show “Man 1, Bank 0” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28, in the John W. Bardo Fine and Performing Arts Center at Western Carolina University.

Presented as a live radio broadcast onstage, “Robin Hood – The Legacy” will be held at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 26, in the John W. Bardo Fine and Performing Arts Center at Western Carolina University.

Multi-platinum country music artist Mark Wills will perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28, at the Smoky Mountain Center for the Performing Arts in Franklin.

Legendary outlaw country singer Willie Nelson will perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28, Harrah’s Cherokee.

QUESTION: Where does Ingles Laura Lynn milk come from?

ANSWER: Most (80%) of the dairy farmers who supply Ingles Markets with Laura Lynn milk live within about 100-150 miles of Asheville. These dairy farms generally have about 100-200 cows and are family owned like English Farm in Marion NC and Ramsey Dairy Farm in Fairview.

To the Editor:

It’s true, you only get one chance to make a good one. Entering Waynesville from any direction does not make a good first impression. 

Coming from the east on N.C. 19/23 you only have to be about 500 feet inside the town limits before encountering a junkyard. There are dozens of unlicensed over-the-road vehicles that haven’t moved for at least the last 20 years. Several are parked within six or seven feet of the sidewalk and obviously are on the road right of way. Keep going a little farther and at the traffic circle you have a great view of a drive-in movie screen that has been falling apart for the last decade. Go another half mile and enjoy the next junkyard on your left. Continue on North Main another half mile or so and gaze upon the next junkyards on both sides of North Main. I have been to ghost towns in the West that gave a similar first impression. Now let’s come to town from the south on U.S. 276. Immediately upon entering the town limits on your left you will see a junkyard that has been growing for the last 15 years. Then come in from South Main and encounter another junkyard on your right, inside the town limits. 

Some of these aren’t real junkyards, but they are businesses who need to clean up their act.

What has happened to our junkyard and sign ordinances? We had temporary real estate signs removed and not returned just days after putting them up. South on U.S. 276 about a half mile from Main Street, there is a development sign that has been there at least 20 years for a development that has never been or will ever be. Consistency in enforcement would be nice. 

I guess my question should be: what individual does the performance review of the town employee being paid to enforce our ordinances? It appears that neither of these people are doing what they are being paid by the taxpayers to do. We have the ordinances in place and code enforcement employees on the taxpayers payroll. Isn’t it time to clean up the impression we make on people coming to Waynesville?

Bruce Gardner

Waynesville

To the Editor:

It took newly elected Sen. Thom Tillis , R-N.C., merely a month in Washington to make himself North Carolina’s reigning national embarrassment, succeeding Rep. Mark “Shutdown” Meadows, R-Cashiers, and John “Casanova” Edwards. People elsewhere are asking how we elected a U.S. senator who doesn’t believe the government should make restaurant workers wash their hands before work or after using the toilet.

The simple explanation is that too many people didn’t care enough to vote; those who did seemed to know what a throwback Sen. Tillis is and most must have approved.

The surprise is not that he’s babbling like a disciple of the nihilist author Ayn Rand, but that he chose so offensive an example to make his point. Sen. Tillis isn’t saying that cooks or servers shouldn’t wash their hands, but simply that it isn’t the government’s job to make them do it. The public deserves only to know whether their employers require it.

His ideology is the law of the jungle. It used to prevail nationwide until Upton Sinclair and other crusaders began writing about such things as spoiled meat disguised with chemicals and littered with rat feces. To return to such unfettered free enterprise is the not-so-secret ambition of the big shots in every sector of the economy and their stooges in the Congress and the legislatures.

In Sen. Tillis’s dream world, restaurants are required only to tell their customers whether employees must wash their hands. To a bemused audience, Sen. Tillis remarked that the market — meaning the patrons — would “take care” of those establishments that didn’t.

Of course, every place would claim that it did. But so what?

To say, as some do, that Sen. Tillis proposes to replace one regulation with another misses the point. As a Bloomberg Politics essay put it, “he’d rather make things easier for businesses than safe for consumers.”

Requiring a restaurant to say only whether it orders its workers to wash their hands isn’t the same as holding it responsible — as the law does — for seeing that it’s done and done well.

North Carolina’s hand-washing rules are fairly detailed and explicit, and properly so. The water needs to be warm, hands and arms should be scrubbed with an approved product for at least 20 seconds, there have to be clean towels or a dryer, and there must be a separate sink so that the one where food is prepared won’t be used for post-toilet sanitation.

In Tillisland, none of that would matter.

Overall, there are 204 pages in our state’s Food Code. If you think that’s too many, you have not suffered such miseries as E. Coli, shigella, or salmonella. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that there are 48 million cases of food-borne diseases in the U.S. every year. That’s one for every six of us. At least 128,000 people are hospitalized and 3,000 die.

During a salmonella outbreak two years ago that sickened 100 people in Fayetteville — yes, right here in North Carolina — inspectors identified multiple possible rule violations at the restaurant in question. They included improper water temperature and a lack of hand-washing supplies. The report also noted that seven employees had violated the code by working when they were ill.

Granted, the employees shouldn’t have worked. But without paid sick leave, it was likely a matter of breaking either the law or their leases.

For public safety, the law should demand paid sick leave for food service and health care workers, so many of whom live precariously from one pay check to the next. But we’re not likely to get something so obviously necessary from a General Assembly of Sen. Tillis clones. With a committee chair’s gavel now in her hands, Rep. Michelle Presnell, R-Burnsville, is promising to attack what she calls “onerous regulatory overreach.”

Tom Tillis and Michelle Presnell: King and Queen of the jungle.  

Martin A. Dyckman

Waynesville

Maggie Valley’s inaugural WinterFest Smoky Style will celebrate the best of the cold-weather season 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28, at the Maggie Valley Festival Grounds, with other events bookending the festival Friday and Saturday nights.

Runners will take to the streets of downtown Waynesville as the inaugural Gateway to the Smokies Half Marathon starts from Main Street at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday, May 2. 

Haywood Community College just became the only two-year community college in North Carolina to offer a forest management technology program accredited by the Society of American Foresters, a national organization for professional foresters.

Registration is now open for the fifth Wilderness Skills Institute, a training program for Wilderness stewardship and management, held at the Cradle of Forestry in Pisgah National Forest.

Lake Junaluska was only 39 degrees on Jan. 31, but 120 people still braved the cold to participate in Haywood Waterways Association’s Third Annual Polar Plunge.

Two open houses this month will offer the chance to meet and greet the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Superintendent, Cassius Cash, who had his first day at work this Monday (Feb. 9).

A nonprofit organization, Catch the Spirit of Appalachia wishes to once again provide four opportunities for a scholarship in the amount of $500 each for Appalachian Studies to be presented to four deserving seniors in the Western North Carolina counties.

• The Annie Lee Bryson Memorial Scholarship is for a local student who has declared a major or minor in Appalachian Studies or related studies with an interest in traditional crafts.

• The Mary Jane Queen Memorial Scholarship is for students who have declared a major or minor in music, with an interest in the traditional music of the Appalachian Mountains.

• The Elmer & Irene Hooper Memorial Scholarship is for high school seniors who have demonstrated excellence in volunteerism and leadership. 

• The Founders Scholarship is awarded on the basis of merit or potential within the visual arts, writing or history, with consideration of financial need.

Applicants must submit a completed application and all supporting documents to the guidance counselor of the applicant’s school by March 10 in order to be considered for this year’s scholarship awards. Home-schooler applicants should complete the application and send it to CSA, 29 Regal Avenue, Sylva, N.C. 28779, also by March 10. The application may be downloaded at www.spiritofappalachia.org.

828.631.4587.

A collection of images by acclaimed photographer Tim Barnwell that reflects the musical and craft traditions of the Southern Appalachian Mountains is currently on display through April 1 at Western Carolina University’s Mountain Heritage Center.

The Downtown Waynesville Association is seeking heritage themed vendors for the fifth annual Appalachian Lifestyle Celebration that will take place Saturday, June 13.

Renowned classic rock act Heart will hit the stage at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21, at Harrah’s Cherokee.

Jackson County commissioners will spend $100,000 on a storage room at the Cashiers library for the Friends of the Cashiers Library to house used book donations.

Haywood County Schools will be offering signing bonuses for teachers in hard-to-get fields starting next school year.