麻花视频 speaks up: Letters to the editor for the week of Sep. 12, 2025
- Updated
Our weekly round-up of letters published in the 麻花视频.
I suspect Donald Trump is trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy by sending troops into Washington, D.C. He is probably hoping some hothead will fire on or otherwise assault National Guard soldiers. Then he can say, "See? I told you so. Washington, D.C., is a lawless city requiring federal intervention."
Even worse, we could be in store for a Kent-State-style tragic overreaction on the part of armed National Guard troops. They are not the best trained and most disciplined troops we have. Should they open fire on a crowd, that too would work to Trump's benefit. He would exaggerate the threat the guardsmen faced and offer it as further proof that a federal takeover is necessary.
I also worry that Trump is testing the waters 鈥 seeing just how far he can go in using the military for civilian law enforcement and ultimately for stifling dissent. In the words of the poet John Milton, "Awake, arise, or be forever fallen!"
Edward Palm, Forest
Whitt Babcock, the Virginia Tech athletic director, recently requested funding help from the university, a trend across the country, he says, as schools face breathtakingly exponential increases in coach/staff salaries, facilities debt, travel expenses, and compensation for athletes.
This 鈥渢rend鈥 reminds of sociologist Harry Edwards when he wrote in 2011 of, 鈥渢he grossly expanding athletics budgets and facility debt-service obligations, resulting in financial burdens upon students鈥 tuition and fees and colleges鈥 general-fund resources.鈥 Edwards concluded the 鈥渁thletics arms race is both increasingly unmanageable and ultimately unsustainable.鈥 Clearly, the Tech AD, along with many of his peers, has run smack into the Edwards' reality of unsustainability.
Another reality is that athletics departments, generating billions of dollars, are finding even those billions aren鈥檛 enough, so they begin cannibalizing academic programs by requesting 鈥渉elp鈥 (i.e., huge subsidies) from the university, its students, and state taxpayers.
Athletics fees are 40% lower at Tech than the University of Virginia, Babcock says, so adding a UVa-level athletics fee would be worth nearly $35 million more to the Hokies each year.
This suggests Tech students are being prepared to pay their 鈥渇air share鈥 by ponying up $35 million more annually聽鈥 in this 鈥渁rms race鈥澛犫 in athletics fee subsidies.
Which brings us to the final reality that collegiate athletics are cannibalizing the academic enterprise. Sports economist Andrew Zimbalist once noted, 鈥淓very dollar going to intercollegiate athletics is a dollar lost to academic programming.鈥 His observation was buttressed by that of Nancy Hogshead-Maker (and many others) who write of athletic spending deficits as, 鈥渕oney coming from academics to athletics, not the other way around.鈥 Thus Babcock鈥檚 鈥渞equesting help from the university鈥 merely underscores the reality of how athletic programs drain institutional, and state, treasuries.
Today鈥檚 University Athletic Entertainment and Sports Gambling Industrial Complex has made us recognize that Robert Atwell (president emeritus of the American Council on Education) was right on target back in 2001 in noting, 鈥渨hen it comes to big-time sports, many universities are in the entertainment business, not the education business.鈥 So, today鈥檚 student seeking academic services may legitimately ask, what is it that I鈥檓 paying for?
James Joy, Huntington
This July, more than 200 American climate and weather scientists were fired while working on the sixth National Climate Assessment, a process that was mandated by Congress two decades ago under a Republican president, to inform the American people every four years about the latest science and expected effects of global warming.
This deleted document includes sea level rise and regional climate expectations important to Virginia and Rockbridge County. And the website featuring the fifth Climate Assessment went dark. What should we think about this blatant attempt to dumb down the American public?
More than 97% of scientists are convinced of the reality, cause and increasingly rapid increase in average temperature and its cause, rising greenhouse gas levels. Continued unchecked, we are looking at a process that is expensive, deadly, and preventable.
Why take this important information away from students, the public, farmers, planners, businesses, people in government?
Moreover, 3,000 pages of the Center for Disease Control website have gone dark. Lost to us, the public, is research-based info on preventing chronic disease, vaccine guidelines for pregnant people, Alzheimer鈥檚 warning signs, overdose prevention, and sexually transmitted disease treatment guidelines. At least 8,000 web pages across more than a dozen U.S. government websites have been taken down.
The removal of all this important information, both medical and environmental, that we, the People paid for, will cost us all; in wasted taxes, increased medical need, personal suffering. and needless deaths.
President Donald Trump, and and our local enabler, Rep. Ben Cline, are pushing our country toward a Dark Age. Please wake up, neighbors, both Republicans and Democrats, open your eyes: we are entering a Dark Age like no other.
Fred Fevrier, Rockbridge Baths
More like this...
I suspect Donald Trump is trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy by sending troops into Washington, D.C. He is probably hoping some hothead will fire on or otherwise assault National Guard soldiers. Then he can say, "See? I told you so. Washington, D.C., is a lawless city requiring federal intervention."
Even worse, we could be in store for a Kent-State-style tragic overreaction on the part of armed National Guard troops. They are not the best trained and most disciplined troops we have. Should they open fire on a crowd, that too would work to Trump's benefit. He would exaggerate the threat the guardsmen faced and offer it as further proof that a federal takeover is necessary.
I also worry that Trump is testing the waters 鈥 seeing just how far he can go in using the military for civilian law enforcement and ultimately for stifling dissent. In the words of the poet John Milton, "Awake, arise, or be forever fallen!"
Edward Palm, Forest
Whitt Babcock, the Virginia Tech athletic director, recently requested funding help from the university, a trend across the country, he says, as schools face breathtakingly exponential increases in coach/staff salaries, facilities debt, travel expenses, and compensation for athletes.
This 鈥渢rend鈥 reminds of sociologist Harry Edwards when he wrote in 2011 of, 鈥渢he grossly expanding athletics budgets and facility debt-service obligations, resulting in financial burdens upon students鈥 tuition and fees and colleges鈥 general-fund resources.鈥 Edwards concluded the 鈥渁thletics arms race is both increasingly unmanageable and ultimately unsustainable.鈥 Clearly, the Tech AD, along with many of his peers, has run smack into the Edwards' reality of unsustainability.
Another reality is that athletics departments, generating billions of dollars, are finding even those billions aren鈥檛 enough, so they begin cannibalizing academic programs by requesting 鈥渉elp鈥 (i.e., huge subsidies) from the university, its students, and state taxpayers.
Athletics fees are 40% lower at Tech than the University of Virginia, Babcock says, so adding a UVa-level athletics fee would be worth nearly $35 million more to the Hokies each year.
This suggests Tech students are being prepared to pay their 鈥渇air share鈥 by ponying up $35 million more annually聽鈥 in this 鈥渁rms race鈥澛犫 in athletics fee subsidies.
Which brings us to the final reality that collegiate athletics are cannibalizing the academic enterprise. Sports economist Andrew Zimbalist once noted, 鈥淓very dollar going to intercollegiate athletics is a dollar lost to academic programming.鈥 His observation was buttressed by that of Nancy Hogshead-Maker (and many others) who write of athletic spending deficits as, 鈥渕oney coming from academics to athletics, not the other way around.鈥 Thus Babcock鈥檚 鈥渞equesting help from the university鈥 merely underscores the reality of how athletic programs drain institutional, and state, treasuries.
Today鈥檚 University Athletic Entertainment and Sports Gambling Industrial Complex has made us recognize that Robert Atwell (president emeritus of the American Council on Education) was right on target back in 2001 in noting, 鈥渨hen it comes to big-time sports, many universities are in the entertainment business, not the education business.鈥 So, today鈥檚 student seeking academic services may legitimately ask, what is it that I鈥檓 paying for?
James Joy, Huntington
This July, more than 200 American climate and weather scientists were fired while working on the sixth National Climate Assessment, a process that was mandated by Congress two decades ago under a Republican president, to inform the American people every four years about the latest science and expected effects of global warming.
This deleted document includes sea level rise and regional climate expectations important to Virginia and Rockbridge County. And the website featuring the fifth Climate Assessment went dark. What should we think about this blatant attempt to dumb down the American public?
More than 97% of scientists are convinced of the reality, cause and increasingly rapid increase in average temperature and its cause, rising greenhouse gas levels. Continued unchecked, we are looking at a process that is expensive, deadly, and preventable.
Why take this important information away from students, the public, farmers, planners, businesses, people in government?
Moreover, 3,000 pages of the Center for Disease Control website have gone dark. Lost to us, the public, is research-based info on preventing chronic disease, vaccine guidelines for pregnant people, Alzheimer鈥檚 warning signs, overdose prevention, and sexually transmitted disease treatment guidelines. At least 8,000 web pages across more than a dozen U.S. government websites have been taken down.
The removal of all this important information, both medical and environmental, that we, the People paid for, will cost us all; in wasted taxes, increased medical need, personal suffering. and needless deaths.
President Donald Trump, and and our local enabler, Rep. Ben Cline, are pushing our country toward a Dark Age. Please wake up, neighbors, both Republicans and Democrats, open your eyes: we are entering a Dark Age like no other.
Fred Fevrier, Rockbridge Baths
More like this...
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