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Editor
Northern Virginia Daily

Sir:

H.R. 45 -- another czarist approach to socializing government. The bill is really about guns or no guns. If this legislation becomes law, we will all be adversely affected.

Listen to the language. The sponsor uses the term "trafficking in firearms," throughout the bill. Benign? I think not. Just listen to the evening news. "Today, law enforcement officials arrested, Bla for trafficking" in stolen cars, prostitution, illegal drugs, etc. We don't say trafficking in milk or chain saws.

Why do they want to put a criminal taint on the legal sale of firearms. The bill states that the government feels it must control the "trafficking" between dealer and citizens (not criminals) and between citizens and citizens.

The fact is that the real data about gun violence will not support legitimate efforts to modify or abolish our Second Amendment rights. The legislation also has language to pursue unwarranted searches of our homes, a protection found in the Fourth Amendment.

This legislation is giving the attorney general unprecedented latitude to decide what a violation of the act is. Insidious creep.

Strong language in the bill reflects its dangerous intent.

You're going to pay fees on guns that you have already paid taxes on. They want to retro a tax on guns you bought up to two years ago. This county has long taught hunting and shooting sports to our children.

Professor Bellesile is wrong. This act will forbid you from so much as showing a gun to a young person under the age of 18. And the criminal penalties, daunting. You will need a license to by a gun and to sell a gun. The U.S. government will have to approve every transaction.

And when you make application to the feds for your license, you will have to provide a signature releasing your medical records. And after all of this, the attorney general, at his discretion, may inspect how you store that gun. I don't know about you, but mine are stored in "my house"

Read it, folks. Call your representatives. Remind them that you vote.

JOHN R. AUSTIN
308 Dragoon Court
Cross Junction
Oct. 15, 2009

Editor
Northern Virginia Daily

Sir:

Craig D'Angelo, a police officer trying to supplement his family's income, saw an ad on TV for owning his own lucrative high-tech business and dialed the 800 number on the screen.

Jim Vitale, the telemarketer on the other end of the phone, told D'Angelo how he could hop on the cusp of a business revolution, owning and operating Internet kiosks. D'Angelo took out a second mortgage on his house, bought two machines, set up the terminals and started his business.

Vitale was making $50,000 in one month -- but not from the business he was luring D'Angelo into. He was profiting off the bogus pitches themselves, selling products to unsuspecting victims.

The two men are featured in a Web video from the Federal Trade Commission, warning consumers about business opportunity scams.

Virginia has a Business Opportunity Sales Act. The statute provides criminal penalties for violations which are enforceable by the local commonwealth's attorneys. The statute also provides for private rights of action for injured parties.

To avoid business opportunity scams:

• Resist the urge to make hurried decisions.

• Get real in-person references, not fake ones that may be in cahoots with the fraudster.

• Obtain disclosure documents and earnings claims.

• See the set-up. Don't just take someone's word for it over the phone.

• Don't just take a business rating's word for it. For instance, the company that D'Angelo was suckered into had no complaints filed against them with the Better Business Bureau.

"The best advice I can give anyone considering a business opportunity over the phone," Vitale says now, is to be quick to say "no" and slow to say "yes."

Every year thousands of people lose millions of their hard-earned dollars to con artists selling fraudulent business opportunities. If you fear you have been scammed, contact the FTC at (877) FTC-HELP or www.ftc.gov.

BILL MIMS
Attorney General
900 E. Main St.
Richmond
Oct. 1, 2009

Editor
Northern Virginia Daily

Sir:

In the article "State seeks $300 million to improve rail, remove trucks from Interstate 81" (Oct. 14 issue), no mention is made of Rail Solution's vision to remove trucks from the same Interstate but on a much broader scale.

Rail Solution is an organization of residents and communities in the I-81 corridor whose goal is the removal of not 15 percent, as the article states, but 60 percent of long-haul trucks running between Harrisburg, Pa., and Knoxville, Tenn.

To date 53 governmental organizations in the Virginia-Tennessee I-81 corridor, including Shenandoah and Warren counties, have endorsed the Rail Solution plan of action.

The goal is achievable by means of roll-on/roll-off technology that is capable of accommodating any tractor-trailer combination. Here the driver guides his vehicle onto waiting flatbed rail cars easily modified for the purpose. Once secured, the driver goes to a car at the rear of the train for relaxation and required rest, thereby removing the threat of accidents due to fatigue. At the conclusion of the journey rig and driver exit the train together.

The simple, practical and elegant beauty of this system is that, among other advantages, it is cost and time competitive with vehicles on the road and demands far less loading and unloading space than massive port and inland terminals now in use or contemplated for the future.

It also allows for shorter trains to be run at much higher speeds, especially as track improvements are made and grade crossings eliminated. And the cost of putting such a system in place is less expensive than VDOT's active plan of widening I-81 with all the delays, congestion and pollution such widening will cause.

Rail Solution is seeking federal funding for a $2 million study that will demonstrate the value of what is known as the "Steel Interstate." Rep. Rick Boucher of Virginia's 9th Congressional District has indicated his strong desire to push for such funding provided the request for it comes through the Virginia Secretary of Transportation. To date no such request has been made.

It's anyone's guess as to why this has not been forthcoming.

Walter D. Clark
Treasurer
Rail Solution
P.O. Box 2
Maurertown
Oct. 18, 2009

Editor
Northern Virginia Daily

Sir:

There's good news and bad, Gene Rigelon Good news: Worldwide depopulation is in high gear. Bad news: Americans are just as expendable as Third Worlders.

While America's puppet, the U.N., gave awards to Indian officials who "encouraged" depopulation by bulldozing shanty towns and forcing the poor to undergo sterilization if they wished to have another place to live (1984), more finesse is used here.

Here women are enticed into believing that a two-bit career in the Wacky Widget Corp. has much deeper meaning than raising the next generation of human beings. Poor men, without the responsibilities marriage imposes, just seem to wallow in perpetual adolescence. Their morals, corrupted in government schools (sex ed), mean marriage offers no special incentives anyway. Most who do marry typically break up. Result: more abortions, fewer children and messed-up kids from broken homes.

Apparently, social engineering didn't produce enough depopulation because the government resorted to fluoridating water systems. What isn't widely revealed is that fluoride is a poison derived from aluminum refining, not a cavity fighter. Isn't it rather bizarre the way officials today can predict the number of future Alzheimer's cases, for a disease that was almost unheard of 40 years ago?

Chemtrails are regularly spewed into the skies above Front Royal by the U.S. Air Force. Chemtrails contain barium salts, aluminum salts, fungi and the fibrous filaments that cause Morgellons disease. This program -- a combo weather control, population control, enemy control scheme costing trillions -- has been polluting America's air since 1999. It caused respiratory death statistics to shoot from No. 8 (1999) to almost No. 3 (2004). Impressive. It has links to cancer, asthma and heart disease too.

Finally, we get to Frankenstein: Monsanto and its genetically modified foods, which kill animals (fast). But don't worry. Monsanto's friends at the FDA assure us these Frankenfoods are fine for humans and require no warning label on the thousands of GMO products (lest people avoid them?).

So eat, drink, breathe and be merry, for tomorrow we die, Gene, guaranteed so if we turn our "health" care over to the very people who want us dead.

Sandra O'Gorman
203 Lee St.
Front Royal
Oct. 19, 2009

Editor
Northern Virginia Daily

Sir:

My thanks to Richard Kapf of Winchester for his wonderful letter on Jody Bradley (Oct. 10 issue).

You said in your letter what a lot of us have been thinking since the tragedy happened. You did an excellent job on your write-up.

BETTY F. STULTZ
3549 St. Luke Road
Woodstock
Oct. 15, 2009