Talk Back

Readers respond to Work & Money and Business section coverage

N.C. needs green jobs

John Murawski in his recent article, "Planting green jobs" (Work&Money, Sept. 28), nailed it when he pointed out that generating a significant number of green jobs can only be done if Congress takes the lead to pass "laws to restrict greenhouse gas emissions."

Our state's unemployment rate was 6.9 percent in August. Murawski's article mentioned the Center for American Progress' recent report outlining a $100 billion green economic recovery program to strengthen the U.S. economy by creating 2 million new jobs over the next two years. That translates to more than 62,000 potential new jobs for North Carolina families and a healthy reduction of the unemployment rate.

As our country faces a severe economic crisis, it is easy to lose focus in the fight against global warming and the fact that we need urgent action. Climbing out of this economic disaster through investments in clean energy provides our families more options by helping eradicate global warming and providing economic growth.

The development of clean energy will only strengthen our economy, put people back to work and help preserve our planet. We need Congress to lead us out of our energy crisis and our economic woes by investing in renewable sources of energy.

Dan Crawford

Director of Governmental Relations, Conservation Council of NC

Raleigh

What about wind?

I am struck by several things in the noise about drilling off the coast. One of these is the lack of discussion of wind power in the sea off Hatteras, Lookout and Cape Fear. The wind resources in these areas are excellent. Development of these resources would be clean and would provide lots of local jobs in building and servicing the towers, constructing and maintaining the transmission lines. And there would be no big negative effect on fishing or whatever. I have sailed past big wind farms off Sweden and Denmark. Pretty impressive.

The second item is how many jobs, exactly, would drilling provide locally. The oil drilling industry uses big rigs, mostly made in Korea or somewhere besides the U.S. Workers are flown in for stints of six weeks or so. They are not necessarily local. No doubt there would be service boats and helicopters based on the coast, but how much real work? It would be interesting and useful to have some information on the actual impacts of oil drilling and wind.

Bruce Carter

New Bern

Only docs should own these stocks

I appreciated your article ("Wake medical group sold," Triangle&Co., Oct. 2) concerning the aquisition of Raleigh's only hospital anesthesiology medical group by Pediatrix, a publicly held corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

As a licensed North Carolina physician and a licensed North Carolina attorney, I am puzzled that this is permitted by statutes and medical board regulations, which are designed to dramatically limit the corporate practice of medicine. The N.C. General Statutes indicate that capital stock in a professional corporation may only be owned by a licensee in the relevant profession. Therefore, an owner of stock in a medical practice in North Carolina must be a licensed North Carolina physician. The purpose of this statutory requirement is to prevent control of the practice of medicine by non-medical corporate executives.

Even if Pediatrix maintains a separate subsidiary anesthesiology practice organization, the ownership of the parent company by anyone who wishes to buy stock would appear to violate the law.

George T. Bartels

Cary