Our Readers' Views, April 5

Kathie Durbin's March 29 front page Columbian story, "Cut-heavy budgets promise pain," tells of the pain to be inflicted by cuts in Washington state's budget. But she avoids mentioning the unsustainable spending that was long foreseen as bringing this situation about. Durbin reports the eagerness with which increased taxes are anticipated by lawmakers as a way to restoring these budget cuts. But she says nothing about the burden such taxes would place upon the citizenry who would be compelled to pay them while dealing with the ruinous consequences this economic downturn inflicts upon their own incomes and savings.

Durbin's omissions distort, creating the misconception that Olympia's fiscal predicament was unavoidable, that taxpayers must now surrender themselves to the inevitability of paying still more to the state, while doing with less for themselves. Hopefully, readers will fill in the blanks and draw the appropriate conclusions.

John Burke
Vancouver

The new tax increase on tobacco products is so unfair. If the government needs funding for health care for children from low-income families, it should be funded by everyone in the country, not a very select few.

Obesity causes as many, if not more, health problems than smoking and puts just as much of a drain on our health care system. If the government needs to single a select group out, why not a big whopping tax on burgers, fries and milkshakes?

And then after they've told you what you can or can't eat, will the government tell you what you can or can't watch on TV, or what books and newspapers you can or can't read?

Isn't it time for our federal government to stop interfering with our private lives and stop wasting our taxpayers' dollars in the process?

Valerie Wheeler
Vancouver

I enjoyed the March 30 story, "For the brothers who never returned." Being a Korean war vet, I plan to contribute to the fund to build the memorial inscribed, "All gave some, Some gave all." I suggest another small slab of concrete stained black in the shape of a running shoe, to be inscribed "some also ran to Canada," placed to the left of the one dedicated to the vets.

Ralph V. Peabody
Vancouver

When you consider the money that AIG received and consider how much money, in the form of bonus money, their executives received, it is not asking too much for money to be spent so that people will be able to afford good health. Taxpayer money is better spent on providing health care than for providing vacations homes, yachts and jets.

Jeff Lyles
Yacolt

Why does the reporting about the problems of Chrysler and General Motors have so little information about the United Auto Workers, some of the highest-paid unions in the country? What is the union doing to help in this situation?

Beverly Van Orden
Vancouver

Some of us know of faith-based organizations that fund homes where pregnant moms may live while carrying their babies. Fewer still know that once the babies are born, most of these young women are booted out on the street. Apparently the intent is to make sure the babies are born, no matter what the future holds for both mother and child.

A theologian friend once put a question to me. "Abortion is a moral and social quandary," he said. My friend said, "Picture some inner-city girl whose step-father has abused her and then raped her. Now we as a society say, "Have that baby!" when she is a child herself. His question? What moral right do we have to impose another generation of misery on this young mother and her family when we appear to really not care for her well-being or her child's to begin with?

Jim Comrada
Vancouver

As reported in the March 31 story, "Seattle bus ads meant to give atheists a voice," atheists are getting the word out as to how wonderful that train of thought is, by advertising inside of metropolitan Seattle buses.

The article stated that there would be quotes by Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein, among others.

I was just curious as to why these folks would have overlooked, for quotable quotes, some of the most famous and influential atheists of the 19th and 20th centuries, and according to Time magazine, in all of human history — Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin and Adolf Hitler.

Jock Demme
Vancouver

The sky is falling! Oops, maybe the sky isn't falling after all.

The media's incessant drumbeat of doom and gloom hasn't helped consumer confidence, the key ingredient needed for recovery, according to Arun Raha, the Washington chief economist quoted in The Columbian's March 28 front page story, "Glimmers may promise end of tunnel."

Since blame for the "economy in crisis," accrues to President George W. Bush and his administration, and since most acknowledge that it will take up to a year for the stimulus package to have an effect and engender a turnaround, I assume that actions taken by the former administration are starting to take hold, causing the reversal alluded to by Raha. If that is so, then surely the media will give credit where credit is due.

If you believe that, I'll sell shares in a bridge across the Columbia that I'll move in from Brooklyn.

Don Newell
Vancouver

Leonard Pitts identified 926 hate groups in his March 30 column, "926 reminders that we're not cured." We now have number 927. The African People Socialist Party (APSP), aka Uhuru, have posted the following on the Web site, www.uhurunews.com, in praise and memory of cop killer Lovelle Mixon:

"We believe the actions brother Lovelle Mixon took were in fact a direct response to a system that upholds itself and protects itself through the imposition of a police state within the African community to enforce systematic harassment, torture, death and destruction on the African community, so that it can continue to thrive."

Unbelievable that the murder of four white police can be twisted into "genocide" of African-Americans.

Michael Siebert
Vancouver