Our readers' views June 12

Gas stations can charge you a tenth of a cent a gallon? What other retailer can do that?

Business leaders can run a business into the ground, and, rather than get fired, get a big bonus and move onto the next company?

Insurance companies that you pay premiums to for years can deny a claim because "we don't think you need that"?

Single-payer health plans, favored by 75 percent of the people, are denied us?

People and agencies who are supposed to regulate are paid by the businesses they are supposed to regulate?

Social Security tax is levied only on the first $106,800 of earnings a year. Above $106,800, no tax .

These things happen because some rich men tell us that other rich men will get mad and take their money and go home to the Cayman Islands. Let them.

They can go home, and the money stays here. Not legal, you say? The Bush administration showed us how do deal with that; just make it legal. We don't have to listen to them.

Christopher Cleveland

Vancouver

Don Brunell's June 2 column claims, "Washingtonians send mixed signals on clean energy." Contrary to his assertions, we don't need more coal to meet our growing energy needs, we need less coal and increased conservation and renewable energy.

There are innumerable ways we can squeeze more conservation out of the electrical system. We should forge ahead with renewable energy sources like wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal.

Renewable energy provides good green jobs — more than twice as many jobs as fossil fuels.

Coal is not the way to go. Coal is 19th century technology. Coal-fired power plants are too dirty for today's world and they are a threat to health. They pump out sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, fly ash, and mercury. There's one coal plant in Washington, the TransAlta plant in Centralia, which spews out 9 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. CO2 contributes to climate change. The Vancouver-based Southwest Clean Air Agency is taking comments on Centralia's air permit until June 17.

Roger Cole

Vancouver

The extreme right-wing Israeli government should think twice before defiantly continuing settlements in occupied Palestinian territories. Benjamin Netanyahu, now Israel's prime minister, sabotaged the peace process in the 1990s after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. Netanyahu reversed course and approved hundreds of thousands of new settlements. He's trying to do the same again, and he doesn't care what America thinks.

Fine. Let's cut U.S. aid by a half-billion dollars each year from the current $5 billion until they make permanent peace with a Palestinian state. Israelis are committing atrocities by using the full force of their military as retaliation against a people with no army, navy or air force who shoot a few large firecrackers across the border to demonstrate continuing outrage at Israel's assault on their human and property rights.

Lest I'm accused of being "anti-Semitic," understand that I have a huge problem with all extreme right-wing fundamentalist religious organizations and the biblical interpretations and convenient excuses they use to justify their ethnocentric bigotry, be they the "chosen people," Christians or Muslims. They are the cause of all major conflict in today's world, and reading them the riot act is long overdue.

Bill Cavanaugh

Vancouver

President Obama's call for the Palestinians to renounce violence was a positive message, especially following his urging Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the PLO, to end the culture of hate in Palestinian institutions.

However, recently Abbas said, "I do not accept the Jewish State," plainly rejecting Israel and showing his disdain for any progress toward peace. Obama needs to say firmly that we expect him to tone down his aggressive speech and get serious about a solution to the violence.

Israel has agreed to implement the framework for a two-state solution. Yet despite Israel's handing Gaza over to the Palestinians four years ago, in an effort to pave the way for peace, terrorists have been allowed to fire rockets at Israel, even since Obama's inauguration.

If Iran maintains nuclear materials, there are no guarantees that these won't get into the hands of the same terrorists. This is unacceptable.

We must be firm in our discussions with Iranian President Ahmadinejad. He's made it clear that he's a Holocaust denier, calling it a "big deception." Obama needs to be resolute and state with urgency that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.

I worry Obama is not as cautious about Iran's nuclear intentions as I feel he should be.

Marsha Abelman

Beaverton, Ore.

In his June 6 letter to the editor, "Seconds do matter if you're a victim," Brad Elfring makes a determined case that the answer to violence is to arm citizens so they can "choose not to be victims." Give more people guns and there will be fewer gun-related deaths. Let's take Elfring's theory on a short test drive:

The cure for road rage, then, is not to police the highways more efficiently, but to arm drivers. So if a driver cuts you off on the freeway, you can "choose not to be a victim," and simply blow the bad guy off the road, Wild West style. Those who see handguns as the answer to societal violence simply cannot let go of their romantic glamorization of such ugliness.

"Guns don't kill people," they intone, "people kill people." And, of course, that is technically correct.

But people without ready access to guns certainly kill fewer people than those who are heavily armed.

If we wish to live in a safe, intelligent society today, we must find better ways of interaction. Carrying more guns may seem like a solution, but it's a product of ill-conceived, short-term thinking that, if followed, will have horrendous long-term consequences.

Roy Wilson

Portland

I just wanted to pass along a note of thanks to the many vendors who show up every weekend at Vancouver's Farmers Market. The number and type of vendors has helped bring a large crowd to the Esther Short Park area. Watching this group set up and take down their wares on the weekends shows a commitment to downtown Vancouver and the messy vitality that the city is striving for, especially in these touch economic types.

It is a pleasure to support local businesses and visit the market. My thanks to these vendors for their hard work and dedication.

Jane Tesner Kleiner

Vancouver