Our Readers’ Views, Feb. 3

State contracts can be renegotiated

In a Jan. 18 letter, “State employees accepted less,” Steve McGillis accuses the Evergreen Freedom Foundation of a “glaring falsehood” about our recommendation to open state employee contracts for renegotiation. As general counsel for EFF, I can attest the law allows such a measure. RCW 41.80.010(6) says state employee contracts can be reopened and modified if “a significant revenue shortfall occurs resulting in reduced appropriations.” With the state’s gloomy budget situation, and the strong likelihood the financial picture will worsen, the Legislature and the governor need to evaluate all options for trimming the budget. It’s not great news for state workers, but neither is it a falsehood.

Michael Reitz

Olympia

States’ rights laboratory is twisted

Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, reminds me of Doctor Frankenstein, and his Tea Party friends are his weak-minded lab assistants. The Jan. 24 story “Orcutt co-sponsors states’ rights legislation,” about Orcutt’s fascination with states’ rights legislation, should send a shudder through every one of his constituents. We need to shut this twisted laboratory down now.

“States’ rights” were invoked by the Confederacy as a rationale to continue enslaving people during the Civil War. One hundred years later, during the Civil Rights struggle, it took strong federal action to overcome local corruption and institutional racism. We don’t see police officers beating people trying to vote thanks to federal intervention in state affairs. The water and air you breathe are far cleaner than 50 years ago because of strong federal regulatory power. Too bad George W. Bush’s financial regulators were so cozy with big banks. We might have avoided today’s devastating recession if they’d done their job.

The states’ rights ideas Orcutt is promoting are stitched together from the rotting corpses of failed Bush-era notions of limited government. If enacted, they would run out of control, just like Frankenstein’s monster. Orcutt needs to spend less time looking over the shoulder of the feds and spend his energy improving our state’s schools, roads, prisons, and social services.

Warren Westerberg

Vancouver

‘Politics of No’ can be desirable

With the passing of another year and three political cartoons later on the opinion page, Republicans are again portrayed as the party of “No.” I’m reminded of an evening 39 years ago, sitting in a movie theater watching “Yellow Submarine.” Animated versions of the Beatles helped liberate a place called Pepperland from invaders called Blue Meanies. In the world of the Meanies, even an affirmative response is expressed as “No.” Only by exorcising these purveyors of “No” could Pepperland be free to be the land of “Yes.” Even then, as a high school student, I sensed a kind of indoctrination by that era’s pop culture.

In politics four decades later, any opposition to the current party in power is cast as the party of “No.” The suggestion is that conservatives are obstructionists who would fare better by shifting their beliefs to be more accommodating. When a political party starts down that road, it loses its distinctiveness, political diversity is sacrificed and power becomes too concentrated. Whether political opposition is called “politics of No” or “gridlock,” it can be desirable if it stops a runaway government. Watch “Yellow Submarine,” but keep in mind there are those who will say that in 2010, the Meanies are red.

Dwaine Bowden

Vancouver

Improve service on existing routes

C-Tran is considering a 3-cent tax on each $10 purchase to improve the bus services and light rail. While I’m all for having light rail, I think they should improve the bus routes that they have now, especially since they are thinking about having rapid service on Mill Plain, a bus leaving every 10 minutes. They tried having a bus every 15 minutes on the Mill Plain route and that didn’t work. It only frustrated the drivers and riders.

They have eliminated several stops on the Mill Plain route, my stop included. Right now the Mill Plain bus runs every 20 minutes during the week and on Saturdays. I would like to see it run every 20 minutes on Sundays until 5 p.m. I guess if they want to make a 10-minute bus service work, they will have to eliminate more bus stops. C-Tran has changed the route so that the people who live on Plomondon Street have bus service once an hour instead of every 15 minutes, no service on the weekends, plus the bus stops running well before 11 p.m. The route also does a lot of doubling up with the other bus routes servicing the Fourth Plain and Andresen routes instead of continuing onto Mill Plain.

Debbie Simonds

Vancouver

Bad decisions still hold back fishing

Rules for sportsmen will not save our managed-to-depletion resources. Old-time sportsmen feel the losses and the sensationalized perceptions of today by being yesterday’s participants. We fished 40 or more years ago. Then government appointed cronies to manage the fisheries. Few can really say they fished on their own; They relied on science as their friend for self-worth with power companies, federal groups and government.

I will give them a grade of F for what they have not done while spending our money. Still in place are harvest practices that create extinctions. Now the sportsmen’s rule book thickens, and our hatcheries become pet projects on “someone else’s dime” by those who can’t feel our loss as they tell us how good “bad” is. “Good” is not the on-land combat zone found at our hatchery fishing.

The catch is far from the old days. Good decisions for salmon have never been implemented, so the same results can be expected.

Larry R. Carey

VANCOUVER

Government should be shrinking

If the number of people working in the public sector (with wages, benefits and retirement funded by taxes) keeps growing, and the number of people working in the private sector (creating wealth that is taxed to support the public sector) keeps shrinking, where will funding for the public sector come from in the short and long term? How much money does China have, anyway?

City, county, state and federal leaders keep telling us that, unless we are willing to pay top dollar for public sector employees, they just can’t attract quality employees. Very true, I’m sure, but that tells me governments are doing far too many things, most of which should be contracted out to the competitive private sector at a lower cost. Many facilities, activities and services our governments deem necessary are anything but necessary, unless one considers growing government “necessary.”

Jock Demme

VANCOUVER