Solution: a nonresident income tax

We have many people living in Washington but working in Oregon. They pay the Oregon state income tax, which helps support the infrastructure they use (roads, police, fire, etc.) while they work there. However, while there are fewer who live in Oregon and work in Washington, those people pay nothing to support the infrastructure here in Washington. We Washington taxpayers end up subsidizing them.

I propose we institute a nonresident income tax. (Olympia, don’t get any weird ideas — key word is “nonresident”). There would be no impact on the Oregon folks who work in Washington because they can deduct our nonresident tax from their state income tax. To make sure we maximize the amount available, we need this to be a strictly flat tax (say 5 percent) that can be collected by payroll withholding. This way we would not create a bureaucracy to administer the program. We could divide the net proceeds from this into thirds — one-third for the state, one-third for the counties involved and one-third for the cities involved. Keep it simple and limited and I believe it would be successful.

Dave Krajcar

Vancouver

Civil liberties endangered

Allegedly in response to recent killings of Lakewood police officers by an insane man with a handgun, state legislators have introduced a few dangerous bills that would drastically expand the ability of Washington state judges to deny bail to people accused of offenses carrying a mandatory life sentence upon conviction. HJR 4220 and SJR 8218 endanger civil liberties in a way that would not have protected the Lakewood officers, but will do much to endanger citizens falsely accused or suspected of crimes.

As Benjamin Franklin noted in 1775, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Current laws on bail exist to allow those accused of crimes to preserve their property, care for their families and assist in their own defense. Nothing in either of the proposed bills would have helped in any way to stop the Lakewood shootings, and it is freedom-crushing madness to think otherwise.

I encourage anyone who has ever been falsely accused of anything (or known someone who has) to oppose HJR 4220, SJR 8218 and any similar bill proposed to the state Legislature.

Rory Bowman

Vancouver

Reinvent business to save building

So the Camas post office will be closed at the end of this year (Feb. 23 Columbian story “Camas post office’s fate sealed,”). Its fate is sealed? Not so fast! I believe that we — not the U.S. Postal Service — are the master of our city’s fate.

How? We can buy the historic building from the Postal Service and start our own mailing service with the Postal Service’s rivals, UPS and FedEx. We can keep those mail boxes and rent to our residents just like what they did in the past. We can even buy stamps from them and resell to our customers. It will be a profitable business since we operate independently without sticking to federal’s high pay scales. It will be a sound investment for Camas and a backfire for the U.S. Postal Service.

Rusty Wales

Camas

Fickle consumers easily influenced

The transposition of an instant of exception to the framework of a general reality has often proved to be flawed and difficult. The media now feasting, in a frenzy, on Toyota is effecting a distortion of a fact immutable in character and confirmed by 50 years of history: Cars built by Toyota are overwhelmingly sound and innovative in design, efficient in performance and have proved to be tough, reliable and lasting. They are now, as has every other car brand in the past, encountering dysfunction in thousands of their cars, to which they now are tending with commendable alacrity and speed.

The fickle nature of American consumers, steeped in deep hypocrisy, and inherently equipped with the shallow loyalty of an audience in a tennis match, helped this foreign brand eclipse even the largest U.S. automaker, shouting loud to buy American from the driver seat of their Toyota, Honda and Mercedes. They now, like sheep, rush to another part of the meadow, as dictated by the invisible shepherd, just as they’ve done before, and as they will again. Round and round these advocates of independence go, blind to the leash around their neck, being led from trough to fattening trough by the prevailing winds of economic opportunity.

Michael E. White

Brush Prairie

Stimulus is helping constituents

Let me get this straight. First U.S. Reps. Dave Reichert and Doc Hastings, R-Wash., vote against extending unemployment benefits and now they say it isn’t enough. Hypocrisy knows no bounds. Where would their constituency be without the stimulus?

Thomas R. Carney

Vancouver

Different strategy suggested for 2012

Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh for 2012, yes indeed, that’s the answer to all that ails the good ol’ U. S. of A. After all, actors, aristocrats, cowboys, fearless fighter pilots protecting our ever-dangerous domestic airspace and, yes, even intellects and the highly competent have tried and failed to bring peace, prosperity and happiness to every (legal and illegal alike) citizen residing under the Star and Stripes. After 223 years and 44 attempts, I say we change tactics, reach deep, real deep, into the slimy odiferous political barrel of nasty goo, scraping the sticky ooze from the bottom and give it try.

Seriously, Sarah and Rush have re-defined the reasonable, eschewed all logic and know the value of pretense and casting aside all morals, ethics and intellect in the single-minded critical drive toward the right intolerant Right. Four years of death squads, xenophobia and uber-hypocrisy might provide a valuable perspective to a monumentally ignorant electorate.

Jim Armstrong

Vancouver

Palin had reasons to quit

In response to Thomas Martin’s Feb. 16 letter labeling Sarah Palin as “Miss Quitter,” perhaps he should have looked into the reasons for her resignation as Alaska’s governor a little more before assigning her a derogatory label. If he had read her book, he would realize the main reason for her resignation was to save the state countless hours of wasted time, energy and money responding to the flood of frivolous charges and lawsuits leveled against her and her administration, all of which were eventually dismissed as groundless.

She may not be ready to be president, yet, but one thing is certain — she has demonstrated more common sense and practical ideas for solving the nation’s economic woes than have Obama and all his czars and advisors put together.

Don Plasterer

Vancouver

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