Our Readers’ Views

Taxes: You get what you pay for

Daniel Mulligan, in a Sept. 5 letter, “Scores reflect poorly on educators,” about the poor performance of many Clark County schools, said Camas must being doing something right. We are, because you get what you pay for. Our taxes and new construction impact fees are among, if not, the highest in the county.

Our nice library remains open on Mondays whereas some of the Fort Vancouver branches closed last year due to funding shortfalls. The hours will be restored next spring due to the levy that barely passed, but no thanks to Clark County residents; Klickitat and Skamania county voters pushed it through. Battle Ground voters have a history of not approving tax levy increases for libraries and parks and playing catch up when it comes to approving school levies (even when the economy was better). After three failed votes, the new library that opened last year was built by private funding and partners, replacing a 49-year-old building.

Call me a liberal Democrat, but I prefer that all taxpayers pay for services that benefit the majority of our citizens, not just schools, which I have been funding for more than 30 years, despite having no kids.

Ann Degenshein

Camas

So tired of hearing from the afraid

Reading Robert Wassman’s Sept. 7 letter, “Tolerating the intolerant is unsound,” he appears terrified that Muslims are taking over the world. Christians aren’t doing their job of pro-creating, and the child-producing Muslims are overwhelming the rest of us by numbers alone. This in turn will result in rampant barbarism that will threaten the lives of women, gays and “apostates.”

What a crock. I’m so tired of hearing from the afraid. May I remind him that we are guaranteed religious freedom in this country without the caveat “Until the other guy’s religion makes you uncomfortable.” And one might be careful about throwing too many stones. I’d ask the Native Americans and the African Americans in this country about their treatment from Christians.

OK, maybe the idea of a mosque near Ground Zero isn’t the best idea in the world, but bad ideas aren’t against any law. They have the right to build it. That is what this country is about.

We have the right to disagree, and Wassman has done that. It’s a pity that it was done in such a negative and hateful way.

Eric Bjorkman

Vancouver

Contrasting opinions interpreted

The juxtaposition of two letters in the Sept. 5 opinion page was priceless. Both letters referred to John Laird’s Aug. 29 opinion column, “News flash! Universities are liberal.”

Laird’s column (as usual) belittles non-college graduates, especially those with substantial national influence. Also, as usual, he named Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck. He curiously supported his opinion because his college-graduate daughter agreed. Wow!

The first letter, by Steve Martin, correctly identifies the elitist attitude of Laird and many college graduates, simply because they have college educations. It makes them crazy (jealous?) to observe wildly popular and successful conservatives like those mentioned above. Further, our country has been enriched by very successful people who did not attend or complete college.

The second letter, by Lloyd Widener, unintentionally validates the first letter mentioned above. Widener’s support of Laird’s elitist attitude is embarrassingly transparent. He is “surprised” that the successful talk show hosts do not have college educations. Then he incredulously wonders how Beck, a Mormon, can be an inspiration to Bible-packing Protestants and Catholics. Stay tuned, Widener.

Is there a word that combines bigot and elitist?

Ernest Badolato

Vancouver

County fails all parties involved

I read the Sept. 5 Columbian story “Permit dispute means U-Neek RV, 11 jobs will be hitting the brakes: After 9 years, county cracks down on landlord’s code violations,” dealing with the problems regarding the company’s Ridgefield site. This problem was caused more than nine years ago by parties not currently even involved. Why did the county building staff ignore this problem for so long, only to now force closure of a business and loss of jobs in the middle of a recession? The enforcers at the county who are really responsible for this disaster are certainly not acting in the best interests of everyone.

Because the county is just as culpable in this situation as the original parties by ignoring it for so long, the county should determine the absolute minimum needed to make the property usable and then contribute financially to the repairs. While the innocent should not suffer at the hands of wrongdoers (the folks who didn’t get the original permit), likewise they should not suffer at the hands of those who did such a poor job of oversight in allowing this to fester for so long. I think the statute of limitations has long since run out on this one.

Dave Krajcar

Vancouver

Rules to the blaming game

President Obama repeatedly has stated that the principal reason we’re still in our current economic and unemployment crises is because President Bush left us with a bigger economic mess than anybody thought, and it will just take more time to fix it. No president or Congress is solely at fault when our economy hits the fan; there’s always more than enough blame to go around. However, the country’s head economic bureaucrat arguably deserves as much personal blame as anyone for the financial situation we find ourselves in today.

In January 2005, Ben Bernacke was appointed Chairman of the U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers. In October 2005, he was appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve. For more than five years, he has been the one individual most responsible for setting monetary and banking policy in this country. So if our president is more interested in accuracy than playing politics, he should say President Bush, Congress and the chairman of the Federal Reserve left us with a bigger economic mess than we thought, and that same Congress and chairman are still with us. Will you ever read that more correct statement? Probably only here.

Michael B. Lumbard

Washougal

Residents want cleaner air

I want to say thank you to Joanne Fitzwilson for her Sept. 6 letter, “Downtown odors are pervasive,” about the foul odors coming from the Albina facility in west Vancouver. I spent weeks searching the web for the right person to complain to, and after being pushed off to a number of people, I found the right person. Gerry Strawn of the Southwest Clean Air Agency is the man you need to contact. You can e-mail gerry@swcleanair.org.

Pat Coleman

Vancouver