Verbal abuse shouldn’t be tolerated
Vancouver City Council member Jeanne Harris needs to be removed from office. Harris’ imperious outbursts over her 14 years in office disgraces her position and her constituents. She screams at citizens, barks orders at the mayor and hurls streams of insults at another council member.
On Sept. 13, for the second time in less then three months, Harris trampled citizens’ First Amendment right to speak. Last summer, Bart Hansen and Harris tried to impede our right to assemble peaceably and to speak freely. Now, she says citizens should be gaveled down because they “keep repeating the same message.” This is the prevailing attitude from Harris to President Obama. It is this arrogant attitude that precipitated the first revolution and now propels the Tea Party (education) movement.
I strongly urge the city council to demand Harris’ resignation. No civil servant has the right to verbally abuse citizens in public.
Debbie Peterson
Vancouver
Anti-tolls speaker was out of line
Well, I watched the YouTube clip regarding Jeannie Harris at the City Council meeting. First question would be — who videotaped this discussion and why? Ethics involved? I don’t know Harris, don’t even know which party she belongs to or her opinions. The “speaker” David Madore was out of line. The meeting was for city business, not tolls for a possible bridge. State Rep. Jim Moeller had it right. He didn’t agree with her comments, but unethical? No.
Neil Rylander
Vancouver
Republicans misinform again & again
Well, here it is election time and the Republican Party is busy spreading misinformation, which seems to be their specialty. They are currently screaming about the deficit, and they would like us to believe that they would do a better job managing the budget. They forget to mention that in the last 30 years the only president to balance the budget and actually run a surplus was Bill Clinton — and he was a Democrat. It took Clinton four years to clean up Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush’s mess so I think it would be fair to give President Obama a little more time to clean up George W. Bush’s mess.
Stephen Corbin
Vancouver
Democrats brought on own troubles
Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat got tough on spending. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. And where was Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as president to complete FY 2008.
If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Obama. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.
Let’s not forget that President Bush tried to pass a bill to reform Fannie and Freddie only to have that bill blocked. The Bush administration recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Kevin Baldwin
Vancouver
Tend to finding facts
“To treat your facts with imagination is one thing; to imagine your facts is quite another.” — John Burroughs. I first thought this is a message for Fox News. Actually, it is a message for all of us. Let’s be alert to information that doesn’t sound quite right, and maybe even more importantly, to information that does sound right. To be informed voters, we must check sources for the whole truth. Unchecked partial truths can be devastatingly influential.
I recently learned a new word: meme. A meme is a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition. We can’t fall into the temptation to dumb down after an exhausting day; the future of our country depends on our getting it right. Check out http://factcheck.org/ or http://snopes.com/ or http://www.politifact.com/ or http://www.whitehouse.gov/ for quotes from the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Bible — go to the source. My thoughts to those good people who are meme starters: forgive them, they know not what they do.
Sue Miller
Vancouver
Fairness should play in sentencing
Washington law categorizes crime according to its severity. There are 16 levels of crime. Second-degree robbery and second-degree assault are considered level four, in the lowest quadrant of seriousness. These offenses are the most common triggers for life imprisonment without the possibility of parole under our three strikes law. Normally, these crimes would carry a sentence of six months to six years in prison. Under three strikes, they carry a sentence of life without parole. Some 70 percent of those sentenced to life under this law have been convicted of one or more of these low-level crimes.
Justice and public safety require that all people are held accountable for their wrongdoing. Respect for the law keeps people and communities safe and makes our society livable. Our laws must uphold respect for the law. But putting people in prison for life for lower seriousness of crimes is a direct assault on lawfulness, on our values of fair play and common sense, and on our safety. The sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole as imposed for lesser crimes should be repealed.
Sandra Gadberry
Vancouver
‘The Truth’ has many versions
In absorbing the daily news, in particular the religion section, I become increasingly concerned for our survival. This is because groups known as religions each have “The Truth.” This is usually recorded in a book supposedly from a supernatural being (Zeus, Allah, God, etc.). To these groups, all nonmembers are infidels and are considered less than human. Also, most religions consider it wrong to kill a human, but often not wrong to kill a nonbeliever.
I am concerned because each group with “The Truth” wishes to impose this truth, often by force, on all others who have their own version. The end result is the constantly escalating series of wars and genocides that have troubled human history. I can only hope that some day, before we destroy ourselves, we will learn to search for knowledge together rather than imposing our own version of “The Truth” on all others. I’m not optimistic.
Garry Layton
Camas
