Gain insight from an iconic crossing
Regarding the Columbia River Crossing: I recommend engineers, politicians, and citizens involved read “The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge” by David McCullough. That bridge took 14 years of planning and construction (1869-1883) and cost $15 million. The current planning of our bridge has taken six years and cost $97.8 million.
The Brooklyn Bridge is of iconic design and has lasted 127 years. It is recognized worldwide. It claimed the life of builder John A. Roebling and the health of his son Washington Roebling. McCullough details the genius, invention, stamina and determination involved; also the engineering problems, graft, greed, politics, and controversy.
Note that over 100 years ago, Roebling included beauty, light rail and a pedestrian walkway. By reading this record, those involved with the building of the Columbia River Crossing may gain inspiration, insight, and fortitude for the task at hand. I hope I live to drive, ride, and stroll across it.
Linell Arbuckle
Vancouver
Homeless deserve respect
A complaint I hear from working-class poor and homeless people is that they feel like they are invisible in society. Our community must open our eyes to the plight of the homeless.
The working-class poor have blue-collar jobs of service, whether as a restaurant worker, a maid, a migrant agricultural worker, etc. Often, these people go unappreciated in their service to the community. Because of this, they can sense they are invisible and unacknowledged.
These people did not imagine themselves, as they grew up, becoming homeless in the future. With today’s economy, the homeless are more likely to have had jobs and to have been productive community members at one time. The homeless these days are more apt to be women and children, not just the drug abuser or mentally ill who roam the streets. Admittedly, it is easier to turn the cheek and pretend we don’t see them when we come up to certain stop signs and lights in town. Change is needed.
The working poor and homeless are not “less than.” They have families, emotions, and needs just like us. We are the same — created in God’s image. Simply put, let us respect each other and appreciate each other.
Kama Higbee
Battle Ground
Liberals are to blame
I cannot understand why politicians don’t get it. Americans are fed up with elected officials, at all levels, their lack of understanding of our needs as well as their self-serving and agenda-driven governance. I don’t care what party you belong to, Americans are being raped of our rights and freedoms by a group of liberal extremists who have their own agenda and want no interference with their goals.
We have elected people with agendas of frightening proportions. They do not follow the Constitution as intended by our Founders, and their sole interests lie in their quest for power and political dominance. By what right do these elected officials call their own rules? Our Democratic-advantage Congress has gone too far off center.
Question: Where do the people figure into all of this? Answer: We don’t. We are stunned at the takeover of our economy, health care, banking and free market capitalist system. The past 18 months of the Obama administration have brought nothing but catastrophe. This country is being brought down deliberately by radical leftists who have taken over the Democratic Party and will stop at nothing until they render our Constitution ineffective. All one has to do is watch as our free choices are erased, one by one.
We have the opportunity to take back our Republic in November — know your candidates’ positions.
Stephanie Turlay
Vancouver
Republicans are to blame
A year or so ago, Moody’s Corporation, not exactly a liberal outfit, analyzed various ideas put forth to help the economy. Tax cuts ranked low, while unemployment insurance and aid to the states ranked high. It seems that helping the poor and middle class pumped more money faster into the economy than helping the rich.
For months, we witnessed the spectacle of the Republicans holding up the extension of unemployment compensation, while Democrats tried to break the log jam. The Republicans’ excuse was that they wanted the unemployment compensation to be paid for somewhere else in the budget. Never mind that George W. Bush and the Republicans ran up a horrendous deficit through unpaid war and unwarranted tax cuts, mainly on higher incomes. Then, through deregulation, they crashed the economy. Now, after attempting to gravely harm those unemployed because of the Bush recession, the Republicans want to renew the gift to the rich — the Bush tax cuts. These, they say, don’t have to be paid for.
Conclusion: anyone with an income less than half a million dollars who votes Republican is indeed foolish.
Gretchen Starke
Vancouver
Legislators: Fund all schools equally
Most people would agree that the best way out of poverty for a child is to receive a good education. Despite this popular belief, children in poverty neighborhoods attend some of the worst schools. This is because of the unequal distribution of fiscal resources in the education system. It is confusing to expect equivalent achievement with dissimilar funds. Students in poverty schools do not receive the quality of education as those from wealthy schools.
In poverty schools, inadequate instruction is more common. In his book “Savage Inequalities,” Jonathan Kozol speaks of three ways that poverty-school children lack adequate instruction. The first way is unqualified or underqualified teachers. This is because such school districts have trouble keeping teachers, which leads to the next two problems. These are the stings of substitutes and large class sizes.
If an education is the key to success, how are poverty children to succeed? These children deserve adequate teachers just as much as any wealthy student. State legislators must pass laws requiring all schools to be equally funded.
Ellie Golliher
Battle Ground
How far do we go on mosques?
I couldn’t agree more with Wendy Langmade’s July 29 letter, “The whole truth about mosques.” I think that she makes a valid point about God’s peoples building monuments of faith after victories. My only concern is that she did not go far enough.
Just as a mosque should not be built so close to the destroyed trade center in New York, I think that a Christian church should not be built anywhere near the bombed federal building in Oklahoma City lest it be a monument to the victory of the Christian terrorist Timothy McVeigh.
Anthony Dunn
Vancouver
