City’s priorities are skewed
If one meanders through the highways and byways of the Pacific Northwest, you begin to see a glaring trend as you pass from town to town. The nicest, most prominent building(s) in each town is a state or federal building. In fact, they are monuments. In each of these monuments reside, for the most part, employees who are typically the highest paid, with the best job security and the best benefits and guaranteed retirement of anyone in the general population of those towns. Now Vancouver has its monument.
The frightening part of the Nov. 11 Columbian story “PeaceHealth wants its HQ here” is the sense of entitlement and contempt that Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt and City Manager Eric Holmes display. While some may believe the city will save $1 million a year with this purchase, I certainly don’t. The city could offer the building to PeaceHealth for $9.1 million more than the city bought it for, erase the budget deficit and create new jobs. It’s a no-brainer.
City Hall needs to stay put and live within its means until greener pastures are arrived at, just like the rest of us. This also might be the sentiment both The Fisher Group and PeaceHealth are looking for to help them make their final decisions to move here.
Joe Adkisson
Camas
Get mad, and buy U.S. products
According to the latest figures, there were 151,000 jobs created in the month of October. Big deal. Most reports neglect to tell you that these jobs were in the retail sector, probably due to the upcoming holidays, the temp service sector, which pays no benefits, and the restaurant and bar sector, which is minimum wage and in most cases no benefits and most are limited to fewer than 40 hours, and last, the education and health sector, which is always there.
The reports also neglect to tell you that most of the new private-sector jobs in construction (road repair, sewer installation, etc.) are a result of the stimulus money handed out to state and local governments. As soon as that’s gone, so are the jobs (unless there is a war to bail them out as happened with FDR).
Until the politicians, Democrats and Republicans, quit allowing our manufacturing jobs to be sent overseas, and our corporations and stockholders cease to be so greedy, and until the American public refuses to buy anything not made in the USA, we will continue to be in trouble and it will get worse.
Fred McNeeley
Vancouver
Cost of care is parental responsibility
Regarding Patrick Sterling’s Nov. 11 letter, “Child care should be subsidized,” people have protested this country turning into a socialist type of government. But yet, some of the same people who are protesting think the government should take care of them. Remember what John F. Kennedy said, “Ask not of what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
Everyone knows having a child, even before the birth of a child, is a costly venture. The answer is simple: If you can’t afford them don’t have them.
Norman L. Wilcox
Vancouver
There’s hope in our own actions
Totally disgusted and discouraged by the half-truths in both the Democratic and Republican campaign advertising, I went for a walk during the week of elections.
First, I saw a man not only picking up leaves on his side of the street, but also on his neighbor’s. Then I saw a man take a hoe and shovel from the trunk of his car to free a street drain of leaves, rocks and needles that would have created a small lake on Garrison Street when it next rains. And then, there was a hiker picking up litter at David Douglas Park.
Finally, real citizenship in action.
I felt a lot better.
Florence Wager
Vancouver
Disconnect from constant calling
Reading her Nov. 15 letter, “Republicans clearly defined,” I’m curious where Lana Filippov bought the telephone filter that apparently filtered out all incoming campaign calls from Democratic candidates. I too grew very tired of the constant calls, but my calls clearly demonstrated that Democrats, as well as Republicans, were guilty of these intrusive calls. Based on the tone of her letter, I sense that Filippov was inclined to vote a straight Democratic ticket long before she received her first call. A few phone calls will not, by themselves, create the intense anti-Republican emotions reflected in her letter. Perhaps the intensity of her anger is more a result of the outcome of the election.
I would also like to know where she purchased the blinders she is apparently wearing that allow her to believe Democrats did not employ exactly the same tactics she is accusing Republicans of using. It is time to realize that politics is no longer about doing something for the people; it is about getting elected.
If we are lucky, future candidates will realize that most voters, like myself, simply hit the disconnect button as soon as it is apparent the call is campaign related and not waste their money.
Bob Richman
Vancouver
Change is messy
Americans must wake up to the possibility of 10 hard years, as Japan recently endured. Republicans of 1928 believed America had reached a permanent plateau of prosperity, but the economy crashed in 1929. Not until 1939 did the number of jobs equal numbers of 1929.
Presidents Bush and Obama have stabilized the banking system; messy but essential. Obama has, so far, stabilized schools, state and local governments and his infrastructure projects have preserved or created 3 million jobs. Yet 8 million jobs were lost. According to economist Robert Reich, Obama would have to spend three times what he spent to recover all of the lost jobs.
Instead, Republicans demand a balanced budget that, according to Keynesian economics theory, is exactly the opposite of what is needed to end a depression. Heeding the battle cry “balance the budget,” many congressional districts switched from Democratic to Republican on Election Day. Two days later, the Republican leadership decided where to make the first budget cuts.
Bring the boys home from Iraq and Afghanistan? Cut military spending? Retract the tax cuts on the rich? No. Instead, cut employment benefits for the unemployed, the worst victims of the recession. Is this what you wanted to vote for, America?
Crystal Littlejohn
Longview
Take a cut out of capitalism
I agree with Jim Postma’s Nov. 12 letter that the “Imbalance of wealth is an outrage.” We need to take all the monies from socialist Democrats like financier George Soros, who has made his money by destroying other currencies, and give it to the poorer people. I will take a million or two myself.
Roy Rapier
Vancouver
