Support library service
Saturday, October 25, 2008 1:18 AM PDT
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E-mail this articleOct. 25 Letters to the Editor
Support library service
I am writing to encourage the citizens of the city of Castle Rock to support our library service for another year. What a privilege it is to have access to books, magazines, books on tape and videos, as well as the use of several computers.
How blessed we are to have librarian Vicki Sealander striving to help and encourage anyone who comes through the door. Though she works with a minimal budget, she has become a master at stretching that budget and of finding ways to acquire books and services with little or no cost.
On any given day our library is well used — students looking up study materials, each computer station occupied by young or old, others selecting books to check out. All this is possible only if we have the operating budget as provided by the Castle Rock library levy.
Carole Hubbard
Castle Rock
Got bus?
I’m supporting Proposition No. 1 because I believe it is an important piece of a healthy community to provide citizens with a reliable public transportation system.
Critics of Proposition No. 1, like Ken Spring, argue that government services should be self-sustaining. By Spring’s logic, local government should charge a fee to citizens for using city park trails and fees for the use of public restrooms.
I realize that these are tough times for most Cowlitz County citizens and proposing a sales tax increase is going to be a tough sell. Despite the current economic downturn, I believe a majority of Cowlitz County voters will see the value in a public transportation upgrade. Two cents for every $10 spent at local businesses is not asking much for a reliable public transportation system. That’s why I’m voting “yes” on Proposition No. 1 (got bus).
Chuck Wallace
Longview City Council
McCain the best Christian?
Norma Peters’ Oct. 20 letter equates a vote for Barack Obama as anti-Christian, using Obama’s pro-choice views as justification. It seems to me a vote for Republicans is anti-Christian as well.
Let’s review from the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Hmm, what did George Bush do when he used WMDs as a justification for this travesty of a war?
What’s that? Bush isn’t running? OK, how about “Thou shalt not steal?” John McCain pals around with thieves.
He was a member of the Keating Five and associated with the Lincoln Savings and Loan debacle that bilked investors out of millions. McCain received hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions from Charles Keating, Lincoln’s CEO. They took frequent jaunts to the Bahamas on Keating’s private jet. Eventually, Keating did prison time. McCain got off with a Senate Ethics Committee reprimand.
How about adultery? Didn’t McCain leave his first wife, Carol, for his current wife, Cindy?
I’m not particularly religious. But McCain doesn’t come close to holding moral high ground on Obama.
Diane Grumbois
Longview
Patriotic taxpayers
If paying higher taxes is so patriotic, as Joe Biden recently suggested, then why are he and Barack Obama promising to cut taxes for 95 percent of so many otherwise patriotic Americans?
Biden’s logic seems to suggests that these patriotic taxpayers will be transformed into unpatriotic freeloaders if Obama’s tax-cutting plan is implemented. Surely Biden and Obama have no desire to create or cultivate a constituency of unpatriotic freeloaders.
Pat McCarty
Woodland
Dino is the man
Recent polls indicate that 84 percent of Americans disagree with any policy that calls for redistribution of wealth. Redistribution of wealth, or as Barack Obama calls it, “spreading the wealth around,” is a cornerstone of Marxism and socialism.
Karl Marx said, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
This nation was built upon aspirations of achieving a better life through the freedom and opportunity provided to our people by the United States Constitution. That is real hope. The government is only to insure that we all have the same opportunity to achieve and is not supposed to decide who wins and who loses by insuring, providing or distributing wealth and prosperity.
Gov. Chris Gregoire and Obama believe in strength through government, while deep down inside most Americans still believe that real strength and hope resides in the American people.
I am so frustrated with both parties in Washington, D.C., and nearly all members of Congress, and so it is reluctantly that I will vote for John McCain. But Dino Rossi is the clear choice when it comes to a voice of real leadership that represents the people of Cowlitz County.
If hope and change is the theme, then Dino is the man.
Shannon Barnett
Kalama
Obama is best man for the job
Two important things people seem to forget about Barack Obama is his intelligence and his calm, level-headed demeanor.
Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard (while being active as president of the Harvard Law Review) in the class of 1991. John McCain, on the other hand, graduated 894 out of 899 in the class of 1958 from the Naval Academy.
Obama shows his great intellect and decision-making skills by his choices of advisors and wise management of his campaign finances.
McCain, on the other hand, has staff people like Sen. Phil Graham (who will probably go down in history as the person most negatively involved in our economic crisis, as the champion of deregulation).
We have had the unintelligent, good ole boy president for the last eight years with his inept cronies that started a war just for them to get richer (with the loss of thousands of innocent lives). And how has that worked for us?
So, vote intelligently with good sound reasoning for the best man for the job, Barack Obama. For the truth and facts about both men go to factcheck.org.
Wanda K. Wines
Kelso
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