Coming up the ranks
Saturday, January 3, 2009 12:15 AM PST
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E-mail this articleJan. 3 Letters to the Editor
Coming up the ranks
Longview Youth Bowlers, our future bowlers, are coming up the ranks. Hopefully, they will all work their way up to a fun group called seniors some day.
I was very fortunate to be chosen by the owners of Triangle Bowl and the head coach to be a volunteer youth bowling coach. This is the most rewarding thing I have participated in. We have well over 100 youth bowlers that have fun and enjoy every Saturday bowling during 30-plus weeks of league bowling. The amazing thing is, they are all well-behaved almost 100 percent of the time. There is certainly a lot of love in them for their coaches and vise-versa. A few are amazingly great bowlers in all age groups; we have a few junior majors that are good enough to go professional.
The United States Bowling Congress now requires that all coaches that work with minors have background checks and wear an approval card around their neck. I think this is a great move on the part of the USBC. From my experience at the bowling alley, Longview/Kelso has some great kids, but continued love and care is needed in the fun things they do to offset the daily hardships of growing up. Remember, there is no peer pressure in sports, everyone has an equal chance given the opportunity to train and be competitive. Enjoy bowling everyone.
Ernie Gerald
Longview
The worst social policy ever
The best policy toward the down and out, by far, was that of FDR. He gave them jobs, he gave them a function, he gave them hope.
The second-worst policy toward the despised and incompetent was that of Hitler. He killed them. But at least his policy employed efficient means to a clear solution.
But the most putrid, rotten, stinking, loathsome, vile, heartless, cruel, idiotic, destructive, expensive social policy ever concocted is The American Way. If no businessman can make a buck from a situation, let it fester. We lock up Indians on reservations, blacks in ghettos, Mexicans in slave wages, homosexuals in hell, and the mentally ill, the poor, the poorly educated and the unlucky fill up The World’s Greatest Prison System.
In a 1964 eulogy to Eleanor Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson said, “She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness.” That should be our policy.
L.S. Wagle
Longview
Politics, religion are connected
Reading recent letters, I was thinking that nothing seems to inflame our passions more than politics and religion. Musing as to whether there is any connection between the two, I realized that there is. It cannot be proven that one political party is better than the other. If one was better, the other would gradually disappear, as no one would vote for it. Nor can the existence of God/Allah or whatever entity is perceived to be the head of a particular religion be proven. One starts out having faith in what others say and it can build from there.
Contrast this with the economic crisis, which is probably having more impact on our daily lives than either politics or religion but doesn’t generate the same passion. I think it is because it is clear and provable what the main causes were: people getting into unaffordable loans, bundling these mortgages into CDOs, and most of all, rating agencies giving AAA ratings to B paper.
But, when a political or religious view is challenged, a person has nothing provable to fall back on. One’s personal beliefs are being challenged and it becomes just that — very personal. And, when things get personal, they can also heat up very quickly.
Carl R. Torgerson
Longview
Had enough?
People, have you had enough of this government and crooked big shot financial skullduggery yet? Most of the government from top to bottom is out of control. The Feds are scooping billions of hundred dollar bills in the front doors of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and every other crooked financial institution, and it is going out the back door with no accountability. All of us will suffer greatly from this terrific debt that includes our kids, grandkids and probably our great great grandkids. The haves are sticking it to the worker bees big time while the drone bees pocket hug raises.
Well, there is something that we can do about it. We can start at the bottom of the good ol’ boy network and work our way up with recall. Look what our three PUD commissioners just did for the top 10 money makers at the PUD. They gave them from a low of 10.5 percent raise to 24 percent raises. This is egregious. Are we just going to grumble among ourselves about this great travesty, write a few letters to the editor, and then let it fade away?
Come on, people. Let’s start with the PUD commissioners and draw up a recall petition that will show them we mean business. We want the top ten’s wages rolled back, not increased in these very tough times for most of us.
If you agree with me, e-mail me at fun_one@comcast.net and let’s get something going.
Ken Spring
Longview
The new lie
“There are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies, and statistics” is a phrase in need of an addition. The sub-headline of Dec. 12 story about PUD raises was the latest example of this new type of lie — “Hikes necessary to compete ...”.
I’ve heard this lie used to justify every increase for every group for so long I was starting to believe it myself. Of course my city council needs a raise, how else will they compete with the rush of residents from Toutle to Olympia trying to get one of the coveted town council seats over here? Of course Brian Skeahan deserves a $15,000 raise while the rest of working Cowlitz County takes pay cuts or loses their job completely. Haven’t we all noticed the improved quality of Cowlitz PUD electricity when compared to the inferior electricity customers receive in areas where GM’s don’t get raises? (Our electoprotonorinos are brighter, or something.)
Of course, school superintendents should make three times what some of the teachers make; they do something so special none of the rest of us are capable of even understanding it, especially teachers.
A wage “hike to survive” I can understand, a wage “hike to compete” is a race to bankruptcy; a circular argument offered by the intellectually lazy for the terminally greedy.
There are four kinds of lies; lies, damned lies, statistics, and “We need a wage hike to compete.”
John Martinez Weston
Castle Rock
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