YOUR VIEWS: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Tim Eyman has exploited anti-government sentiment

I find it ironic that Tim Eyman's new position with his initiative-pushing organization is "offensive coordinator." Some of us have found him offensive since he entered the public arena.

It is bad enough he was skimming money from the people he claimed to represent as a dedicated "volunteer."

Far worse are the lies he and his organization persistently tell about the initiatives they propose and the impacts they will have.

Eyman and his ilk have exploited anti-government sentiment in this state and abused the initiative system so that they can pay obscenely low car tab fees, while others just have to learn to do without public transportation to get them to work. I believe if you can afford to own a Lexus, you can well afford to pay proportionate taxes on it, especially in a state with no income tax.

Eyman and company ridicule our elected officials, while purporting to be champions of the little guy. In reality, all that he and his supporters care about is the bottom line -- "How much money can I keep for myself?" -- the public good be damned.

We have a representative democracy for a reason: Running a government, and making hard choices about revenue sources and funding priorities requires a certain level of understanding about the economic big picture and a commitment to public service. Eyman's crew has neither.

As for the people who donated money to Eyman and still support his irresponsible cause? "A fool and his money are soon parted."

Evonne Hedgepeth, Olympia

Canadians cut taxes to stimulate the economy

Two articles in a Vancouver, B.C., newspaper highlighted differences in approaches to the current recession by Canadian and Washington state governments.

The first article detailed how British Columbia's leadership plans for massive cuts in government employment, services, and tax rates, with a goal of a balanced budget within three years. Government representatives stated that they "cannot provide all the services the public is used to," and that taxes must be cut to stimulate the economy.

On the national level, the Prime Minister's office has (for the first time) admitted that high taxes are largely responsible for a "brain drain" in Canada and a decrease in productivity compared to the United States.

They stated that due to the high tax rates and heavy government regulation, talented individuals and companies relocated to the United States, resulting in a decade of slow growth.

In response, the government plans to cut tax rates to encourage growth.

While Gov. Gary Locke has appeared to be willing to use the Canadian health system as a model for Washington state, he does not appear willing to follow their lead in regard to our state economy. He has only modestly reduced the number of government workers, has not proposed any large scale cuts in services, and proposes to increase taxes.

Surely, if even benign socialist governments have apparently repudiated Locke's financial approach, we should pause before embracing it.

Frederic Kuhlmann, Rainier

Duplicated ballots are marked very carefully

This is in response to the valentine I received from Shawn Newman via a Feb. 14th letter to The Olympian.

He observed that under Washington law election officials can "... duplicate or enhance your ballot without notifying you ..."

This is true. Unfortunately, voters sometimes mark their ballots in a way that cannot be read by the ballot counting machines without human intervention.

However, if we were to require election officials to notify each voter before duplicating or enhancing a mismarked ballot, election officials would obviously have to know the identity of the voter. In short, they would have to compromise the secrecy of the ballot. I absolutely oppose violating that basic tenet of our democratic system.

This duplication or enhancement is done by two election staff members who must agree as to the voter's intent on any duplicated or enhanced vote, and who must do their job in such a way that the original marks or the original ballot can be tied back to the enhanced or duplicated ballot if necessary. Political party observers are authorized to oversee the process.

The only alternative to this practice is to allow the voter's choice to go uncounted. I also find that solution totally unacceptable.

Election officials don't argue that it's too "burdensome" to contact those voters. No such mechanism exists to do so in law, and were it to exist, it would be in violation of the constitutional rights of Washington state's voters.

Sam Reed, Secretary of State

Nursing home residents are medically fragile

As an AARP member, I was disappointed to read AARP's recent ad in The Olympian. The ad states that a woman receiving home care, just "some help with bathing and household chores," could end up in a nursing home if home care funding is cut.

Home care is not jeopardized by the state budget crisis. Almost all of Gov. Gary Locke's proposed cuts in long-term care, $69 million, are in already under-funded nursing home care. That would prove disastrous for more than 20,000 Washingtonians.

Unlike those who can stay at home, nursing home residents are the state's most medically frail and vulnerable citizens. People do not enter nursing homes simply to get help bathing or with chores. They are in nursing homes out of acute medical necessity, often coming straight from hospitals.

Roughly 70 percent of nursing home residents are state clients. Under state law they must need medical care. That highly regulated level, with 24/7 staffing, and continual physician and clinical nurse supervision, could not possibly be provided in homes.

It is ludicrous to suggest that cuts in home care would place people in nursing homes. That ignores intermediate state-funded alternatives like adult family homes, boarding homes, and assisted living facilities.

AARP's posturing begs the question of why it is indifferent to the plight of more than 20,000 nursing home residents, and has chosen, at the expense of that especially vulnerable population, to only champion the cause of more independent seniors with the lightest care needs.

Bruce Anderson, Olympia

Wait until late summer to solve logjam problem

So the Deschutes River is plugged up again.

My family had the 125 acres from the falls to the golf course, brewery, restaurant, athletic center and Capitol Boulevard. We moved our house to put in Capitol Boulevard.

When the river used to dam up (which was often), my uncle would hitch up King or Queen to pull out the big logs to cut up for fire wood and cedar fence posts when summer came on.

Other times he'd go to the powder plant and get a case of dynamite and blow it out. He and Gordon Purkett taught me blasting.

Now for a whole lot less money spent, county officials could just wait until August or September (at low water) and start at the top of the logjam and pull stumps and logs high and dry and burn or sell them. Or they could put some work crews from city jails making firewood for our needy and elderly.

A giant cherry picker could work the banks and take care of it in short order like we used to do when this was a community of neighbors helping neighbors.

But then that would put the paper shufflers out of work, and they get more than the workers.

RC "Skip" McConkey, Olympia

Washington State Library should be fully funded

Gov. Gary Locke's budget proposal to close the State Library just doesn't make sense to me.

Perhaps the budget cutters saw the library as a collection of old books with no relevance to the new world of Internet connections and immediate access to information. If that argument were so, they don't know the State Library that I have experienced.

The State Library is the only centralized source for information crucial to the quality of government in this state.

As a state employee, I frequently use the State Library to keep my team and myself on the cutting edge of change in our field. As a citizen seeking information, I can research the issues and advocate for my community of interest armed with factual data about this state and other states.

This State Library has a superb Web site and highly trained staff who quickly search all of the modes of delivering a wide variety of obscure research. A few years ago with the advent of computers, some experts asserted that we soon would be living in a "paperless" society. How naive!

A recent study by the Association of Information and Image Management forecasts that the volume of paper will increase by 400 percent by 2005, even though paper's share of information will drop by 40 percent.

The State Library should be applauded for its success in moving into the 21st century. It deserves to be fully funded, and it needs to be recognized as a public value in our democracy.

Jane Field, Olympia

Olympia police showed great restraint before firing

I am writing in response to Apryl Carlington's horrifying letter about the recent Olympia police shooting.

I can't understand how someone would blame a police officer for defending his and another person's life.

The police responded to a call for help from the parents of a mentally ill person. Just because a person is mentally ill does not mean that deadly force can't be used when needed.

The police acted in defense. They only fired after knives were thrown at them.

To call the police uneducated or unfeeling is appalling. The police show the utmost restraint when it comes to the use of deadly force.

Then to claim that the police didn't get the necessary training they need is obviously wrong. They did. When deadly force was needed they used their training and hit the target.

It is impossible to receive training for every situation a police officer might face. Not every situation can be handled with talking. Some people choose to use force, and sometimes deadly force is a necessary response.

To expect the police to sit there when knives are being thrown blows my mind. They have to protect themselves as well as others.

Maybe its time for critics to ride with your local law enforcement agency, and see the challenges first hand.

Mike Brooks, Olympia

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