Posted: Monday, November 19, 2007 10:00 pm
Motorcycles would be big loss
I have attended two Veterans Day parades in Albany. In my opinion, it would be a big loss to the Veterans Day Parade if the veterans on motorcycles weren't involved.
Frances Beck, Albany
What happened to your pet
To the owner of that poor dog that I hit Saturday on Pacific Boulevard.
I tried to stop, but your dog ran right out in front of my truck. Two other cars narrowly missed hitting him and then I did. The other cars stopped and assured me that there was nothing to be done, neither for your dog nor my ability to miss him in time.
But, shame on you for not licensing your animal. No tags, no license, no identification at all. I knocked on doors in the neighborhood for as long as I could, to no avail. Nobody knew whose dog it was.
The dog had a collar, so I can assume that it was a pet to somebody. I intended to find the owner and let them know what happened, help them recover the body and apologize for my role in the death. All I could do was get the animal off the road.
So, now you know what happened to your pet. I feel terrible for the accident and having to leave your pet beside the road. Had you licensed the animal or provided a tag with your name and address, I would have contacted you, instead of you having to wonder what happened to your pet. I can only hope that you found the body and will understand that it was an accident that killed your pet.
Curt Hinzman Albany
The Department of Tyranny
Re: "Wrong to send that boy away," (editorial, Nov. 15).
Steve and Angela Brandt of Toledo, along with Governor Kulongoski, have recently discovered what many other Oregonians have had to learn in regrettable ways - the Department of Human Services is in fact the Department of Tyranny.
The DHS is a bloated, expensive bureaucracy, rich in political power and accountable to no one. It has the power to act as prosecutor, judge and jury in disputes involving parents and their children. The DHS can seize children and prevent parents from exercising their parental duties without any sort of due process. Innocent unless proven guilty means nothing to the DHS. An accusation is as good as a conviction. No evidence required. Why do the social workers - social workers, for crying out loud! - at DHS do this? Because they can! The governor, Supreme Court and legislature have imbued the DHS with unbridled power, no questions asked.
In the Ward Weaver III fiasco of 2002, two girls were raped and murdered. One of the girls was under the supervision of the DHS at the time, and both lived in an apartment complex that supplied DHS with a steady stream of cases. The unfortunate Ashley Pond "slipped through the cracks," according to news reports, and a low-level DHS employee who supervised her was demoted and reassigned as a result of her brutal death. This is as accountable as the DHS gets! Deadly incompetence is excused at DHS as long as the victim slips through the cracks.
The DHS, like any other bureaucracy, operates on procedures and forms. Outcomes are beside the point. The employee in the Weaver case was punished for misusing a form, according to a DHS press release, not specifically because of the two deaths.
If the Brandts' foster son receives as bad of an upbringing by his relatives in Mexico as he would have gotten from his biological parents, it will be no skin off anyone's back at DHS. They have already washed their hands of it. No one at DHS will suffer any consequences for being wrong.
I wish Mr. and Mrs. Brandt the best of luck in their struggle against the Department of Tyranny.
Richard Chinn, Albany
No more ho ho ho? Really?
So I heard the alarmingly sad news yesterday that our country is picking on Santa. Apparently there is some sort of a movement that folks are encouraging Santa to stop saying "HO HO HO!" and replace it with "HA HA HA!"
What? Really? Yeah, that's what I said when I heard it. All I could do was shake my head in disbelief. Then came the explanation as to why they are wanting Santa's greeting changed, which really made me stop and think, when are we going to stop all this idiotic nonsense and get real?
According to the "experts," Santa's exclamation of "HO HO HO" is now scaring little children. Again, what? Don't we remember that Santa has always scared babies and freaked out kids? And frankly, I don't think it is the "HO HO HO" that's doing it. After all, he is technically a stranger that we parents force our children to plop upon his lap to snap that must-have annual holiday picture, bawling their heads off or not.
You think all that is bad? Well, now consider the other reason Santa is being 'encouraged' to change his jovial greeting. "HO HO HO" sounds too much like the terminology used to describe a female prostitute! No kidding! Who thinks up this kind of stuff anyway?
I challenge all of you to think back to the last time you heard "HO HO HO" and I ask you this, did you for one second think, "Hmm, that sounds like Santa is referring to the little kids anxiously waiting in line as whores"? Nope. Didn't think so.
But now, thanks to the 'folks' who did think this, I feel violated. My innocence has been stripped away from the funny fat man in the bright red suit. Because of this "movement," every time I hear "HO HO HO," I can't help but think of - sigh - ho's!
Stop the ridiculousness now! Is nothing sacred and innocent anymore?
Didi Clarke, Lebanon
A sales tax on Wall Street
I have figured out how to solve the national debt and deficit spending problem of our government. A sales tax! No, not the regular kind that I have helped defeat about eight times. Rather, I call it the "one-tenth of 1 percent solution" sales tax on all Wall Street dealings. The daily wheeling and dealing that goes on runs into hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars a day, and it is all like a big casino. A small percentage of what the brokers get seems reasonable to me, and it might reduce our income taxes.
On the "war for oil," we all know that's what it is for, but there is a misconception still held by quite a number of folks, even among the majority that know it has to stop. Which is that our intervention (invasion) is to "secure our oil supply." Not so.
The question is, will the countries that have the oil control the sale of it, or will the world oil companies control it. Rest assured: It will be sold on the world market at going prices, and we will pay the max for it no matter who controls it. In fact, it will probably be cheaper buying it from the countries that have it, instead of the oil companies, and certainly cheaper when the market is glutted by the cessation of the incredible waste that is the war, and the war industry. Not that we still don't need a mass transit system and a rail freight system. Still, reducing debt is a worthy cause. Think about it.
Ed Hemmingson, Albany