Posted: Sunday, September 30, 2007 10:00 pm
Inspired at Mount Rushmore
This month (September) I had the opportunity to visit Mount Rushmore.
I attended the evening show when they have a presentation of the four presidents. At dark, they turn the lights off at the amphitheater and turn lights on the mountain. The four men look impressive.
They ask all military veterans to come down to the main stage and be present as they lower the red, white and blue.
The whole presentation lasts all of about an hour. If any American doesn't come away feeling a little knot in the stomach, and very, very proud of who and what we are, they should catch the next bus out of town.
Maybe some of our elected people should take the time to visit.
Jay Erickson, Scio
Management raises: An insult
I guess I shouldn't be too surprised to read the report that our governor has chosen to increase salaries by large margins to managers and department heads. It only reaffirms that no matter how much money is available, government will find a way to spend it.
They trotted out the old saw that "we have to be competitive or they will go elsewhere." There must be a big, big place where all employees paid by the taxpayer can go because we hear that again and again.
Raises 11 to 24 percent should be an insult to every Oregonian. Wouldn't that money be better spent to fund more state police to help close down the drug corridor on I-5? The thinking must have been that if the people wanted it, they could fund it somewhere else.
Couldn't that money be better spent at least as starting money for what is seen as a needed insurance program for kids? No, the thinking was to call it a "healthy kid" program and impose a large tax increase on cigarettes. After all, smokers are in a minority and can't keep the tax from passing. This proposed "insurance for kids" will never, I say again, never be a reality unless it is supported by other funding. Money from the proposed tax is being fed in so many different directions that it will never stick to the healthy kids that it is supposed to support.
I have been retired for six years now and my retirement check from my employer is the same now as when it started. Social Security increases 3 percent per year if we're lucky. Oregon taxes my retirement and the feds tax both retirement and Social Security.
My wife has worked for the Sweet Home School District for 20 years as a classified employee and still pays nearly $300 a month toward her medical insurance. The list goes on and on. Unless you work for the government, everything that can be taxed will be taxed.
The article also stated that state employee union representatives see no problem with the increases given to management. Guess what, next contract round they will point to this as a reason the rest of the state employees need larger raises.
I have been a lifelong registered Democrat but believe me, I have had enough.
Someone will have to talk long and hard to me in order to convince me that any kind of tax increase on anything is necessary.
Dave Holley, Sweet Home
Homeless: No abstraction
"Another week, another Albany meeting about what to do about or for the homeless. (The latest one was held last week.) There is a mountain of good will and good intentions," unfortunately not represented in these topic sentences.
So long as journalism, and government, abstract the issue to "the" homeless, as it once did with "the" blacks, solutions are impossible. There are specific issues, and one can only reach specific answers when one defines those issues. "The" homeless is caricature, entertaining, not at all informative.
Harold A. Maio, Ft. Myers, Fla.
The writer is on the Advisory Board of the American Journal of Psychiatric Rehabilitation and a board member of Partners in Crisis.