Consider budget cuts as well

Page C1 of the Jan. 27 Gazette-Times contained an article on the Corvallis city budget entitled "Agencies make budget pitches."

As I read the article, each department has been encouraged to ask for additions in their programs because there is room in the budget - more money available - for growth in services.

It appears that the city council is saying, "We have more money. Let's spend it."

The city council should have directed departments to tell the budget commission the consequences reducing their current budgets by, say, 10 percent or increasing those budgets by 10 percent.

Moreover, the consequences of the reductions should be more important than the consequences of the increases.

If the consequences of the reductions are not too awful, taxes could actually be reduced. We are facing a great deal of economic uncertainty, and many citizens think they can employ their own money better than government can employ it.

John H. Detweiler, Corvallis

Early development far from normal

Unfortunate is the population whose officials accept degrading health conditions as "normal."

I refer to the article "Early development becoming the new normal," by Susan Brink of the Los Angeles Times (Jan. 27) that examines the phenomenon of a decreasing age at the start of puberty among U.S. girls, and the disturbing decision to change the medical definition of normal as a response.

Normal implies, according to Webster's International Dictionary, "occurring naturally and not because of disease, inoculation, or any experimental treatment," assured by "long-run expectations not deviating from an established norm."

When we consider the definition of the word normal it becomes apparent that our medical officials either have a poor understanding of the English language or they are lying.

Normal implies natural and, in a medical context, healthy, but this dramatic, relatively rapid shift is neither.

Environmental toxins and unhealthy lifestyles are the culprits, the inoculating agents, the materials of an experimental treatment that harbors unpredictable results.

Let us remind the medical institutions in the U.S. that a bandage titled normal spread across a complex public health issue is a disservice to humanity.

Sally Boyer, Corvallis

New hassles for a hazmat license

Homeland Security and the Transportation Safety Administration have got together to save us from a new threat.

They have become concerned that the wrong people might be driving trucks with hazardous materials. So they have decided that all those people who have the commercial driver's license need to have a FBI investigation of their life.

The process to have this done goes like this if you already have the CDL hazmat license and do the work:

You must first go to your doctor and pay for a physical exam to prove you are healthy. Then you must take your license to DMV and take an eye exam (you just had one at the doctor's office) and re-test for the hazmat license for another fee $10.

Then you must take a day off from work and drive to one of the three fingerprinting stations with the TSA (Portland, Medford or Pendleton). You must have proof of who you are and pay them $90 to run your fingerprints through the FBI. All of which has to be done in person and by appointment only. Six weeks later you will be approved to have the license.

Now it might sound like a reasonable approach to a problem, but the facts are the process could be done much cheaper without hurting employers.

When you go to buy a firearm, it takes about 20 minutes and $10 to call instant background check of your criminal history to see if you can buy a gun. The DMV could do the same background check for your hazmat license, and it would take 20 minutes.

Or, you go through the same FBI check to get a concealed firearms permit, so you should be able to just show the DMV that permit.

It won't happen, of course, but it should. Critical thinking and government are to separate happenings.

James Farmer, Albany

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