Our Readers’ Views

Quality of roads has deteriorated

Recently in the mai,l I received my annual notice to renew my vehicle tabs. I have a personalized plate, so I expect the total to be $80.75, which is no problem. But when I see the funds for road construction and maintenance projects is $30, and the funds for the Department of Fish and Wildlife is $32, which is the charge for the personalized plate, it made me say “wait a minute.”

Roads are in terrible condition in our area. I can name a couple of roads in my immediate vicinity that, if I went one mile over the speed limit, I would damage my car. While I know the Fish and Game Department needs funds, too, I feel our road work is slighted.

JoAnn Gates

Battle Ground

Power line issues need addressing

My wife and I, along with several hundred other concerned Clark County and Cowlitz County residents, attended a meeting at Prairie High School on April 25 to register our opposition to Bonneville Power Administration’s I-5 Corridor Reinforcement Project. This project, as previously reported in The Columbian, proposes to run 70 miles of 500kV transmission lines through the two counties. There are health and property value issues that will ultimately affect more than the 7,000 property owners along the routes.

One question asked at the meeting of BPA’s project manager Mark Korsness had to do with Sen. Patty Murray’s invitation to BPA to route through the two counties and the lack of local job creation for the project. Since January 2008, the engineering firms contracted to provide services have been located in Oregon. Whom does Murray represent?

Kim Smith

Camas

Superintendents not doing their jobs

The April 21 story, “Military takes aim at food served in school,” is right on target. Why does it take the military to point out such obvious facts that kids are getting fatter from poor school food programs and a lack of exercise?

I believe it is because our overpaid school superintendents lack the moral courage to do what’s right for our kids. They are too busy feathering their own nests to deal with what’s wrong with their schools.

How long are we going to take the shabby performance from most (not all) of our superintendents before asking them to seek employment elsewhere? Do you even know what the salary is of your own superintendent? Are you satisfied with the status quo?

Ted Stubblefield

Ridgefield

Financial regulation is the solution

It amazes me that folks are now defending the same Wall Street people who got us into this mess. Canada had similar banking regulations to the U.S. until the 1980s ,when the U.S. rolled them back. Canada is having no problems on the financial system. We did. Time to bring back those regulations.

Bert Adams

Vancouver

Use all help available to enforce laws

Why is it not OK for local law enforcement to enforce federal immigrations laws, but it is OK for local law enforcement to enforce federal bank robbery laws? Federal laws are federal laws and illegal is illegal.

Robert F. Nesvick Jr.

Vancouver

Imagine immigration issue in reverse

Imagine every man, woman and child from Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana (more than 12 million) entering Mexico to live, work, commit crime, receive welfare, attend public schools, show up at hospitals and expect and receive free medical care. Imagine this illegal so-called immigration and the immigrating U.S. citizens living in Mexico protesting after the citizens of Mexico become angry with the illegal occupation of their country.

Can you imagine Mexico’s President Calderon saying to his citizens that it would be unfair, might violate the illegals’ civil rights if the Mexican policia or federales asked to see the identification papers of the occupiers because we might be more pale in color than the legal citizens of Mexico? Then imagine a free ride from the Mexican government, while Mexico’s legal citizens work ever harder to make a living and pay ever-increasing taxes to support the Americans that just keep coming.

The weather is just too good south of the border.

Just imagine …

Thomas E. Adams

Kalama

Target the illegal hiring

Illegal immigrants are a source of legalized slavery for the billionaires who control large segments of our economy and the government. Illegals are afraid to complain and won’t form unions to demand benefits and reasonable working conditions.

The reason the border is broken is because business leaders who want cheap labor keep it that way by lobbying Congress.

I sympathize with the voters of Arizona and their attempt to fix the problem with a local law, even one that is patently racist, but until we start throwing the people in jail who hire illegals for cheap labor, the problem will stay. If businesses had to hire legal citizens, the illegals would go home or wouldn’t come — it’s that simple.

What isn’t simple is cutting through the control of Congress by the people who benefit from this form of legalized slavery. Like everything else, the people controlling things love the fact that half the voters are fighting with the other half over issues that will either never be resolved, or were non-issues from the start.

The people who have been redistributing wealth upward for decades, through control of Congress and the tax code, and issues like immigration, are pleased that they have middle class Americans working for them by fighting with each other.

Steve Rapalus

Ridgefield

Lead by following U.S. Constitution

I have not seen the racism that Leonard Pitts speaks of in his April 26 opinion column, “Tea Partiers’ criticism reeks of racism.” What I have seen is that the Tea Party participation sure gets you liberals worked up. For my part, I would settle for Congress and President Obama reading and following the Constitution of the United States.

Fred Cloe

North Bonneville

Letter on Obama filled with hate

I refer to Jim F. Ermis’ April 22 vitriolic letter, “Obama ill-equipped to lead.” Such bitterness.

During the years George W. Bush was president, I was certainly opposed to his policies and form of government, but I would never, I repeat never, have attacked the president of the United States as Ermis chose to do against President Obama. Ermis has his right to free speech but so do I in saying that his letter was filled with hate.

Bob Carlyle Gordon

Vancouver