Letters to the editor, May 27, 2009

Pancakes & personalities
Sequim Prairie Grange held a pancake supper Sunday, May 17, to benefit radio station KSQM. Attendees were able to visit with their favorite radio personality while enjoying delicious pancakes, ham and eggs.
The generosity of the community made it a successful, enjoyable evening.
Loretta Grant
Sequim
 
     
American terrorists
This letter will hopefully put to rest the ongoing debate regarding the “Guest Opinion” of Ms. Christine Springer about the Department of Homeland Security memo warning of potential terrorism threats by extreme conservative armed right wing radicals who might have former military experience.
If one reads the actual DHS memo, they should have realized that it did not target the conservative, Christian right-leaning retired military family of Ms. Springer.
Instead the DHS memo was dead-on describing Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who were responsible for the largest terrorist attack by homegrown U.S.-born Americans.  
Homegrown bigoted terrorism that killed 168, wounded 800 and destroyed or damaged 324 buildings. How soon we forget those innocent citizens of the Oklahoma City bombing and turn around good policy for the sake of politics.
Conservative Christians with guns and who are retired military do not have anything to fear because since they are Christ-like, they love their fellowman no matter what color, creed, political philosophy or country of origin. Love thy neighbor was Christ’s only command.
Patricia McCauley
Sequim

   
Beautiful bird
Dave Jackson wrote an especially interesting article this issue (May 20) — thanks for giving it such prominence and for publishing the beautiful photo of the harlequin. And thanks for including “Our Birds” in your great coverage of our community
Lyn Muench (a long-time subscriber)
Port Angeles


At it again — again
Don Boensel says I’m at it again. He’s right. I’m still at countering right-wing myths and unproven assertions.
Boensel recalls an exchange years ago over the Bush administration. He says he tried to follow each of my letters with a balancing one of his own, but they “were rejected as either too partisan or not fact-based enough.”
My files have two letters I sent with facts refuting false assertions he made about convictions in the Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and Clinton administrations. Some of his “not fact-based,” letters did get published.
My writings, he says, are riddled with “half-truths and lies.” Show me and I’ll correct them. I can admit to errors when I make them.
He remarks on my phrases, “right-wing extremist, right-wing radicalization, right-wing fear mongers and negative propaganda.” The first two phrases are quoted from the not-leaked DHS memo I found on the government Web site.
“Fear mongers and negative propaganda,” are my conclusions, based on statements like Boensel’s that, “all citizens should be concerned about the socialist, fascist and largely unconstitutional direction that the one-party Democrat administration and Legislature are taking our wonderful country.”
Until you show me facts to support that opinion, I’ll call it fear-mongering propaganda.
Boensel says I’m in denial and he’s right. I deny that what he says is true.
We have elections every two years and if we don’t like our current representatives, we elect new ones. That’s what we just did after 28 years of uncontrolled greed, costly foreign adventures and Reaganomic debt caused our nation to fail.
If these people have an alternative to Obama’s direction other than return to their failed policies, they should show us what it is, but all they give us 24/7 is a fearful litany threatening socialistic conspiracies that are not apparent to most of us.
Their ideology apparently blinds them all from considering any facts that don’t fit their preconceptions.
From 80 years of American experience and the facts I see before me, I disagree with them. I have faith in America and its institutions. They don’t.
Roy F. Wilson
Sequim


Driving vs. voting
The electoral college may be a tradition of America but it is definitely not a method that any true democracy would recommend. A driver’s license is more democratic than the electoral college.
The value of our driver’s license is the same from state to state yet the value of our vote for president is not the same from state to state.
Our driver’s license gives us the right to drive equally in any state, but we do not have the license to vote equally in every state.
As a United States citizen we are all equal, but as a United States voter we are not equal.
We do not vote for governor by counties; we vote as one voter within each state. The whole state is equal and voters in the counties are considered equal to all the other counties. Then why cannot we vote as one for president in every state?
The Constitution implies that every citizen has the right to be treated equally between states but when we vote, we are segregated into 51 separate elections and our individual votes are absorbed by the electoral college which cannot possibly give us a truly democratic election. The reason is because it is seriously flawed by a single fact. It is based on the census which is taken every 10 years but we vote every four years.
Each state has a different rate of growth and thus many voters cannot be counted fairly due to the difference in the rate of growth from state to state. Washington votes have been devalued in every election since 1904, more than a century ago, because more people have moved here proportionately than many other states.
Florida has experienced an even greater loss of vote values since 1960, especially this last election where each voter was worth only 78 percent of their true value. This is the most extreme illustration of the imbalance of our method voting for president. The difference violates the meaning and spirit of the Constitution.
The citizens of the United States, not the states, should be responsible for selecting the president just as a vote for governors belongs to each state respectively.
IRS taxes are collected within each state, yet they belong to the United States government, not the states.
The same applies to our votes, they are held only in trust by the registrar of voters. The votes for president should therefore be sent directly to the president of the United States Senate to be counted along with all the votes cast in the entire country just as votes for governors are counted by the entire state, not by counties.
By joining together we can defeat this egregious violation of our rights as citizens of one country, not 51. If you are approached to participate in a petition to correct this problem, please do so. It is your country but only you can really change this for the better.
This is not a political question as we all are citizens regardless of our political affiliations. It is the method of counting that is in question, not who you vote for.
Clint Jones
Sequim