It does take a village
I am writing this letter to send a Big Thank You and to express my gratitude to those folks who helped to sponsor my trip to the Skills USA National competition in Kansas City, Mo., in June.
I competed in the Major Appliance repair competition. I took fifth in the nation overall and feel that I represented Sequim well. It was a great learning experience, an opportunity to meet people from all over the U.S.A. and I had a lot of fun doing it.
I could not have done it without the support of the following businesses and individuals: The Sequim School District, Mr. Langston, Mr. Seabolt, Mr. Marcy and anyone at the school involved in making the arrangements reservations and payments to get Mr. Seabolt (Skills USA/Teacher) and myself to the competition; Mr. Seabolt (Engineering Tech Teacher) for showing me the right way to braze copper tubing and test electrical wiring and for taking me to the competition and for being a great teacher; Tom of Tom’s Appliance for the use of his books and knowledge on major appliance repair; David Sweet of David’s Appliance Service for answering a lot of appliance repair questions and for his knowledge; and Mrs. Seabolt for arrangements to get Mr. Seabolt and myself to the airport.
On the financial side, thanks to Bob and AnneMarie Grey of Sears, Mom and Dad, Clint Rushton, Tom and Maribeth, Violet, Ingrid, Suzanne, Elizabeth and Grandma and Grandpa. Without your financial support and technical help, I would not have been able to go. I would also like to thank the Sequim Gazette for running my letters in the paper.
Please support your Sequim School District and the vocational and FFA programs it offers. Without them I could not have done this. We have a lot of students who attend these vocation classes, but we need more.
When considering an elective, take a look at Engineering Tech or one of the other vocational/FFA classes. You will not be sorry and you will learn a new skill and have fun doing it. Thank you for your time and financial support.
Randy Hogoboom
Sequim
A vote for Cloud
Responding to a forum question, Doug Cloud answered that Frederick Hayek (“Road to Serfdom”) is one historical figure he admires.
Hayek promoted the superiority of the free market system, believing it allows individuals greatest freedom to generate messages about resources, resource usability and demand that only individuals of society can know. Hayek maintained that socialist planners cannot supply knowledge about such infinite needs and resources.
Thinking they knew how to pick winners and losers, with their political advantage in mind, politicians ignored basic economics. The $862 billion “stimulus” program failed because politicians ignored market forces.
All around us, we observe government failures and waste; Solyndra is just one.
In a free market economy, businesses hire employees based on the market demand, i.e. consumer needs and wants. Nowhere have government planners ever produced long-lasting economic growth.
“Green” energy grows slowly because of inefficiency in relationship to production costs and consumer demand. In Spain, “each new ‘green’ job destroyed 2.2 others” while government subsidies rose to an outrageous “$1.5 million per job.” Each new green job eliminated 3.7 other jobs. Our U.S. Department of Labor provided “green” jobs training for 3,586 graduates that resulted in 466 jobs and more squandering of taxpayer dollars.
Cloud knows cutting taxes and revising tax codes will send market signals needed to encourage savings and investments for business.
Doug Cloud will work to remove overregulation so consumers and business can again exchange accurate messages about supply and demand vital to liberty, prosperity and happiness.
Sophia Walker
Port Angeles
Another vote for Cloud
A gentleman attending the June 24 candidate forum expressed belief that our nation’s fiscal condition is just hunky-dory and challenged Doug Cloud’s description of our economic disintegration.
Democrat Derek Kilmer, not attending, couldn’t defend Obama’s broken promises, floundering “hope” and destructive “change.” Unobstructed, Cloud and other realists, labored to return the delusional to reality, substantiating the paramount requisite to stop spending and to start reducing the size of government.
A few, from a multitude of ominous facts follow:
1. In 2012, Social Security began paying recipients $48.9 billion more than the department received in payroll taxes.
2. In 1950, 16.5 workers supported one Social Security recipient. In 2011, 2.9 workers supported one Social Security recipient.
3. Spending more than its revenues since 2008, the Office of Management and Budget forecasts insolvency for Medicare in just 12 years.
4. On June 22, 2012, the national share of debt, (rising every second) per person, was $50,425. This is exactly the meaning of “putting the debt on the backs of our children and grandchildren.”
Western European crisis, here we come!
Cloud believes removal of oppressive, government overreach and overregulation from our (once) private sector will restore liberty and reverse this economic down spin.
His priorities are:
1. Repeal Obamacare, its $2 trillion liability and its largest middle-class tax in history;
2. Cut spending;
3. Restructure Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid;
4. Revise the tax code, add no new taxes and renew tax cuts;
5. Eliminate duplicating federal agencies.
Vote for Cloud!
Judi Hangartner
Port Angeles
Rohrer for judge
Neighbors,
I want to avoid the pro-anti, liberal-conservative, blue state-red state conversation by simply stating why I am voting for Judge Erik Rohrer.
I have known Judge Rohrer since 1992 when he ran the Port Angeles Attorney General’s Office. Judge Rohrer is a kind, thoughtful, hardworking man who always tries to do what is right and what is fair.
These are the qualities that make for a good judge as well as a good person and that is why I am voting for Judge Rohrer.
Please join me.
Dwain Sparrowk
Sequim
What is this DOE?
It may very well turn out that I am not the only Clallam County citizen dumfounded by the scene portrayed in the July 4 Gazette cover story: 300 sincere Clallam County residents, U.S. citizens, voters, taxpayers on their knees begging a bunch of unelected Olympia bureaucrats to not change the laws which have governed this county for over 100 years. Do I need to get my vision checked, or is there something wrong with this picture?
OK, here is what my research has unearthed so far:
No. 1. The Department of Ecology (DOE) consists of bureaucrats who were not elected by "We the People," but who were instead appointed by a governor who in turn — it is reported — was "elected" by a 40-vote "majority," even though many of those "voters" were later found to be deceased.
No. 2. The DOE folks do NOT reside in Clallam County.
No. 3. The "rule" they propose has no legal precedent in the jurisprudence of this county.
No. 4. We, the taxpayers of Washington state, pay their salaries, and so, in theory, they work for us.
What I have so far been unable to unearth is the clause in the U.S. Constitution which gives unelected bureaucrats the right to dictate how U.S. citizens will conduct their lives and businesses.
So now my question to the people of Clallam County is this: "What if, instead of bowing in humble supplication before the almighty DOE, we simply told them to go take a flying leap?" I know of at least two Clallam County attorneys who would love to support a strategy like that one.
Craig Buhler
Sequim
Is ‘winner-take-all’ morally wrong?
Not if it were applied to a single election because that would be factual, as of course the winner will always take the election regardless of how many other votes there were for any other candidate; there would be no question.
But if there are many other elections proceeding at the same time for the same proposal or candidate, then how may anyone know which elections will be determinative? More especially as there are no common denominators among all the elections.
Every educated person should know that when there are several numbers being compared there must be a common denominator.
Each state runs its own presidential election, but none have the same common denominators. For example, there are 538 electoral votes, but there are 51 different values for those 538 votes. Washington had 11 electoral votes in 2008 and each was worth 1,750,848 (leading candidate’s votes) divided by 11 equal to 159,168 votes per electoral vote.
Idaho had 403,012 (leading candidate’s votes) divided by 4 equal to 100,753 votes per electoral vote. That is a significant difference for the same item, namely one of 538 items all supposedly equal to each other. That is why when voting with 51 accounts there must be a common denominator which is to count by digital numbers, not by whole numbers.
We delude ourselves when we believe the Electoral College voting results. They are all phony. The real values are hidden.
And that is one of the frauds of the way we vote for president. That is the absolute truth!
Clint Jones
Sequim
Area full of shakes, quakes
As this retirement town bounces along with all these very minor quakes, the people survive. It’s one thing to put up with minor shaking, but do you know why? Seems under us is the south end of the land plate of Vancouver Island. It is pushing into this section of the Olympics ever so slowly as it moves to the southwest. It is the reason fog happens along the Sequim fault line when conditions are right (wet and cool).
The land over the fault line is warm from all this friction from the movement. Sometimes the fog line stretches for miles. But you thought Vancouver Island was across the strait!
The strait was carved out by glaciers during ice ages past. If you study geology, you might predict this land we are on could be the bow of the island as it heads off on a journey across the Pacific. This would mean Puget Sound is ripping open, ever so slowly! Well, look at a map.
My backyard that has bumped up six feet for a couple of hundred feet is slowly subsiding. This happened when we had that quake six or seven years ago. Vancouver Island granite is about 100 feet under us in Happy Valley.
You can’t drill a well deeper — plenty of water on top of the granite.
Richard Dobbs
Sequim
Population growth at root of planet’s problems
There was a time when farmers needed a big family to help with chores, sow and reap the crops, milk the cows, etc.
Now, most farm work and many U.S. manufacturing jobs are done by fewer workers, assisted by machines and robots. But the world churches and evangelicals seemingly want NO birth control and more (tithing?) babies, whether unwanted or mentally/physically deficient or not.
Does ANYONE recognize the biggest problem on the planet is the current exponential growth in human population? Population growth increasingly consumes more renewable and nonrenewable resources while, at the same time, it increasingly pollutes the land, air, fresh water and the oceans, which are required for human survival.
Obviously, there is no practical way to stop population growth; the Chinese experiment has failed. Even a leveling off of our planet’s population (which may not be practicable?) merely delays the "inevitable" — not the so-called "rapture" or the Mayan end of the world — but simply the end of human life as we have known it.
Based on events of the past 100 years, it is virtually impossible to extrapolate human existence 100-200 years into the future. This is NOT alarmed "Chicken Little" talking but "Pogo" saying: "We has met the enemy and he is us!"
Coupled with increasingly polluted and diminishing resources, and lack of common sense by lawmakers and world church leaders, intelligent readers should (will?) draw their own conclusions.
Richard Hahn
Sequim
