Sequim Gazette Editorial and Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor
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How many are
too many?
Thank you for your article about Monday's council meeting. I am married to a Sequim officer and it is very disheartening to hear that some council members think the department is overstaffed.
Speaking from personal experience, there have been many times when my husband has either had to stay late (making his already 10-hour shift turn into 12, 14 or 16 hours) or has been called in early and even on his days off to help cover shifts. Another officer just worked eight days in a row with no day off and his shifts average 14 hours.
I believe that in a way it is a compliment that the council "thinks" our streets are safe. That means our officers are doing a great job!
Aimee Dennis
Sequim
A one-way ticket
The (Barack) Obama administration just increased its estimate of the deficit over the next nine years from
$7 trillion to $9 trillion. Their first-year deficit ($1.56 trillion) is greater than all the deficits of the Bush administration and they expect a deficit of $1.3 trillion for their fiscal year budget of 2011.
Yet millions of Americans trust them to enact a health care plan or a single-payer plan that will only add to the deficits.
How reliable are government forecasts? Let's review some examples over a 40-year span (1968-2007). Government spending increased 15.3 times in that period. Social Security increased from $23 billion to $581 billion, a multiple of 25 times. Medicare rose from $5.1 billion to $436 billion, an increase of 85.5 times and Medicaid spending went from $1.8 billion to $190.6 billion, a multiple of 105.9 times.
These figures do not include state spending for Medicare. The costs of these programs have greatly exceeded the original forecasts of a tenfold increase.
The ratio of worker to retiree has decreased from 17 to 1 in 1950 to 3.2 to 1 at this time and is edging toward 2 to 1 in 10 or 20 years. Couple that with 65 million people retiring during that time, the recent loss of 6.5 million jobs and fewer people paying into the system and ask yourself if we can afford a government-run health care system?
Our five-year post-cancer survival rate is the best in the world and remarkably better in some instances. Mortality from breast, prostate and colon cancer is also considerably better, as is access to renal dialysis, cardiovascular surgery and knee and hip replacement. The mortality rate of breast cancer in the U.S. is 25 percent compared to 46 percent in Britain and Germany. Our mortality rate to prostate cancer is 19 percent compared to 57 percent in Britain. Finally, the cost of health care in the developed world is persistently exceeding revenues of their respective countries and the quality of medicine in those countries lags well behind what's available in the U.S.
A government-run health plan for the U.S. is a one-way ticket, in my view, to fiscal, economic and political suicide.
Ted Gagné
Sequim
What we need
Andrea Sauve placed an article in the Gazette on Wednesday, Aug. 19. It was under Sequim Stories and was called "Streets obstruct disabled persons." (Opinion page section.)
I would like to add to what she said. Her words were strong and powerful. I felt they reached people about our issues as disabled. I want to tap into the emotions she pulled out.
I ask that each of you who are reading this, who are healthy and whole, to give thanks for your two arms/hands and how they do all that you ask of them to do with simplicity and ease. Be thankful for your muscles that do all you. We who are disabled need special chairs or canes and other devices to do what you do.
It is past time for all who are normal to be aware of those who are not.
When you put garbage cans on the sidewalk, you block our path - we cannot go around as easily as someone walking. We need easy access to building and bathrooms.
My biggest gripe is the Sequim Post Office. It has no door opener to get into the building and no chairs to sit on if you cannot stand long.
Let me also address bathroom stalls for the disabled. If you do not see a disabled person - you think, so what, I am going to use this stall. Now a disabled comes in to use the bathroom and you are using the only stall they can use - they cannot go to the bathroom.
Now, the biggie - disabled parking stalls. You think, well, no place else to park - so what - and take the space. Now someone who cannot walk or walk much cannot do what they need and/or want to do.
Because you are whole does not give you more rights.
We who are disabled are still human and deserve respect and honor due all humans.
As American citizens, we have the same rights as given in the Constitution.
It is time to wake up and to see beyond the end of your nose. We, the disabled, ask for respect, understanding and to be as independent as we can be.
I am a member of the Disabled Rights of Washington and I am one of the co-chairs of the steering committee called Passport for Change.
If you are disabled and/or have questions, I can be reached at 681-8961. Disabled Rights of Washington can be reached at 800-562-2702; ask for Betty Schwieterman.
Azella
Sequim
Editor's note: Azella is the author's complete legal name.
Life sentence for
bar fight is unjust
In so many articles regarding criminal justice, I have noted the flippant remark "Do the crime, then you must do the time!"
Well, that is exactly what the incarcerated are doing. Across our country, thousands of people are behind bars serving extraordinarily long terms for a variety of low-level, nonviolent crimes. It is the result of well-intentioned anti-crime laws that have gone terribly wrong. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws enacted mainly to target drug crimes have become a mosaic of statutes that all but eliminate judicial discretion, mercy and even common sense.
However, wouldn't it be far more fair, far more just if the time coincided with the crime as Washington's law mandates? Our RCW 9.94A.010 requires that punishment for crimes in Washington be proportionate to the seriousness of the crimes and commensurate with punishment provided for similar crimes.
The "three-strikes" imposition of the same life sentence for a bar fight or a purse snatching as for aggravated murder violates this code and also violates the intent of Washington voters when they voted to impose life sentences on the "worst of the worst."
Lou Krewson
Stanwood
How to see miracles
"I have never met with a man, either in England or America, who hath not confessed his opinion, that a separation between the countries, would take place one time or other. There is no instance in which we have shown less judgment, than in endeavoring to describe, what we call, the ripeness or fitness of the Continent for independence.
"The present time, likewise, is that peculiar time, which never happens to a nation but once, viz., the time of forming itself into a government. Most nations have let slip the opportunity, and by that means have been compelled to receive laws from their conquerors, instead of making laws for themselves. First they had a king, and then a form of government, whereas, the articles or charter of government, should be formed first and men delegated to execute them afterwards: but from the errors of other nations, let us learn wisdom, and lay hold of the present opportunity - to begin government at the right end." Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" Revelation for Independence, 1776.
No one told us to be good to each other on 9/12; it just happened.
We know that our best days aren't behind us. We know that America is the country that freed millions of people in the last hundred years alone. We are the people who changed the world.
America's promise of freedom allowed the lone entrepreneur to bring the world the light bulb, car, telephone, movie, assembly line, artificial heart, computer, bifocals, sewing machine, refrigerator, air conditioner, safety pin, television, cash register, crayons, power tools, the oil well, water tower, Popsicle, blue jeans, elevators, repeating rifle, laser, polio vaccine, microwave oven, copy machine, fiber optics and cotton candy.
When we stop telling ourselves we can't do it, that our best days are behind us, things will begin to change. Start telling yourself, "I don't need government to do it for me." Stop being a slave and you will start seeing miracles.
Lloyd S. Pedersen
Sequim
Where will we
get our water?
Our water supply crisis is with us again and will be back again. The rivers are running low and there may be a cutback on water usage. This means wells going dry, not enough water for the fish to spawn and water for the farmers.
It is time for our governing fathers to start thinking about reservoirs in the hills to capture the excess runoff from the rain and melting snow so, when needed, it can be released. This will also help recharge the aquifers. If this global warming continues, where will the Olympic Peninsula get water for our growing population? Also, taking the dams out will not help the water problems.
Jim Steik
Sequim
Four numbers to consider
Senior citizens, there are only four numbers you need to remember concerning Obamacare:
1) $243,000,000,000 - The House bill would reduce projected net increases in Medicare payments to providers by more than $243 billion over 10 years (source: "Obama's plans on health care a tough sell among seniors," The Washington Post via seattletimes.nwsource.com, 8/10/2009).
2) 45,700,000 - The number of Americans without health coverage that the existing health care system will have to accommodate under Obamacare (source: "Health care debate: How many actually uninsured?" The Associated Press via seattletimes.nwsource.com, 8/5/2009).
3) $9,000,000,000,000 - The Obama administration estimates a 10-year budget deficit of $9 trillion (source: "Meltdown 101: Huge budget deficits expected," The Associated Press via
seattletimes.nwsource.com, 8/24/2009).
Hmm, huge cuts in Medicare payments, a significant increase in demand for medical care without a corresponding increase in supply and unbelievably large, unsustainable federal deficits as far as the eye can see.
Still think Obama and Co. won't ration your health care?
Oh, almost forgot that fourth number:
4) 202-224-3121 - The U.S. Capitol switchboard telephone number, where you can tell Norm, Patty and Maria what you think of their plans for your medical care.
Better call before it is too late.
Jerry A. Ludke
Port Angeles
Local losers
Television has a show called "The Biggest Losers" but theirs deals in weight. Sequim, on the other hand, has the same program but it's called the city council, mayor included .... For months the council has spent numerous hours and thousands upon thousands of dollars ($20,000 reported) searching for a new city manager, most all of the search behind closed doors and without any public input, and now the truth comes out ... they never even vetted the candidate that they picked, turns out he was fired from his last job and never bothered to tell his new employers. And what do the mayor and councilman Hays complain about the police having too many officers and overprotecting the citizens of Sequim after their chief had bailed them out during their failed search by filling in at both jobs, city manager and police chief.
My vote would be to dump this group of losers and start all over.
That's just my opinion (but I bet there's a few others).
Bob Lampert
Sequim
How could they?
How could some Sequim elected city council members make a "selection for new city manager" at the payment terms of $120,000 per year for the position and not fully check and ask for reasons in leaving that person's last position?
How simple a task yet how "stupid" those members appear to be ... and Sequim community, all of you ... have elected them to lead your community.
Carol Jordan
Sequim
It will make you stronger
He (Herman Murillo) was a coach in sports and in life. He was tough on you while you were on the field because he knew life wasn't easy and wanted you to be the best person you can.
I was terrible at baseball so he coached me about life. I didn't remember some of his life lessons until I got the news he was gone.
I remember getting hit with a baseball in the boney tush and was down for the count until he came out and told me, "Walk it off, it will make you stronger." My reply was "My tush isn't ever going to get more cushioning."
I hope the kids growing up and hitting the fields will hear about what he and so many others did for the kid sports
program in Sequim so they will all be remembered. We all lost a great man and may his family be blessed knowing how many people his life touched 30-plus years ago and forever in the Sequim sport world.
Mark (Sticks) Mathis
Sequim High School 1986-1990
too many?
Thank you for your article about Monday's council meeting. I am married to a Sequim officer and it is very disheartening to hear that some council members think the department is overstaffed.
Speaking from personal experience, there have been many times when my husband has either had to stay late (making his already 10-hour shift turn into 12, 14 or 16 hours) or has been called in early and even on his days off to help cover shifts. Another officer just worked eight days in a row with no day off and his shifts average 14 hours.
I believe that in a way it is a compliment that the council "thinks" our streets are safe. That means our officers are doing a great job!
Aimee Dennis
Sequim
A one-way ticket
The (Barack) Obama administration just increased its estimate of the deficit over the next nine years from
$7 trillion to $9 trillion. Their first-year deficit ($1.56 trillion) is greater than all the deficits of the Bush administration and they expect a deficit of $1.3 trillion for their fiscal year budget of 2011.
Yet millions of Americans trust them to enact a health care plan or a single-payer plan that will only add to the deficits.
How reliable are government forecasts? Let's review some examples over a 40-year span (1968-2007). Government spending increased 15.3 times in that period. Social Security increased from $23 billion to $581 billion, a multiple of 25 times. Medicare rose from $5.1 billion to $436 billion, an increase of 85.5 times and Medicaid spending went from $1.8 billion to $190.6 billion, a multiple of 105.9 times.
These figures do not include state spending for Medicare. The costs of these programs have greatly exceeded the original forecasts of a tenfold increase.
The ratio of worker to retiree has decreased from 17 to 1 in 1950 to 3.2 to 1 at this time and is edging toward 2 to 1 in 10 or 20 years. Couple that with 65 million people retiring during that time, the recent loss of 6.5 million jobs and fewer people paying into the system and ask yourself if we can afford a government-run health care system?
Our five-year post-cancer survival rate is the best in the world and remarkably better in some instances. Mortality from breast, prostate and colon cancer is also considerably better, as is access to renal dialysis, cardiovascular surgery and knee and hip replacement. The mortality rate of breast cancer in the U.S. is 25 percent compared to 46 percent in Britain and Germany. Our mortality rate to prostate cancer is 19 percent compared to 57 percent in Britain. Finally, the cost of health care in the developed world is persistently exceeding revenues of their respective countries and the quality of medicine in those countries lags well behind what's available in the U.S.
A government-run health plan for the U.S. is a one-way ticket, in my view, to fiscal, economic and political suicide.
Ted Gagné
Sequim
What we need
Andrea Sauve placed an article in the Gazette on Wednesday, Aug. 19. It was under Sequim Stories and was called "Streets obstruct disabled persons." (Opinion page section.)
I would like to add to what she said. Her words were strong and powerful. I felt they reached people about our issues as disabled. I want to tap into the emotions she pulled out.
I ask that each of you who are reading this, who are healthy and whole, to give thanks for your two arms/hands and how they do all that you ask of them to do with simplicity and ease. Be thankful for your muscles that do all you. We who are disabled need special chairs or canes and other devices to do what you do.
It is past time for all who are normal to be aware of those who are not.
When you put garbage cans on the sidewalk, you block our path - we cannot go around as easily as someone walking. We need easy access to building and bathrooms.
My biggest gripe is the Sequim Post Office. It has no door opener to get into the building and no chairs to sit on if you cannot stand long.
Let me also address bathroom stalls for the disabled. If you do not see a disabled person - you think, so what, I am going to use this stall. Now a disabled comes in to use the bathroom and you are using the only stall they can use - they cannot go to the bathroom.
Now, the biggie - disabled parking stalls. You think, well, no place else to park - so what - and take the space. Now someone who cannot walk or walk much cannot do what they need and/or want to do.
Because you are whole does not give you more rights.
We who are disabled are still human and deserve respect and honor due all humans.
As American citizens, we have the same rights as given in the Constitution.
It is time to wake up and to see beyond the end of your nose. We, the disabled, ask for respect, understanding and to be as independent as we can be.
I am a member of the Disabled Rights of Washington and I am one of the co-chairs of the steering committee called Passport for Change.
If you are disabled and/or have questions, I can be reached at 681-8961. Disabled Rights of Washington can be reached at 800-562-2702; ask for Betty Schwieterman.
Azella
Sequim
Editor's note: Azella is the author's complete legal name.
Life sentence for
bar fight is unjust
In so many articles regarding criminal justice, I have noted the flippant remark "Do the crime, then you must do the time!"
Well, that is exactly what the incarcerated are doing. Across our country, thousands of people are behind bars serving extraordinarily long terms for a variety of low-level, nonviolent crimes. It is the result of well-intentioned anti-crime laws that have gone terribly wrong. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws enacted mainly to target drug crimes have become a mosaic of statutes that all but eliminate judicial discretion, mercy and even common sense.
However, wouldn't it be far more fair, far more just if the time coincided with the crime as Washington's law mandates? Our RCW 9.94A.010 requires that punishment for crimes in Washington be proportionate to the seriousness of the crimes and commensurate with punishment provided for similar crimes.
The "three-strikes" imposition of the same life sentence for a bar fight or a purse snatching as for aggravated murder violates this code and also violates the intent of Washington voters when they voted to impose life sentences on the "worst of the worst."
Lou Krewson
Stanwood
How to see miracles
"I have never met with a man, either in England or America, who hath not confessed his opinion, that a separation between the countries, would take place one time or other. There is no instance in which we have shown less judgment, than in endeavoring to describe, what we call, the ripeness or fitness of the Continent for independence.
"The present time, likewise, is that peculiar time, which never happens to a nation but once, viz., the time of forming itself into a government. Most nations have let slip the opportunity, and by that means have been compelled to receive laws from their conquerors, instead of making laws for themselves. First they had a king, and then a form of government, whereas, the articles or charter of government, should be formed first and men delegated to execute them afterwards: but from the errors of other nations, let us learn wisdom, and lay hold of the present opportunity - to begin government at the right end." Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" Revelation for Independence, 1776.
No one told us to be good to each other on 9/12; it just happened.
We know that our best days aren't behind us. We know that America is the country that freed millions of people in the last hundred years alone. We are the people who changed the world.
America's promise of freedom allowed the lone entrepreneur to bring the world the light bulb, car, telephone, movie, assembly line, artificial heart, computer, bifocals, sewing machine, refrigerator, air conditioner, safety pin, television, cash register, crayons, power tools, the oil well, water tower, Popsicle, blue jeans, elevators, repeating rifle, laser, polio vaccine, microwave oven, copy machine, fiber optics and cotton candy.
When we stop telling ourselves we can't do it, that our best days are behind us, things will begin to change. Start telling yourself, "I don't need government to do it for me." Stop being a slave and you will start seeing miracles.
Lloyd S. Pedersen
Sequim
Where will we
get our water?
Our water supply crisis is with us again and will be back again. The rivers are running low and there may be a cutback on water usage. This means wells going dry, not enough water for the fish to spawn and water for the farmers.
It is time for our governing fathers to start thinking about reservoirs in the hills to capture the excess runoff from the rain and melting snow so, when needed, it can be released. This will also help recharge the aquifers. If this global warming continues, where will the Olympic Peninsula get water for our growing population? Also, taking the dams out will not help the water problems.
Jim Steik
Sequim
Four numbers to consider
Senior citizens, there are only four numbers you need to remember concerning Obamacare:
1) $243,000,000,000 - The House bill would reduce projected net increases in Medicare payments to providers by more than $243 billion over 10 years (source: "Obama's plans on health care a tough sell among seniors," The Washington Post via seattletimes.nwsource.com, 8/10/2009).
2) 45,700,000 - The number of Americans without health coverage that the existing health care system will have to accommodate under Obamacare (source: "Health care debate: How many actually uninsured?" The Associated Press via seattletimes.nwsource.com, 8/5/2009).
3) $9,000,000,000,000 - The Obama administration estimates a 10-year budget deficit of $9 trillion (source: "Meltdown 101: Huge budget deficits expected," The Associated Press via
seattletimes.nwsource.com, 8/24/2009).
Hmm, huge cuts in Medicare payments, a significant increase in demand for medical care without a corresponding increase in supply and unbelievably large, unsustainable federal deficits as far as the eye can see.
Still think Obama and Co. won't ration your health care?
Oh, almost forgot that fourth number:
4) 202-224-3121 - The U.S. Capitol switchboard telephone number, where you can tell Norm, Patty and Maria what you think of their plans for your medical care.
Better call before it is too late.
Jerry A. Ludke
Port Angeles
Local losers
Television has a show called "The Biggest Losers" but theirs deals in weight. Sequim, on the other hand, has the same program but it's called the city council, mayor included .... For months the council has spent numerous hours and thousands upon thousands of dollars ($20,000 reported) searching for a new city manager, most all of the search behind closed doors and without any public input, and now the truth comes out ... they never even vetted the candidate that they picked, turns out he was fired from his last job and never bothered to tell his new employers. And what do the mayor and councilman Hays complain about the police having too many officers and overprotecting the citizens of Sequim after their chief had bailed them out during their failed search by filling in at both jobs, city manager and police chief.
My vote would be to dump this group of losers and start all over.
That's just my opinion (but I bet there's a few others).
Bob Lampert
Sequim
How could they?
How could some Sequim elected city council members make a "selection for new city manager" at the payment terms of $120,000 per year for the position and not fully check and ask for reasons in leaving that person's last position?
How simple a task yet how "stupid" those members appear to be ... and Sequim community, all of you ... have elected them to lead your community.
Carol Jordan
Sequim
It will make you stronger
He (Herman Murillo) was a coach in sports and in life. He was tough on you while you were on the field because he knew life wasn't easy and wanted you to be the best person you can.
I was terrible at baseball so he coached me about life. I didn't remember some of his life lessons until I got the news he was gone.
I remember getting hit with a baseball in the boney tush and was down for the count until he came out and told me, "Walk it off, it will make you stronger." My reply was "My tush isn't ever going to get more cushioning."
I hope the kids growing up and hitting the fields will hear about what he and so many others did for the kid sports
program in Sequim so they will all be remembered. We all lost a great man and may his family be blessed knowing how many people his life touched 30-plus years ago and forever in the Sequim sport world.
Mark (Sticks) Mathis
Sequim High School 1986-1990
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