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www.OthelloOutlook.comA2 The Othello Outlook – Thursday, December 17, 2009 O p i n i O n

The Othello Outlook (USPS 413-380)Entered as Periodicals Jan. 21, 1947, at the Post Office at Othello, WA, under Act of March 3, 1879. Published every Thursday by Basin Publishing Company, 125 S. First Ave., Othello, WA; Telephone: (509) 488-3342; Fax: (509) 488-3345; Periodical postage paid at Othello, WA. Postmaster: Send address corrections to:

The Othello Outlook, 125 S. First Avenue, Othello, WA 99344.

PublisherEric LaFontaine

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EditorBob Kirkpatrick

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Contributing Writer/ProofreaderLuAnn Morgan

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The publisher shall not be liable for slight changes or typographical errors that do not lessen the value of an advertisement. The publishers’ liability for other errors or omissions in connection with an advertisement is strictly limited to publication of the advertisement in any subsequent issue or the refund of any money paid for the advertisement.

Publisher’s Liability for Error:Circulation: 1,600

Letters to the Editor are always welcome. It doesn’t matter what the topic is, so let your voice be heard. Please limit letters to 300 words or less. Letters must be signed by the author and provide a telephone number and place of residence for verification purposes. They will be published on a space available basis and are subject to editing for appropriate content. The letters must be received by 9 a.m. on the Monday prior to publication the following Thursday. They can be mailed to 125 South First Avenue, Othello, WA 99344 or e-mailed to [email protected]. For more information regarding our policy, contact Eric LaFontaine, publisher, or Bob Kirkpatrick, editor, at (509) 488-3342.

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Letters to the Editor

By Eric LaFontainePublisher

Othello Outlook

Anyone interested in a pair of skis?

Everyone loves a good con-spiracy theory. Did the govern-ment plan 9-11? Were there two shooters in JFK’s assassi-nation? Was the Apollo moon landing a hoax?

Conspiracy theories seem to drive Americans crazy.

In March 2008, a mystery investor spent $1.7 million on a series of options that Bear Stearns, a global investment bank and brokerage firm, would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. At the time, it seemed like an insane gamble.

The real conspiracy is that the gamble paid off.

Six months later, Lehman Brothers, another top-five global financial services firm, was va-porized by the same type of market manipulation that caused Bear Stearns to fold.

Is it really possible both col-lapses were intentional?

It is, thanks to the naked short sell, an investment strategy that allows investors to bet against companies they believe will fail. The more they bet, the more likely the firm will collapse.

The problem with naked short selling, in addition to being illegal, is the shares are not actually owned by the seller nor are they planning on delivering them.

It would be like me selling my wife’s skis on eBay, with-out her permission, because I was sure she would eventually give up skiing. I sell them for $150 but never actually ship the skis. After all, they aren’t mine to sell.

The buyer gets a certificate that shows them as the new owner but agrees to let me hold the skis for him.

Assuming the skis are val-ued at $300, the new buyer got a heck of deal. They now own $300 skis. My wife also owns the same $300 skis. The value hasn’t changed, but the num-ber of owners has. Again, I am hedging my wife will eventu-ally give up skiing.

Let’s assume I sold the same skis eight more times for $150 but never actually delivered them. We now have 10 owners (including my wife) all believ-ing they own $300 skis. I’ve collected $1,350 for something I don’t even own. Brilliant!

What happens when one of the new owners wants their skis? Simple; I ship them and now my wife has no skis, which means she will give up skiing. I have manipulated the market and forced my wife to give up skiing.

Eventually, one of the re-maining owners will also want their skis. Here lies the prob-

lem. They don’t actually exist. Technically, all 10 owners have $30 in ski value, there-fore, the value of the skis has now essentially fallen to $30.

If I kept selling the same skis, they would eventually have no value and my house of cards would begin to crumble.

In 2008, thousands of in-vestors began hedging their bets that Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers would be-gin to crumble. The number of naked short sells against each firm began to double and double and double, thereby decreasing the value of each stock until it was worthless.

They both filed for bank-ruptcy and were eventually purchased by larger firms.

Did these larger firms have a hand in their demise? Con-spiracy theorists say yes.

They believe this type of mar-ket manipulation is also the same scheme that caused the Internet bubble to burst and the mortgage industry to crumble.

Think of how many times your mortgage has been sold to another lender or bundled in a mortgage-backed mutual fund. Each time it’s sold, the value of the mortgage hasn’t changed but the number of owners has.

Is it really that simple? If I had a few million dollars, could I force the price of a stock down simply by betting the stock will fail? The answer is yes.

Anyone interested in buying some skis?

You can tell a lot about folks by their Christmas decorations. Those with artificial trees, for ex-ample tend to be efficient, prag-matic and in tune with society.

“Why go out and buy a tree every year?” they reason. “You’re just going to send it to the landfill later.”

Those who buy a living tree, on the other hand, tend to be young, idealistic and concerned about the environ-ment. They hope to “save our forests” by purchasing a live tree and then planting it out-side after Christmas.

Living tree advocates often plant their tree in the back-yard or at a friend’s house. I recommend the friend’s house, because the tree is probably

going to die, anyway.It’s like Mother always said,

“You can bring it into the house and you can feed it. But if I were you, I wouldn’t give it a name.”

A third group, the “real tree” people, are bound by tradition. These folks tend to be old-fashioned, uncompro-mising and possibly stubborn.

There is a need for artificial trees in some cases, but those who buy real trees should be given some room. They believe Christmas trees are grown and harvested for our enjoyment, like any other crop.

We don’t see people planting corn in their yards — with the purpose of saving our cornfields. What’s this thing with the trees!?

I know some folks are opposed to tree harvesting of any sort, but that line of thinking has its limi-tations. This is best illustrated by the Sad Christmas Story.

I should mention the Sad Christmas Story is a fairy tale, as opposed to a redneck story. Readers will recall a fairy tale begins with “Once upon a time.” A redneck story starts out “You ain’t gonna believe this!”

You ain’t gonna believe this, but once upon a time there was a little fir tree growing way out in the National Forest. (In a roadless area, I think.)

The little fir tree had a slight case of needle rust and a few budworms, but still, he was hoping a nice family would come to the forest and take him home to celebrate the holidays.

Try as he might, the little fir couldn’t compete with the fan-cy pines or the elegant spruce that grew nearby. One by one, families came to the forest to cut their trees and nobody no-ticed the little fir who wanted so badly to celebrate Christ-mas with a family.

(How these people were get-ting into the forest without any roads is a political problem not suited for fairy tales.)

Finally, the day before Christ-mas the little fir tree had almost given up hope. Then suddenly, he heard rustling in the brush! Was this a nice family coming to take him home for Christmas?

Nope. It was a big flock of woodpeckers! And they just wiped him out.

The Back Forty: It’s landfill

By Roger Pond

A heartfelt thanksAs citizens of Othello, we

would like to say to our super police force, the fire department and staff, you are very much ap-preciated. God bless you. Have a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Herb and Janet WardOthello

Win Afghanistan warPresident Obama and many

of his followers have dwelled on the past and attempted to blame George Bush for the country’s ills.

The Obama Administration has been in charge for almost a year and should have made more progress toward solving

our problems, especially with a Democratic-controlled Con-gress since 2006.

It is the easy way out to blame others for problems. Bush could have blamed Clin-ton for decimating our mili-tary, but he didn’t.

Bush was castigated for the Iraq war, but it was Rumsfeld

who promoted the “shock and awe” war of taking Iraq with 125,000 troops (Rumsfeld originally requested 75,000 troops) when General Shinse-ki, the Army chief of staff, said we needed 250,000 troops to subdue the Iraqi military and the countryside.

The general was correct

and the result was the military mess in Iraq. General Petraeus finally got enough troops into Iraq to do the job.

Now, President Obama has added 30,000 troops in Af-ghanistan to try to decimate the Taliban and al Qaeda.

We are in Afghanistan and have to win the war or we risk

the potential attacks of terror-ists throughout the world.

I am pleased President Obama is showing some leadership.

Donald A. MoskowitzFormer AG2 and LT, U.S. Navy

Londonderry, N.H.

By Don C. BrunellPresident

Association of Washington Business

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

As part of its health-reform package, the U.S. Senate wants to expand access to the almost bankrupt Medicare program. Currently limited to seniors over 65, the proposal would allow people 55 to 64 to pur-chase Medicare coverage.

That’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. In fact, the Senate is actively en-couraging more passengers to get onboard the sinking ship that is Medicare.

Without a huge infusion of cash from our government (us), Medicare goes down like a big rock in a pond.

That’s unfortunate, especial-ly when there are affordable, risk-free private sector solu-tions to what ails our health-care system — but more about that later.

The proposal to expand Medicare is an attempt to ap-pease moderate Democrats who oppose the so-called “public option” — a govern-ment-run insurance program.

But some fear that, once 55 year olds are covered, political pressure will build to expand eligibility even further.

According to a Washington Post editorial, “The irony of this late-breaking Medicare proposal is that it could be a bigger step toward a single-payer system than the milquetoast public op-tion plans rejected by Senate moderates as too disruptive of the private market.”

The major problem is the Medicare program is unsus-

tainable; in fact, it is projected to go bankrupt in seven years.

The 2009 Social Security and Medicare Trustees Report shows Medicare has unfunded liabilities — costs exceeding income — of $86 trillion dol-lars. Expanding Medicare as the centerpiece of health-care reform seems a questionable strategy at best.

For example, Medicare doesn’t pay the full cost of medical services.

It reimburses doctors and hospitals only 83 percent of the true costs, forcing them to shift the unpaid costs onto people with private insurance.

Putting more people in the program will only worsen that cost shift, further stress-ing strapped medical provid-ers and increasing private insurance premiums.

For that reason, the pro-posal came under intense fire from the American Hospital Association and American Medical Association (AMA) as soon as it was announced.

In addition, the AMA, which supports national health reform, reports Medi-care denies claims at double the average rate of private in-surance companies.

And “60 Minutes” corre-spondent Steve Kroft reports that “Medicare fraud — esti-mated now to total about $60 billion a year — has become one of, if not the most profit-able, crimes in America.”

This is not a good foun-dation upon which to base health-care reform.

Lastly, there is great concern about the cost of enrolling millions of additional people in a program heavily subsi-dized by the taxpayers.

Current Medicare benefi-ciaries pay $96.40 per month, with the taxpayers picking up the rest of the premium cost.

So, if expanding Medi-care isn’t a solution, what is the answer?

If the goal truly is to improve

access to affordable health care — rather than a govern-ment takeover of 16 percent of our economy — there are several affordable, risk-free, market-based ways to accom-plish that goal.

• Allow people to purchase health care across state lines. Families will have more choices and insurance com-panies would compete na-tionwide for customers.

• Give families and individu-als the same tax exemptions for health insurance premi-ums as employers.

• Rather than create a mam-moth federal program, sim-ply provide vouchers to help people purchase private health insurance.

• Encourage the 14 million uninsured people who qual-ify for existing government health programs to enroll in those programs.

• Lawsuit reform would save billions of dollars now spent on frivolous lawsuits and de-fensive medicine, the practice of ordering unnecessary tests just to protect against a pos-sible lawsuit.

Thankfully, some Senate Democrats are signaling they may reconsider the proposal to expand Medicare as part of health-care reform.

Rather than enroll more people in a faltering govern-ment program, Congress should focus on private-sector solutions that give Americans more choices, more indepen-dence and more control over their own health care.

Don Brunell is the presi-dent of the Association of Washington Business.

www.OthelloOutlook.comA2 The Othello Outlook – Thursday, December 10, 2009 O p i n i O n




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Questions for the editorLast weeks editorial (Raise

your hand) raised more questions in my mind than it answered. So, in order of ap-pearance, I want to address some points you raised and of-fer some counterpoints.

1. The annual budget for Othello in 2010 is $18 Mil-lion. Is that really a high figure when you take into account economies of like scale? How does the Othello budget stack up next to other communities of like size? Moreover, how does the quality of life in those cities measure up to our own?

This is a line of thought an investigative journalist might follow. Perhaps if these things were brought to light in this paper, we all could see the big-ger picture a bit more clearly.

2. On one hand, $2 million earmarked for a new well and $312,000 for rehab on another well seems like the kind of thoughtful and forward look-ing responsible thinking I as

a citizen taxpayer expect of the city. If memory serves me, Othello wants to top out in population at about double the number we now have.

Now, on the other hand, you raise the question of whether Othello is preparing to grow or faces a potential water shortage. The answer, as I see it, is yes.

Short term, water in Othello seems to be in abundant supply. Long term, I wonder if Othello faces the same challenges as our neighbors to the east.

Just 20 miles east of our city, areas in the Odessa subaquifer area and homes in the Cunning-ham area are seeing their water supply drying up due to exten-sive use of well water for the purposes of potable water and crop watering. In spite of digging deeper, the output of water is lacking and trucking in drinking water is expensive.

Does Othello face the same fate? Time will tell. But make no mistake, there has been and is a broad, real desire to see Othello

thrive and grow to its full mea-sure of potential.

Sometimes, this desire blinds us to potential pitfalls (which I will mention a little later here) but I want to see more in depth reporting from this award-win-ning newspaper about how all the pieces fit together for the wa-ter picture in our region.

Perhaps a better explanation could be gleaned from the ex-tensive hydro mapping that has been done by GWMA in the re-gion. The Odessa subaquifer has been a concern for some time.

I feel we owe it to our posterity to better understand our water stocks and to do our best to en-sure Othello is still here to see its 200-year celebration.

3. Do we need a community center and skateboard park. As a person who has lived here more than 25 years, I feel there is a long-standing desire for these things. But better than a feeling, it might be good to re-view juvenile crime statistics to support the argument. Perhaps the span of time before, dur-

ing and after the boys and girls club was open in Othello could be correlated with the juvenile crime statistics, as just one measuring standard to compare to. Same goes for the question of teen pregnancy rates.

4. Are the city staff under-paid? Well, why don’t you look into the particulars and inform the public? How about clueing us all into the thought pro-cess used by the city to reach the conclusion that a 5 percent across the board raise is in or-der? One other question I per-sonally have is whether a raise is long overdue.

I strongly question the logic of using a 12-month snapshot of the consumer price index as a good barometer to gauge the situation. I would like to see a 10-year his-tory to better understand how those pieces fit together.

5. You said a few members on the local city council raise these types of questions if the public won’t. One such person is outgoing councilmember Eleanor Brodahl. Her years in

the banking and financial in-dustry, coupled with her years of service on the city council and keen memory of facts, have helped sculpt the debate at council. Her principled ap-proach has kept the city from running headlong into due process or class action law-suits regarding water rights for our town, but also put her at odds with some who felt she was hampering their endeav-ors. I find her courage admi-rable and I, for one, appreciate her noble service to our town and will miss her being there on the council.

In summary, sir, I believe the questions raised in last week’s editorial could bear the scrutiny of some good old gumshoe investigative journal-ism. I do not espouse the idea that the public does not care about what happens at city council meetings.

I hereby issue a challenge to you sir. In short, inform us.

You ask some good ques-

tions. Dig for the answers! Practice great journalism

and get the story. Give us some background so we can see how the pieces all fit together.

A newspaper at its best re-ports the facts unvarnished, entertains opposing points of view in a civilized manner, corrects its mistakes for the re-cord and holds public figures to give account to the citizenry.

It is your job as journalists to inform the public, not glean book reports from public ser-vants and print them verbatim.

Don’t expect the public to provide content for the body of the newspaper, the public are not journalists.

To expect such would be sadly sophomoric and lacking in professionalism.

Do not rest on your award-winning journalistic laurels. Earn more accolades from your peers and your reading public.

Sean BatesSubscriber

Letter to the Editor


Othello Outlook

Congressman Doc Hastings

Not all have chimneys

Small business creates jobs for Central Washington

When is it appropriate to stop sheltering your children from the truth? Should they really know babies aren’t delivered by storks and that birds and bees don’t actually procreate?

My teenage daughter still won’t believe me.

If they ask, should I tell them President Obama is hir-ing the same people to fix our nation’s financial woes who caused the financial collapse in the first place? Some things are better left to adults.

The real issue this Christmas is … when do I come clean about Santa Claus?

What’s unique about Santa is everyone is entitled to believe what they want. I can have an In-dian Santa. You can have a white Santa. He can have a thin Santa. She can even have a beardless Santa. The point is it’s your Santa.

Let’s use Jesus as an example.Over the holidays, some peo-

ple like to imagine their Jesus as a baby in a golden fleece di-aper nestled in a small wooden rocker. Some prefer the surfer or Bee-Gee Jesus.

Either way, it’s your Jesus over the holidays.

But what about Santa? We raise our children to believe that an overweight elderly white male is able to fly a sleigh around the world, squeeze into millions of chimneys in a 12-hour span, all the while com-manding magic reindeer.

I see one fatal flaw in this

belief. Not everyone around the world has a chimney.

And have you ever seen a reindeer? They are the size of a large dog. And even if large dogs were magic and could fly, I doubt they would be willing to pull a giant two-ton sleigh filled with gifts over Christmas without holiday pay.

I have four kids between the ages of 8 and 13. My two eldest have already accepted that I am Santa. One is strug-gling to let go and my youngest son still believes.

Ahhh … to be young and without worry.

I’m pretty confident this will be his last year as a “believer.” His three older sisters will gladly make sure of that.

What frightens me is the as-sumption that all “non-believ-ers” are immediately placed on the Naughty List. If that’s the case, maybe now is a good time to start believing again.

Representing all or part of 10 central Washington counties provides me the opportunity to travel across much of our state and visit with people from many di-verse communities.

As you might imagine, there are a variety of concerns and needs that come from each part of the region.

While Douglas County is a very different part of the state than the Gorge, they all have one thing in common — small businesses create the jobs that sustain our local economy.

Innovation is the key to small business success and what leads to continued job growth and expansion.

It’s the role of the federal government to allow com-panies the freedom to come up with new ideas and prod-ucts, not to impose new taxes, mandates and restrictions on honest law-abiding small busi-

nesses and entrepreneurs.One of the ways I continue

to learn about the ever-chang-ing needs of central Washing-ton is to visit and tour local businesses.

Doing so, I get the chance to listen to the men and women who create jobs and grow our economy and give managers and employees the chance to ask me questions about fed-eral issues.

This is my chance to hear from them what Congress can do to help small business re-main the economic engine of our Central Washington econ-omy.

Recently, I visited two companies that are doing their part to create new jobs and make products that help our state.

Norco in Moses Lake and Pexco in Union Gap are two great examples of successful firms that have brought manu-facturing facilities into our local communities, provided quality jobs for area residents, contributed to the town’s tax base and generally helped strengthen the economy.

When I toured Norco, I learned their company is one of the foremost manu-facturers of welding, safety, medical and gas products in the country.

The company focuses on separating air into its indi-vidual components of nitro-gen, oxygen and argon.

This highly specialized work is used by many medi-cal facilities that provide oxygen to their patients.

At my tour of Pexco, I heard the plant manager ex-plain how the company melts pellets and molds plastics for use in the aerospace, medical and construction industries and parts for Boeing aircraft.

With about 150 employees working at the plant, Pexco plays an integral role in the Union Gap community.

Companies like these are truly the backbone of the American economy.

Congress must work to re-duce costly regulations, lower taxes and generally promote innovation and expansion.

Giving small business own-ers the tools they need to create jobs and grow their business is vitally important to strengthening our econo-my and is what I will contin-ue to support in the House of Representatives.

The Back Forty: Fish stories

By Roger PondThere seems to be two

types of hunters and fisher-men: Those who stretch the truth and those who shrink it. Either way, the truth is a neb-ulous concept for most of us.

I learned this while hunt-ing rabbits as a teenager. My brother Kenny and I had a pretty good morning and were near limits by noon. Then we headed into town for lunch.

A well-known truth stretcher approached our table to talk hunting. “We were just out for an hour or so and got two pheas-ants,” he said. “How’d you do?”

“Oh, we didn’t get anything,” Kenny said.

After the older man left, I asked my brother, “Why didn’t you tell him about the rabbits we shot?”

“I knew he didn’t have any pheasants,” Kenny said. “So I fig-

ured if he was going to lie to us, why should I tell him the truth?”

My son has adopted a similar strategy for steelhead fishing. When someone asks if he’s hav-ing any luck, Russ generally says, “Nope,” whether he has or not.

If they ask what kind of bait he’s using, he says, “Eggs.” Russ might have the biggest, shiniest plug you ever saw dangling from his rod tip, but he still says, “Eggs.”

I really can’t fault those an-swers. When a person catches fish, it’s probably not a good idea to broadcast it all over the county and salmon eggs are certainly a time-tested bait.

In his book “The Best of Ed Zern,” the great humor writer tells about one of his friends who spent much of his life on the trout streams of the North-east. The fishing pressure and finicky trout in that part of the country turned this fellow into an expert with nymphs.

When a business trip took him to Portland, Ore., this man wasted no time heading for the Deschutes River. After studying the water for a while, he no-ticed a tiny midge was hatching. So he tied on a No. 20 nymph

(slightly larger than a fruit fly) and proceeded to clobber trout the rest of the day.

He lost quite a few fish on the little flies but managed to keep five in the 16- to 18-inch class. (Daily limits on the Deschutes were larger in those days.)

As he was walking back to the car, he ran into a party of three local fishermen. When they saw his stringer of fish, they asked what kind of bait he caught them on. (Bait was still legal at the time.)

The fly fisherman showed them the tiny, little nymph and these western fishermen “be-came moody,” as Zern puts it. One of them picked Zern’s friend up by the scruff of the neck and said, “In these parts, stranger, when a man asks us what we caught our fish on, we don’t try to kid him. Now, git!”

He got. But before he made it back to his car, he ran into another group of eight-foot tall fishermen. After admiring his trout, they asked what he caught them on.

“A great big glob of salm-on eggs,” he said. Then he jumped in his car and drove to Portland as fast as he could!

www.OthelloOutlook.comA2 The Othello Outlook – Thursday, November 19, 2009 O p i n i O n




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Letter to the Editor


Othello Outlook

By Don C. BrunellPresident

Association of Washington Business

The Back Forty: Outdoor sense

By Roger Pond


You’ll never guess what I saw the other day. Give up? A litterer.

I actually witnessed a young male throw an empty plastic bottle to the ground, almost like it was trash. I think I even heard him mutter.

Now you may assume I stormed over and strong armed the young 6-foot-3 man. Despite the fact that my hips hurt when I get out of bed and I was on my way to get cream for my morning coffee, I opted for the more dovish approach.

I picked it up for him. I en-abled him. I pitched in and picked up his slack.

I could’ve called the 1-800-litter line and cost tax-payers twice as much as the ticket. But I didn’t.

If I hadn’t picked it up, where would it go? Would it roll around the parking lot, eventually get caught up in the wind and blow over the Cascades to the Pacific ocean. Or would it take the more efficient route down the Columbia River? Either way was probably going to kill a seagull someday.

We all know that plastics’ fantastic 100-year rise to fame falls into the “trash that keeps on giving” category.

Plastic is simply everywhere and will not biodegrade. That’s the best part. The more we make, the more we have. The more we have, the more we accumulate. Brilliant!

Apparently, one-third of all the plastic we make, have and accumulate is discarded within a few minutes to a year. Again, where does it go?

I’ve heard of a floating gar-bage dump two-times the size

of Texas called the North Pa-cific Gyre. Maybe it goes there.

Think of a gyre as that last bit of Comet bubble still in the toilet after a thorough clean-ing. It swirls and swirls but never leaves the middle until that last flush.

In nautical terms, the North Pacific Gyre is home to the circular currents and trade winds of the Pacific Ocean.

What goes in will eventually filter to the middle, only with-out any flushing escape plan.

Early December, 192 coun-tries will finally address strat-egies to keep global tempera-tures from continuing to rise at the United Nations summit on climate change in Copen-hagen. Think of George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove only times 192.

I guess since the U.S. alone provides 25 percent of the world’s total greenhouse-gas pollution, with barely 5 per-cent of the population, it’s a good thing I did chip in.

Think of that single plastic bottle as the beginning.

How do you get rid of the Comet bubble?

Throughout the last cen-tury, the United States has experienced periods of un-precedented growth, as well as recession. One consistent theme throughout this history is that when taxes have been reduced and the American people have been given more of their hard-earned money to invest and save, our country has prospered and grown.

That is why Congress must take action before the end of the year to keep taxes from being raised on millions of Americans. Keeping taxes low will create jobs, help busi-nesses invest and expand and allow Americans to keep more of what they earn and send less money to Washington, D.C.

Unless Congress takes ac-tion in the next month, the state sales tax deduction, the

tax deduction for teachers and tuition tax credits will all ex-pire. These taxes will impact millions of families and cost families thousands each year.

According to the IRS, the state sales tax deduction saves Washington residents about $500 million each year. In ad-dition, it is estimated our state could lose between 2,000 and 3,000 jobs if the deduction were eliminated.

That is why I am supporting legislation to allow Washing-tonians to continue deducting state sales tax from their fed-eral taxes. For 20 years, Ameri-cans who paid state income taxes could deduct those taxes from their federal taxes, while those who paid state sales taxes but no state income taxes weren’t allowed to.

In 2004, Congress finally enacted a law to fix this dis-parity, a deduction that will expire at the end of the year. This is a matter of fairness. Taxpayers in non-income tax states like Washington deserve equal treatment.

Another tax that will affect Washington families if it is not extended is the current tax deduction for elementary and secondary school teachers.

Many teachers throughout cen-tral Washington supplement their official resources with educational materials pur-chased on their own. Whether it is extra notebooks for their class, a microscope or just new pens and pencils for their stu-dents, many teachers go above and beyond the call of duty to help give the best educational experience possible.

Congress recognized that commitment and provided a tax deduction to those who choose to make such pur-chases. Unless that deduction is extended by the end of the year, teachers will pay more to help their students.

Congress needs to move forward with plans to extend these tax incentives so we can get our economy moving for-ward again. Instead of legisla-tion that imposes a new cap and trade national energy tax, or a costly new health care mandate, this Congress should get back to the issues that will help improve our economy and create jobs.

Ensuring these tax incen-tives do not expire at the end of the year will have biparti-san support and should be passed immediately.

Doing nothing a bad idea

Recently, The Othello Out-look newspaper wrote a won-derful front page article about the Othello Food Bank. Since then, folks have stopped me and asked how they can con-tribute to the food bank here in a monetary way. I’ve told

them their donations can be mailed to the Othello Food Bank, P.O. Box 152, Othello, WA 99344.

We volunteers at the food bank would like to take this opportunity to express our sincerest THANK YOU to all

of the folks who support the food bank here in Othello.

Bob FullerVice-Chairman

The Othello Food Bank

Now that voters have reject-ed I-1033, the spending limit initiative, the talk in Olympia has turned to raising taxes.

Hiking taxes would be the wrong thing to do. Our economy is just showing signs of recovery.

Gov. Chris Gregoire hit the nail on the head in her re-marks at the Association of Washington Business’ policy summit this September: “Tell me a tax you’re going to in-crease that will give you $1 billion that doesn’t hurt busi-ness, hurt individuals, hurt our recovery.”

The governor’s words ring true with employers who are trying to compete in a cost-sensitive global economy and provide jobs for people strug-gling to pay their bills. Cash is tight for employers and fami-lies, for charitable organiza-tions and government.

Taking more money from individuals and employers through higher taxes means less money for government and charities if businesses have to close or cut back fur-ther. It is a vicious cycle.

So, how do we provide more funds for necessary govern-ment services, public schools,

community colleges and uni-versities without increasing taxes or fees?

The answer lies in the source of our tax revenue: the private sector.

In Washington, businesses pay more than half of our state and local tax revenue through property, business and occupa-tion and sales taxes. Private em-ployers provide millions of jobs, enabling people to buy goods and services and pay their share of state and local taxes.

When businesses falter, tax revenues plummet and people get laid off, increasing the need for government services. When merchants and manufacturers thrive, employers expand and modernize and hire more peo-ple and therefore, everybody pays more taxes.

The key for the state, then, is to find ways to help businesses do better or at least do no fur-ther harm by hiking tax rates.

We learned this lesson the hard way 16 years ago.

In 1981 and 1993, our state found itself in bruising eco-nomic downturns. Governors John Spellman and Mike Low-ry and state lawmakers levied higher taxes.

In 1981, Spellman and con-trolling Republicans not only raised taxes, they cut incen-tives that stimulated manufac-turing investments.

In 1993, Lowry and the Democrat majority not only raised taxes, they increased workers’ compensation and unemployment costs and implemented a costly new government-mandated health system.

In both instances, employ-

ers were forced to lay people off and found they could not pass all of those added costs on to their customers in the form of higher prices.

In 1995, Lowry pushed the Legislature to approve a bill encouraging growth in the state’s manufacturing sector. The bill exempted manufac-turers from the sales tax on new machinery, equipment, repair and replacement parts and research and develop-ment. The incentive more than paid for itself in higher tax revenues and new businesses.

The exemption is still pay-ing dividends. State and local governments are expected to realize $2.1 billion in ad-ditional net tax revenues be-tween 2007 and 2016.

No doubt the state’s next revenue forecast will be down again, increasing the financial stress on government, public schools, colleges and uni-versities. As consumer con-fidence continues slipping, it means lower sales and less income for employers to hire, modernize or expand.

But as we saw in 1981 and 1993, raising taxes doesn’t help, it only compounds the problem.

And our situation today is even worse.

The recession is far more severe, global competition is fierce and consumers are more cost-sensitive.

Raising taxes won’t make consumers more confident, it won’t create jobs and it won’t encourage employers to ex-pand and hire.

We need to stimulate the private sector to lead us back to recovery.

Time to up revenue, not taxes

Anyone who enjoys the out-doors should be delighted that women are getting more in-volved in outdoor sports. Wild-life agencies in many states are sponsoring programs to help women learn about sports, such as hunting, fishing, and fly tying.

I’m happy to see the value of such instruction is finally being recognized. If a fellow could get his wife to attend a program like this, she might become interested in fishing and hunting — or learn how to tie up a few Carey Specials in the lantern light of the old fishing cabin.

Sponsors are quick to point out these outdoor programs are not just for wives; they’re for any woman who wants to become more involved in outdoor sports. Women don’t attend just because husbands want them to, either.

That doesn’t surprise me any. Experts tell us many

women don’t enjoy taking sug-gestions from their husbands.

I’m reminded of a woman describing her job to my wife a few years ago. “This is the worst job I’ve ever had,” she said. “Everyone is always tell-ing me what to do and then complaining about the way I do it. It’s like going fishing with your husband.”

My wife thought that was hilarious, but I didn’t. Some-times, her sense of humor leaves me baffled.

Don’t get me wrong, I think outdoor programs for women are a great idea — married or unmarried. I would expect single men are asking for the graduation list.

The class offerings are ex-cellent. The weekend program I read about includes game calling, working dogs, rappel-ling, wilderness medicine and kayaking.

I questioned the rappelling and kayaking at first, but I suppose these have some val-ue. I can think of several in-stances where I’ve dropped a bird over a cliff and someone who was good at rappelling would be a fine companion in those situations.

Kayaking skills would come in handy if a bear was swim-ming toward your boat and

the little woman was obliged to use the oars on him. Or for those times when a person is camped in the swamp and someone has to swat mosqui-toes with her canoe paddle.

I was especially happy to see the class on wilderness medicine. The value of this subject was impressed upon me and some elk hunting friends many years ago.

My two friends and I ar-rived in camp with two tents and one stove. We somehow decided to put the stove in the cook tent and sleep in the cold, clammy one.

Then, we pitched our sleep-ing tent with the door uphill so the melting snow would trickle in and float our sleep-ing bags. Next, I got out some steaks for dinner — with the plan of cooking them outside under the tent flap.

The cold rain and snow turned my steak-grilling job into a two-hour ordeal. Dinner was late that evening and hap-py hour was longer than usual.

My friends and I laugh about that outing every time we see each other.

Even after all of these years, everyone agrees, we should have been thankful for the wil-derness medicine we packed into camp.

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Seeking to capitalize on the righteous indignation voters are feeling toward President Barack Obama and his Con-gressional allies, a group of Republican politicians is dust-ing off an old playbook.

Led by former GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich — Washing-ton’s preeminent “Reformer in Name Only” — this group’s plan is to bring back the “Con-tract with America,” the 1994 policy platform that helped propel Republicans to majori-ties in both the U.S. House and Senate in 1995.

In unveiling his first draft of such a document, Gingrich spoke of “the clarity, the posi-tive focus and the election re-sults of the 1994 contract.”

He obviously wasn’t able to speak about the post-election results of the contract, be-cause those are frankly few and far between.

Nonetheless, a second con-tract, Gingrich said, would be a powerful unifier for all those who are tired of the corrup-tion and waste of Washington and the alien views of the sec-ular-socialist coalition seeking to radically change America.

Well, well. That’s tough talk — but once again, it’s all pre-election.

And while Republicans are great at campaigning on limit-ed government talking points, they’ve proven positively awful when it comes to governing according to those principles.

After all, the “corruption

and waste of Washington” didn’t stop when Gingrich and his Republican Revolutionists rode into town; far from it, in fact. And as for the “secular-socialist coalition,” didn’t Gin-grich recently endorse a secu-lar socialist (over a limited government Conservative Party candidate) in a New York Con-gressional race?

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

That should be America’s re-sponse to a “second contract.”

Gingrich’s 1994 plan was actually dead before arrival, meaning the Speaker and his committee chairmen broke their balanced budget promises early on in their first appropria-tions process — literally days after arriving in the Capitol.

“We got our people into leadership,” the late Paul Wey-rich, a long-time Gingrich ally, said in 1996. “But we are not getting different policies.”

Indeed, the two signature “accomplishments” of the Republican Revolution were partisan distractions — a po-litically-motivated government shutdown and the impeach-ment of President Bill Clinton. And, of course, after Clinton came the big government era of “Bush Republicanism,” which has been an unmitigat-ed fiscal disaster.

Also, remember how the Gingrich contract was going to replace career politicians with “citizen legislators?”

Well, more than a decade and a half later, there are still two dozen Republican mem-bers of the class of ‘94 serving in the U.S. House. Six others have gone on to become U.S. Senators, including Sen. Lind-sey Graham, of South Caro-lina, a staunch supporter of Obama’s “cap and trade” en-ergy tax.

Gingrich’s “second contract” doesn’t mention a word about term limits, incidentally.

“The Republicans have

stopped being reformers,” former congressman John Ka-sich lamented shortly after the GOP was routed from power in 2006. “They’re practicing poli-tics as usual.”

Indeed, Democrats won control of Congress in 2006 by pledging to restore fiscal san-ity in light of Republican bud-get excesses — and Obama won the presidency in 2008 by promising tax cuts to the middle class.

Clearly, these “bread and circus” centrist diversions (neither of which the Demo-crats were ever serious about implementing) masked a sinister socialist agenda, but should Republicans be the ones we trust to make a course correction?

And more importantly, can America afford the conse-quences of another aborted “Republican” revolution?

Much more promising a reform effort than Gingrich’s top-down contract, in my opinion, is a grassroots move-ment by tea party activists to create a Contract From Amer-ica — a document springing up in cities and towns across America, rather than originat-ing from the corrupt centers of power in Washington, D.C.

Or, for that matter, the Mount Vernon Statement, which challenges candidates to pledge their allegiance to the fundamental foundations of Constitutional governance.

Ultimately, though, Republi-cans and Democrats alike will be judged not by their promis-es but by their votes — which will either protect taxpayers and promote their liberties or continue down the same bipartisan path of excess and interventionism.

Howard Rich, chairman of

Americans for Limited Gov-ernment, is a Liberty Fea-tures Syndicated writer.

It was little league tryouts and something wasn’t right.

Typically, my 9-year-old son would be rambling about a new funny face he invented or mathematically doubling a number until it can’t be doubled.

For the first time on record, Cooper was silent.

“Is he nervous?” I thought. When I was 9, I had my first

baseball tryouts. I never played tee-ball or machine pitch and headed straight for the “bigs” — or at least the minors.

To break the silence, I told Cooper about my first year and how I took three base-balls off the face on three separate occasions.

“I used to wear these giant glasses that would fog up,” I explained, hoping to ease his anxiety.

Still silent. I glanced in the rearview mirror, hoping to catch a smile. Nothing but fear … or so I thought.

I went through a laundry list of fundamentals: Quick hands, squash the bug, sit down on a ground ball. Still nothing.

Cooper certainly looked the part. Yankee pinstripe pants, socks with the faux stirrup, Nike cleats and even a ball cap with the perfectly straight bill.

We’d spent hours over the previous weeks working on hit-ting, fielding and even base run-ning, so I knew he was ready.

I wanted him to shine. To be so good other parents lifted me on their shoulders, thanking me for giving him life.

As we pulled up to the field, the lights were just be-ginning to illuminate. It felt like baseball.

I started again on the funda-mentals: Settle under a fly ball, hit your cutoff in the chest. Still nothing but silence.

He finally looked up and re-

sponded, “What did you say?”Then it hit me. He had found

his 13-year-old sister’s iPod and was enjoying her cata-log of downloaded music. He wasn’t silent because he was nervous, he was silent from the horrific tween-pop blaring through his eardrums.

He pulled the earplugs from his ears, grabbed his glove, laced his cleats and exited the car on a mission. Only his mis-sion was to find his friends.

Cooper ended up doing great. He dropped his first fly ball (“two hands,” I thought to myself) but hit his cutoff man right in the chest. He fielded his ground balls and made the best throw he could to first base. At the plate, he was one of maybe a dozen kids who almost made contact with every pitch.

He did everything I had coached him to do.

Tryouts ended and we made our way home. As we pulled into the driveway, I turned and asked him how he thought he did.

He looked up, removed the earbud headphones from his ears and responded, “What?”

I guess I’ll never understand credit cards. How can compa-nies continue issuing credit and encouraging folks to buy things they can’t afford without running into serious collec-tion problems?

Yesterday, I had two credit card offers in the mail and one over the phone and that was a slow day. In recent weeks, I’ve been offered gold, platinum, silver-plated, cadmium-coated and lead-alloy cards with af-filiation to every organization known to man.

I gave them all the same answer, “We’ve got plenty of cards.” Clank!

It’s easy to see why card companies want to extend credit to people like me. We’re valued customers, members of

a select group, people of im-peccable taste. (Besides that we’re alive and breathing.)

I’m not sure when the con-cept of living within one’s means became outmoded, but I think television advertis-ing has something to do with it. One has to wonder about those commercials that sug-gest, “You need to buy this — not because you need it, not because you can afford it. You need to buy this because you deserve it.”

Maybe I have a low opinion of myself, but I don’t think I’ve ever bought anything because I deserve it.

Last fall, I watched a com-mercial for the company that offers money to folks who didn’t pay it back last time. This com-mercial features a former bas-ketball player who has so much money I can’t understand why he does these things.

This fellow comes on the screen and asks folks with credit problems to call his company and find out how to buy things they can’t afford. He suggests a new car is some-thing we might need but prob-

ably can’t pay for.“Just call this number and find

out how you can buy the car you need and deserve,” he says.

I was reminded of a story my brother told me several years ago. My brother was sitting in the coffee shop chatting with an old-timer who lives nearby, when a younger man stopped by their table.

The young man told them about his job and his boss and quite a few things that weren’t going well at work. “First, they changed my hours; then, I got a new boss. Now I’ve got more responsibility, but I don’t get paid any more than I did be-fore,” he said.

The young fellow described the benefits package his com-pany promised the new em-ployees and all of the prob-lems he was having with that. This fellow said he wasn’t one to complain. He just wanted to get what he deserved.

When the young fellow walked away, the old-timer turned to my brother and said, “You know, I think I’ve spent most of my life trying to avoid getting what I deserve.”

The Back Forty: On credit …

By Roger Pond

By Howie RichChairman

Americans for Limited Government


Othello Outlook

Baseball, tween-pop and fatherhood

Terrorists need military trials, not courtrooms

GOP: Contractually bound? The United States is cur-rently engaged in a global war against terrorists whose pri-mary mission is to attack our nation and destroy our way of life. While we may not see the results of our soldier’s efforts on the front pages of the news-paper each day, they are serv-ing around the world to protect our nation and bring terrorists to justice and have already killed or captured some of the most dangerous terrorists.

Bringing terrorists to the United States will only under-mine our security and place our citizens at risk.

I join with many Americans who are concerned about the Obama Administration’s ini-tial decision to transfer Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the admit-ted mastermind of the Sept. 11

attacks, to New York City for trial in civilian federal court.

Under their plan, the man who planned and helped ex-ecute the attacks that killed 3,000 that fateful day would receive the same protections and legal rights under the Constitution that U.S. citizens receive and serve as a poten-tial target for further attacks, putting our country at risk.

Recent news reports indicate the administration may con-sider changing its mind and reversing course, a decision I would welcome.

Most Americans understand the danger of transferring ter-rorists to the United States and holding trials for them here. The trials must occur, but in a place that provides maximum safety for our nation and at as low a cost to the American tax-payer as possible.

That is why I am supporting and co-sponsoring the Keep Terrorists Out of America bill aimed at preventing terrorists held at the Guantanamo Bay prison from being transferred into the United States.

I’m also supporting legisla-tion that would block the ad-ministration from bringing ter-

rorist detainees to trial in a U.S. civilian court. This bill would still allow for military trials to occur at Guantanamo Bay, or in another appropriate military facility, but would not allow the Justice Department to try these terrorists in U.S. courts.

A readymade solution for where to hold the trials already exists on our military base at Guantanamo Bay, a solution that would not place Ameri-cans at further risk and would save hundreds of millions in new detention facility con-struction and security costs.

The federal government’s first priority is to protect our nation from enemies, both for-eign and domestic.

As enemy combatants cap-tured plotting and carrying out terrorist attacks against our nation, these men are intent on carrying out their hatred against America and our way of life. They should be prosecuted for their crimes against human-ity in a military trial, not in a United States courtroom.

I will continue to oppose any efforts to bring terrorists to our country and support ef-forts to bring them final jus-tice in a military court.


www.OthelloOutlook.comA2 The Othello Outlook – Thursday, February 25, 2010 O p i n i O n




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The winter Olympics are truly nostalgic. Like an Ameri-can pie popsicle.

Country versus country. Na-tion versus nation. Grown men in tight bird costumes on ice skates. And snowboarding!

Isn’t Olympic snowboarding the greatest thing since hand soap dispensers?

The last time I got any back-side rotation on a snowboard was in the late-1990s. I was in my mid-20s and snowboarding had just gone main stream.

I remember tearing down the mountain at lightning speed as the wind whipped through my computer-generated hair.

After a heel-side turn into rail slide, I barreled down on the half-pipe.

I had my first trick lined up. A double corkscrew with backside rotation.

I remember the fear and exhilaration of mentally pre-paring for the trick. My hands were sweating. My heart was pounding. I wanted to pee my pants, but I knew it would freeze instantly.

I hit the edge clean but had

way too much speed and spun out of control 30 feet above the ground.

I began to panic. Then I re-membered something crucial. I was only playing a video game.

1080º Snowboarding for Nintendo 64 had just hit the shelves and I was hooked.

My stint as an avatar on a computer generated snow-board didn’t last long. Nor did it lead to a career as a profes-sional snowboarder.

I’ve been a skier for 20 years and have seen some gnarly crash-es on snowboards. No way am I strapping a giant board to my feet and tumbling down a hill.

Skis, OK. In theory, they’ll pop off in a crash.

Watching Olympic snow-boarder Shaun White complete a double McTwist 1260 was sick, which I believe is snowboard lingo for “crazy-amazing.”

As Americans continue to win medal after medal, the nostalgia of watching Olympic athletes can be overwhelming. Even the men on ice skates, hockey players included.

I think deep down inside, the winter Olympics gives America a little hope. Hope for our children. Our communi-ties. Our country.

And isn’t it great to see Americans winning!

With only three days till the winter Olympics end, bake an apple pie and catch an Olym-pic event. If you miss it, four years is a long time to see another grown man in a bird costume on ice skates.

Well, what should I do now? We have so many gadgets, I probably should learn how to use them.

I don’t know how we got into this fix. We used to call people and just chat about things. Now, we call them and leave a message on their cell phone.

More than 1,000 folks vis-ited emergency rooms in 2008, because they fell down or ran into a wall while using their cell phone. Everyone has one now.

It’s getting to the point where we can’t walk down the street with-out hearing the phones.

When I go into the grocery these days, I hear folks calling home to decide what to buy. “Maybe, I’ll buy these bananas?” they say. “What do you think?”

I stopped at the dry cleaners a couple of months back and noticed a sign on the counter stating, “Please don’t talk on your cell phone here.”

When the clerk came to the desk carrying my shirts, I told her, “I’m happy to see that sign. People are so involved with talking, they can’t hang up their phones.”

“That’s certainly true here,” she said. “We’ve had customers who walk in and start making calls. Some talked so much, the others were waiting.”

She said a woman answered

her phone while the clerk stood at the desk. The next customer had to wait just to see what would happen.

My newspaper calls that “mul-titasking.” A study at Stanford University proved students who do several things at once often can’t tell what they’re doing.

Stanford resarchers were shocked to see how this works. They found students who liked multitasking the most did it the worst. This is the opposite of what we would expect.

One professor wondered, “Is multitasking causing them to be lousy at it or is their lousi-ness at multitasking causing them to be multitaskers?”

These researchers gave stu-dents a form asking how many types of media they used at one time. Elements such as televisions, computer-based video, music,

telephone, print, and computer games were included.

Results averaged about 1.5 media at a time for those on the low end, while heavy users scored more than four. That’s when researchers learned mul-titaskers have trouble switching.

These people can’t decide what’s important. They can’t organize things and they won’t ignore stuff they don’t need.

Some states have found folks with cell phones in their car can’t leave them alone. This is a dis-traction that causes car crashes.

They’ve found folks talking on the phone have trouble walking, too. They bump into trucks parked in the driveway.

Researchers say multitaskers are easily distracted. They always want more information, but they don’t know how to use it.

The Back Forty: Multitasking hazardous to health

By Roger Pond

Letters to the Editor


Othello Outlook

Pie popsicles?

Dear Community; Thank you!With mixed emotions, we

write this letter to inform you of our move to Redding, Calif.The last 22 years in Othello has a tremendous blessing to us. We want to thank you for be-ing a part of our lives. We will never forget you!

To all of our family, friends, players, teammates, citizens, co-workers, youth, families, orga-nizations, coaches, bosses and churches, we say a compassionate God bless you and your future.

Jeremiah 29:11 says, ”For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Sincerely,The Gowan Family

Heartfelt thanksOn Feb. 16, I was invited to

a meeting of the Paul Revere Masonic Lodge No. 205. Thank you Ken and Barbra Caylor, Eric and LuAnn Morgan, Tom-mie Tindell and the members of Othello, Moses Lake and Ephrata lodges. I was given a very nice plaque and kind words. Wow! What a nice thing for them to do!

My parents Orley and Bon-nie Sanders came to this area in 1902. They are now gone. I was born in Othello. The years have gone by so quickly.

Thanks again to all of you,

Everett C. Sanders and family

Food bank needs your helpThe Othello Food Bank has

recently been made aware of “The Feinstein Foundation” whose founder is Alan Shawn Feinstein, in Cranston, R.I., and his mission to feed the hun-

gry. For the past 13 years, Mr. Feinstein has been giving away $1 million dollars each year to anti-hunger agencies, i.e. food banks, throughout the country. How this program works is dur-ing the months of March and April, the Foundation will match the amount of money and food items (at $1 a pound) collected by the participating agency.

Many other food banks in Washington state have taken advantage of this opportu-nity. Penny Archer and Linda Finlay, with the Moses Lake Food Bank, speak highly of this foundation and their food bank has been the recipient of grant money for several years. This year the Othello Food Bank will be applying for the first time.

It is in this light that the Othello Food Bank is asking people, churches, schools and businesses to consider making a monetary or food donation during the months of March and April.

With the donations made during the months of March and April, we are eligible for matching grant money.

Our mailing address for the Othello Food Bank is P.O. Box 152, Othello, WA 99344.

Thank you for your consideration.

Bob Fuller, Vice-Chairman

Othello Food Bank

A harassing waste of taxesSenator Patty Murray is

blatantly wasting our money. Murray has been sending mechanized phone messages from our nation’s capitol. The message is either information-al or political.

I was unable to ascertain

the meaning as it appears the message began as soon as the call began ringing. Sending out messages where the recipi-ent only hears a part is wast-ing taxpayer dollars.

Murray’s call may have been informational, however, the timing, when many campaigns are just gearing up, gives the appearance of it being politi-cal. Either way, when the mes-sage is only a part with the Caller ID showing “Capitol, US” and the 202 area code, it has the obvious appearance of, although ineffective, an attempt to use tax dollars to send out Murray’s propaganda.

Murray is splurging taxpay-er dollars during a recession when many are out of work. Her ineffective attempt only adds to the increasing calls from “toll free” and other en-tities whose messages already begin upon answering or rings only twice not allowing one to catch the call.

Murray should be working on legislation to reduce phone spamming rather than waste-fully spending our money add-ing to the growing number of nuisance calls.

Thank you and have a great day,

Roger W. HancockAuburn

Here we go againWith Initiative 960 being re-

pealed, the flood gates opened for Olympia to tax the lifeblood out of the citizens of Washing-ton and the Push Back Rally Feb. 15 in Olympia to protest tax increases, we are intent on maintaining pressure by get-ting Initiative 1069 on the bal-lot to show the level of voter dissatisfaction with the current

tax and spend policies.We ask that you join us in

our efforts to put pressure on Olympia to become fiscally responsible and to stop rais-ing taxes as the governor had promised. Attached is a rough draft to provide a guideline-baseline for our contest to re-place the state seal and for the design of a bumper sticker.

Due to our state’s full court press to increase taxes, I was motivated to create an initiative to replace our state seal from the vignette of Gen. George Wash-ington as the central figure to a tapeworm dressed in a three-piece suit attached to the lower intestine of the taxpayer as the central figure and encircling the vignette, the words “Committed to sucking the life blood out of each and every taxpayer.”

If you are like most people, your initial response is to chuckle or have a serious belly laugh. However, the sad truth is this is far from funny.

Now that I have your atten-tion, please spend a few min-utes to read why I am serious about our government being fiscally responsible and to stop raising taxes.

Before I proceed, please note, Initiative 1069 is direct-ed at RCW 1.20.080. However, Article XVIII of the Washington State Constitution states the seal of the State of Washing-ton shall be, a seal encircled with the words: “The Seal of the State of Washington,” with the vignette of General George Washington as the central fig-ure and beneath the vignette the figures “1889.”

This cannot be changed by an initiative. Initiative 1069 is de-signed to send a loud and clear message to our state government.

Billions and trillions of dol-lars of debt is such an enormous amount of money that it does not seem quite real to the individual tax payer. This makes it easy for government officials to spend and spend and spend. However, the debt is real. As a result, it is time for our state government to quit raising taxes.

We are not asking Olympia to do more with less. We un-derstand it is time for Olympia to do less with less. It is time to prioritize spending and re-duce government.

Ask yourself what happens when the economic stimulus money is spent and we have not created long-term employment for our citizens that will allow us to repay our debt to China, Brazil, etc. We cannot expect them to lend us more money.

As a result, the dollar will be devalued and we will see hyperinf lation.

It could result in foreign countries refusing to trade with us. No money — no oil — we are back to horse and buggy days.

This will not be the Great Depression, but the Great-est Depression.

This is your chance to be part of a grass roots effort and have your voice heard not only in Olympia but send a message to Washington, D.C., about govern-ment spending. Please send your designs for a new seal no later than tomorrow, Feb. 25, or sup-port our efforts by ordering a $20 bumper sticker and-or sending a donation to: Jim Vaughn, Citizens for Economic Stimulus, 14416 168th Street, Orting, WA 98360.

Jim VaughnOrting, WA

Create and keep jobs in U.S.President Obama is pro-

moting a new $300 billion economic stimulus program. When he took office in January 2009, he said the $787 billion stimulus program will create 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 and unemployment will remain below 8 percent.

Unemployment is hovering around 10 percent and the jobs promised by Obama might hit 1.5 million by the end of 2010, but during the last 13 months, we lost five million jobs.

The stimulus saved the jobs of municipal workers and provided additional unemploy-ment benefits, but it has not provided jobs in the private sector. The money went to government agencies, colleges, non-profit organizations and entitlement programs.

These programs will generate annual deficits of $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion for years to come.

Our government has squan-dered our financial resources on failed economic programs and the American work force continues to suffer.

The domestic priority should be creating millions of new jobs and other domestic ini-tiatives, including health care reform, should wait until the economy improves.

The administration and Con-gress have to reduce the size of government, cut business taxes and give U.S. companies incen-tives to operate in this country and disincentives to move op-erations and jobs overseas.

Donald A. MoskowitzLondonderry, N.H.

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