Support CL

Hood River citizens, beware of the Hood River County School District. In May of last year HRCSD came to Cascade Locks for support on Bond Levy Option 2008. They told us if it passed, it would be able to maintain current programs and staff, if state funding fell short. Cascade Locks gave it our full support and passed it.

Then, five months later, HRCSD started having meetings to cut our current high school programs and staff. At the school board meeting last week they voted to shut down our high school. They said the district budget estimate for this year was about $500,000 short for the whole district.

One board member asked if Cascade Locks was the cause of the budge shortfall. The answer was “no.” Cascade Locks was running in budget. So, the HRCSD is having Cascade Locks carry the burden of the whole district budget shortfall. We are being singled out when it should be spread out over the whole district.

The HRCSD says our children will be better educated at HRVHS, which is already overcrowded. Our academic test scores are just as good.

We want our K-12 school in our town. Please don’t hold our future action against us. We need your support in our time of change from HRCSD.

We as parents only want what is best for our children, as you do for yours. How would you feel if you were in our shoes?

We, the people of Cascade Locks, have a constitutional right to equal representation. Hood River citizens, beware of passing future bond levies. HRCSD will do whatever they want and not stand behind their word or their words written in the levy.

We feel like we are bleeding, but far from dead. We need your understanding and support! Please call if you can help in any way: 490-9334.

George H. Fischer
Cascade Locks

Classic loss

Where does a person begin? To see the Hood River Classic be canceled this year (page A1, Jan. 31), it is both disappointing and heart-wrenching.

I was on the original committee that met one afternoon and discussed having a horse show — that we really didn’t know anything about — and out of this came lasting friendships, money for our local hospital and the opportunity to meet new people, and ultimately, enjoy the fun of horses. I personally spent all my vacation hours from work for 10 years to be one of the original “gate keepers” and then the paddock manager for this show.

I had great fun and met some of the neatest people, both horse people and EMTs of your local fire departments, and learned how to greatly give to my community, even though I lived in White Salmon.

This show not only put Hood River “on the map,“ but the entire Columbia River Gorge and it became one of the “must-be-in” horse shows. It greatly saddens me to see this not go on this year.

Although family death and commitments made it not possible for me to continue volunteering after 10 years, I have closely followed the show from day one, and I hope that it will again be the pillar of our Columbia Gorge community that it has been. Again, I thank Lynn Everroad and the foundation for such a great experience and opportunity to volunteer. I would gladly help in any way in the future to see this excellent example of community love and support be put on again next year.

Dena-Rae Martin
White Salmon, Wash.

Presumptuous?

Let’s see: Hood River City Council tells Cascade Locks they can’t have a casino. Hood River City Council tells Boardman to close their coal plant or control its emissions.

Isn’t it presumptuous of the Hood River City Council to assume that Hood River is the sole owner of the Columbia Gorge and can dictate the actions of all the other towns in the Gorge?

Ruth Turner
Hood River

Freedom to fly

Hello — I just had the opportunity to read your article about Gary Boggs and the Port (Jan. 31). I think that the complaints about his flying fall into two categories:

The uneducated — someone sees something they don’t understand and complains to the port about it. The port should not take any complaints about air operations; they have absolutely NO authority whatsoever. The individual who is complaining needs to be referred to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Secondly is the malicious complaint — someone who knows to call the FAA but contacts the port anyway. The FAA takes a very hard line on violations of regulation and safety.

The article did not mention whether the FAA has weighed in on this issue. As a public airport the port receives federal funds that contribute greatly to the port’s payroll. By law the port cannot restrict Gary and his glider flying; again only the FAA can do that. They can deny him a permit to operate a business, but in these difficult economic times, that would seem to go against a port authority’s charter to foster the local economy.

My 14-year-old daughter, Katie, has been taking glider lessons with Gary since this last spring. Our family has traveled 30-plus times to Hood River this year. Every time, we have had meals at local restaurants and made purchases, at stores and produce stands.

I have been involved with aviation all 52 years of my life, and I would not risk my daughter’s life, if I did not have full trust in Gary Boggs’ commitment to safety! I really believe, that this is a personality dispute; I am pretty sure that the port commissioners do not have a good grasp of aviation.

Finally, before I get off my soapbox, I served in the active military for more than 22 years so that we all can enjoy the freedom this country has to offer. Flying is perhaps the greatest freedom (albeit regulated) that man has ever experienced.

It truly saddens and angers me when the uneducated with power attempt to deny myself and others of hard-earned freedoms, whatever they be.

David K. Domeyer
Washougal, Wash.

Legrees today

After reading a recent letter to the editor in the Hood River News, I immediately thought of the character, Simon Legree, in the book about slavery — “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

I found an excellent review of the character and hereby paraphrase parts of it to make it fit a certain type of character in this time in history.

Some profiteers from the business world are materialists who see human beings as nothing but material that can be used for profit. What they can’t see is that with the reduction of workers to the status of things, they necessarily reduce themselves to the same status — for to objectify others is to objectify oneself.

Some do it without thinking. But like Simon Legree (in Uncle Tom’s Cabin) others seem to see clearly, not only what they are and what they do to others, but they also revel in it. They may tell anyone who listens that they hire and fire people for economic reasons, but sometimes they become so incensed over things not going their way, that they shut down operations and lay off people just for spite. They just love having this absolute power over the lives of people who work for them, and they relate to a government that does the same.

No one can appeal to their conscience because they have none.

Anne Vance
Hood River

It can work

Now that RaeLynn Ricarte has provided (U.S. Rep. Greg) Walden with a front page “editorial” (Jan. 31) on the stimulus bill, I would hope that she will be providing the same to Senators Wyden and/or Merkley.

As I suspect we may not be seeing this anytime soon, however, I offer up my humble opinion: The economic stimulus bill that President Obama is asking Congress to pass is not perfect, but it is a very good start! Here are some things it actually does:

It creates or saves 3-4 million jobs in the next two years. It averts hundreds of thousands of teacher lay-offs and doubles funding for education.

It creates hundreds of thousands of green jobs and doubles our clean energy production.

It gives unemployed folks access to affordable health care coverage.

Critics like Greg Walden are singling out miniscule portions of the bill and twisting things out of proportion. They are also assuming that giving tax cuts to businesses and wealthy folks creates jobs. Well, that’s what we’ve been doing for the last eight years and it’s not working! It has never worked — it is a Republican myth. Last week 100,000 Americans lost their jobs.

We can either go on bickering while our economy continues to hemorrhage, or we can redirect that energy toward averting disaster.

Karin Tauscher
Hood River

Chance to fix

Fiscal conservatives are feeling very threatened right now. Obama has put together a stimulus plan that calls for taxes to fund the programs that increase long-term jobs, like infrastructure, education, and health care. This is unreasonable to them for some reason, but giving billions and billions to the banks and car manufacturers in bail-out monies — also funded by the American taxpayer — is reasonable. Please explain this to me.

It seems to me things like jobs, education, and health care should be at the top of the agenda for everyone, because it is in everyone’s best interest — even the conservatives who enjoy having roads and hospitals at their disposal — rather than the select, yacht-buying, billion-dollar-bonus-having executives who could do without for a bit, like the rest of us.

One-hundred-thousand jobs lost, and food stamp and welfare applicants skyrocketing is not a good thing.

Let’s give our new president a chance to help fix this. Let’s not get any closer to Great Depression  statistics. Thank you.

Jill Powers
Hood River

A tax burden

A $900-billion-dollar stimulus price tag will crush my grandkids. What is worse is that it has been shoved down our throats. The senate version has over 600 pages in it. What? How many people in Hood River will see ONE dollar of stimulus? No one in either party seems the least bit concerned about where this stimulus money is going to come from. You can’t magically produce a stimulus. If government gives you the money, guess who will also take it back?

Whether designed to or not, this package WILL dramatically increase your tax burden. You can’t just print more money without having runaway inflation, and if you borrow it, how on earth will it stimulate the economy? That only produces a larger tax burden! We need less tax burdens not more!

A faster way to put unborrowed money in my household is NOT for a “trickle-down” stimulus package to hopefully work but rather have an absolutely no-strings-attached tax holiday for every working American. It would provide an immediate boost of between 10 and 50 percent income for everyone. An actual, physical, tangible, spendable increase in income. All it would take is an executive order from President Obama. And it wouldn’t be based on a hope and a prayer that the eventual trickle-down of the stimulus package will work. There is a commercial by JB Wentworth that has people saying, “It’s my money and I need it now!” People need to wake up. Tax money is YOUR money.

Dale Harland Royce
Hood River