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A week before he died he told my brother he needed help. He had lost his job and had no health insurance so private care was not available to him. The state-funded rehab agencies were full. He was placed No. 50 on the waiting list.

My brother begged to have him moved up and he was moved up to No. 14. But it was too late. He needed treatment now and could not get it. Jon may have had a chance if he had been admitted to treatment when he asked for it. He could be alive today and there wouldn’t be a funeral planned for Saturday.

This country spends trillions of dollars seemingly keeping us safe from terrorists, but it refuses to keep us safe from disease, illness and death. Why this disconnect? Jon’s story is all too familiar. We have all heard variations of it. And yet, politicians, eager to see Obama fail in his attempt for healthcare reform, are making this a political issue while you, I and our loved ones suffer. I am angry.

We should be marching in the streets demanding that this ineffective Congress come up with a solution that guarantees health care for everyone; that they stop the posturing, bickering, scare tactics and use of this issue as a political weapon.

I want my taxes to go to health care for every citizen in this country. It’s our country. It’s our tax money and we should demand it.

Kay Floria
Hood River

It’s still rural

This is what I think, whether anyone likes it or not. I am 19 years old and I have grown up around hunting and the butchering of our own animals. It is a way of life, and a lot of people will not change their way of life for “newcomers” who do not enjoy the sound of gun shots.

Do you eat fish? Beef? Chicken? Pork? Well if so, these animals are also killed, and if children are so traumatized by the fact that things are killed to eat, it would be a good idea for their parents to educate them about where their meat comes from. People decided to move to this rural area and just because certain individuals do not agree with the hunting rights, does not mean they need to be ceased.

Since the rural land has been developed and certain people have decided not to develop their property does not mean that they have to be restricted to how their land is used, and who can use it. The beautiful geese will still fly over homes even though there is a small amount of goose hunting going on. They are not just going to go away. If certain individuals do not like the rural way of life, the city is still there to go back to.

Yes, I am sure there are a lot of gun shots in the city but I assume it is violent acts against other people, not goose hunting; which would you prefer? Last but not least I would like to say that geese do not chirp.

Caitlyn Beth
Hood River

Corporate takeover

As a result of the recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision on “Citizens United ...” — affirming corporate “personhood” and “money” as “free speech” — the political process was, in effect, taken completely out of the hands of the American people and transferred over to a rapacious, predatory, transnational corporate oligarchy. If allowed to stand, this ruling represents a paradigm shift of truly epic proportions. In light of the vast, cataclysmic, corporate funding tsunami set to be unleashed on an unsuspecting electorate, it is no longer meaningful to speak in terms of Democrat vs. Republican or Conservative vs. Liberal; rather, the reality now is transnational corporations vs. the American people.

Make no mistake, candidates and legislation benefiting local economies and constituencies, at the expense of these “transnationals,“ are truly at risk and will be “carpet-bombed” into oblivion by the corporate media. Existing laws which present an “inconvenience” will simply be re-written or repealed, as occurred with Glass-Steagall in 1999.

At the local level, expect continuing predatory lending practices in the home mortgage and credit card industries, taxpayer-funded Wall Street mega-bailouts, out-sourcing of jobs and resulting home foreclosures, endless-war profiteering, and the privatizing of Social Security and Medicare, for starters.

Michael T. Carver
Hood River

Reform now

Up until today there was an eerie silence out of Washington about health care reform. Had the Democrats given up passing any legislation? In the health care summit that ended today, President Obama ran into stiff opposition from GOP members who rejected key provisions and insisted that the effort start again from scratch.

Meanwhile the top five insurance companies made record-breaking $12.2 billion profits this past year and are now increasing their rates to draconian levels.

California’s Anthem Blue Cross is raising rates by 39 percent. Regence Blue Cross-Blue Shield has filed a 25.3 percent rate increase for 70,000 Oregonians in the individual insurance market. My own Medicare Advantage plan doubled the amount I have to pay for X-rays, for outpatient surgery and for chemo drugs. The only thing they lowered was the premium I pay by a measly $1 per month!

The health care bill had stalled because the Democrats no longer have a super majority to pass it, and because polls showed that the big issue now is the economy. (As if health care is not the biggest drag on the economy.)

Meanwhile, in the face of the worsening economic conditions, many politicians, both Democrat and Republican, are not signing up for re-election. I guess they don’t want any part of the blame for what is happening to the economy or health care.

Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein wrote, “At best, what you can say today is demonstrating is that there’s a sharp contrast in the philosophies on display: Democrats believe the federal government is capable of writing and implementing legislation that will take a big step forward on a hard problem. Republicans believe government doesn’t have that capability, and shouldn’t try.

There’s no real compromise available between those two positions, but they’re philosophies that the American people can choose between.

I think we Democrats (and anyone else who wants health care reform now) should write to our legislators and urge them to do whatever needs to be done to get the bill passed, even if not one Republican is on board.

Anne Vance
Hood River

Care to confront

One of my friends has two brothers with drug addictions; one’s in recovery, the second brother died from an overdose. Life-controlling problems so often turn to life-taking addictions. My friend says each day he lives with the guilt he didn’t do more to help the brother he lost.

Talking with a friend or loved one who has a life-controlling problem can be like talking to a brick wall. But that wall can be broken down, brick by brick. So I was wondering, Hood River News reader in River City here, someone you love struggles with a life-impacting mindset or behavior, and when you try to talk to him or her about it, your words seem to bounce back at you, as though they’ve hit a brick wall? And I could see this: a person behind a brick wall becoming trapped but continuing to lay brick, building the wall higher and higher, in their mind, each brick a way to defend themselves but in reality the wall is trapping, not defending them. Denial blinded this loved one to their real condition.

David Augsberger, who wrote “Caring Enough to Confront?” has a term, “care-fronting.” What’s that? A communication technique that combines love and caring with confrontation.

Caring confrontation can chip away, bit by bit, the wall of delusion that hides reality from a loved one. The reality of the reason they are spiraling and the reality that an answer does exist to turn the spiral the other direction. When we are able to get rid of anger and replace it with caring, confronting our loved one with the truth can actually be the most loving thing we can do.

The bridges through the wall are made of care and really are derived by us growing our relationship with our Creator first, to shine that love and care to trapped loves. As our Creator grows in us, that forgiveness of us, melts our hurt we feel from our loved one and allows us to see them through our Creator’s lenses so real care, love can happen.

There’s a message to deliver; they’re able to see themselves as they really are, someone made in our Creator’s image, a message we can first mode, then say and never give up.

Donna Gray-Davis
Hood River

Library win-win

After reviewing his property tax statement, in light of the proposed library district tax rate of 70 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, John Brennan stated the following in his letter to the editor (March 3): “It appears that the cost of operating the libraries is equal to half the cost of operating the entire county. I find that hard to believe.”

I, too, found Mr. Brennan’s assumption unbelievable, so I did a little research: Hood River County receives revenues from a number of sources, property taxes being just one. Other sources include sale of timber from its forest lands and monies from Oregon and the federal government.

I do not have a copy of the current Hood River County budget, but I do have a copy of the 2005-06 budget. The county’s portion of our property taxes was about 20 percent of county revenues that fiscal year.

The more important figure, however, was that the library expenditure was less than 2 percent of the total county expenditures during that fiscal year. Given the cuts in the county and library budget since 2005-06, that minimal percentage has probably not changed much.

Even in less-than-optimal economic times, the proposed library district tax rate is necessary and appropriate. By law, this rate cannot be raised without a vote of the people. It will restore library services, staff, hours and the ability to purchase new books, etc., that have been gutted over the last 10 years or so.

Establishing a library district will cost my wife and I each about 27 cents a day. The libraries are a fundamental necessity and too important to the citizens and businesses of the county to lose. To pay our share, we will stop drinking Diet Pepsi and in the process use fewer plastic bottles, consume fewer toxins and lessen tooth decay! This win-win is a no brainer!

Hugh McMahan
Mount Hood

Not ‘every dime’

Chuck Thomsen’s assumption (March 6) that every dime used to support a government job or service was earned in the private sector is not at all accurate.

Oregon PERS retirees alone pay approximately $105 million in income taxes each and every year. Every state, county and local government employee pays income taxes and that includes all teachers and school employees. Oregon, by its constitution, has to operate on a balanced budget. It does not matter what the approved budget says.

If income falls below budgeted expectation, new revenues must be found or cuts made to bring it into balance by the end of the biennium. Usually it means tightening the belt and making those cuts.

Gary Fields
Hood River

Juggling justice

I am a senior in high school and on a normal day of boredom of being a modern-day teenager, I so happen to browse on my iPod touch and look up a list of bizarre laws enforced in our well respected nation.

Now I was astonished to see that our small town was on this list for being the only place in the world that forces you to have a permit to juggle in public. I ask why, and who has been fined for not doing so? I firmly believe that if Man can juggle fire, then Man should be able to juggle fire in public to earn a respectable amount of change in their pocket for their unique talents.

We are a pretty big tourist attraction, so why can’t we see some balls being thrown around?

Hector Marquez
Hood River

The library: ‘The world, free of charge’

By MEG EUWER

More than 52 years ago, just after moving to the Hood River Valley, I visited the Hood River Library. I knew it would be a welcoming place, just as the libraries were in San Francisco bay area of California.

Since I’d grown up in San Leandro just five blocks from its library, it had always been like a second home to me. I went there for all of my far-away adventures, to Oz, to Heidi’s Swiss Alps, to Riki-tiki’s India, to all the places in the world whose authors wrote stories. It was a seamless conversion to Hood River, where as an adult, and then a mother, I returned over and over again for the new book adventures, for a storybook for my children, for recipes, travel information, history, psychology, for every aspect of making our lives richer.

Libraries have always been the leading edge of information, where one can do research, find magazines, the latest books and periodicals. Today it is also where everyone has a free access to the Internet with its seeming infinity of answers to whatever question one asks. Not that the answers are always verifiable. It is another starting point.

In today’s library one can read the periodicals of the world, find out what’s going on in Eritrea, Hood River, Oregon, Myanmar, Rio De Janeiro, in science laboratories, in medicine, in politics, everything and anything.

The very idea of having a place to be welcomed by smiles, comfortable furnishings, and the world at one’s fingertips is more than enough to justify the library as a place for all of us to come to, to meet and share ideas, thoughts, books, and news.

It is a place to dry off and rest between rainstorms, to hear interesting lectures, meet authors, sit by windows and look at breathtaking views, communicate with the world. And it is free for everyone, welcome to everyone. The librarians and assistants are there to answer your questions and to help you find whatever you are looking for.

It is the one place to come where you don’t have to buy something or listen to a sales pitch, just sit or walk around and enjoy your very own public library.

Now it is time to join together and preserve this incomparable public asset. It is handicapped accessible, and open to every child or adult who wants to be there. We have many entertainment venues in this magnificent valley: theater, sports, music, the great outdoors playground in which we live, the living and breathing playground of the library. These opportunities are there everyone. But the world, free of charge? That’s the library.

Please support our community and join our efforts to make the Hood River County Library its own district, independent of the county budget, voted for by the people.

In May we will have the opportunity to vote to ensure this important issue will be on the ballot next November. Please support our community library.

Meg Euwer of Parkdale is on the ballot for a one-year position on the library district board. She is an orchardist and a long-time member of the Hood River Library Foundation.