Letters to the Editor for Jan. 1, 2010

What an amazing place to live

Baker City is an amazing place to live.  I am thankful every day for the kind and thoughtful things people do in this town.  Since it is the holiday season and we are celebrating giving and helping others, I thought I’d mention a few wonderful things I have witnessed lately:

When a plea went out, via e-mail, to find a bike for a boy who has been in foster care for six years, I began wracking my brain for a way to find one. As I sat thinking of who I could contact to help, another e-mail arrived saying one had been donated. All it took was 15 minutes, a need and a plea.

I have watched the schools collect thousands of pounds of food for needy families.

A pizza and bowling party was given to kids in foster care because of one family who saw a need.

A church and school collected 33 boxes worth of school supplies to be shipped to a soldier in Afghanistan so he and his buddies could distribute them to children there.

Hundreds of toys and gifts were donated, wrapped and presented to children who were not able to be home for Christmas. Some of the people who wrapped the gifts felt less than able to wrap — in fact one woman told me she was so bad at wrapping that she had her blind niece do the wrapping at her house — but she showed up anyway.

People all over this town have given time, money, talents and love to support others. The kindness and thoughtfulness is felt throughout our small city and even in other towns — I heard the idea for collecting school supplies for kids in Iraq and Afghanistan has traveled to a relative of a friend of mine on the East Coast.

Yes, times are tough and we have worries and troubles, but let’s look for the good — it’s everywhere, especially in our little town of Baker City.

Sue Richard

Baker City

Vote Yes on Measures 66, 67

I would like to encourage all Baker County residents to vote Yes on Measures 66 and 67 in the coming election. The economic benefits which a Yes vote would mean to Baker County can be best understood by visiting the Vote YES For Oregon Web site: http://voteyesfororegon.org/map/baker.html

While nearly 90 percent of the residents of Baker County will not pay a cent of increased tax, the 2,208 students of the Baker Public Schools will receive much needed additional funding. Also, passage of Measure 66 and 67, will benefit the 1,938 Baker residents on the Oregon Health Plan, as well as continued assistance for hundreds of seniors with disabilities living in extended care.

This is truly a vote by the people, for the people. Spread the word! Be sure to vote Yes.

Richard Nase

Baker City

Obama’s only gift is to himself

The headline at the top of the front page of the Dec. 24 edition read “Obama’s Biggest Gift: Health Reform.” That headline needs some clarification. It is a gift to himself. It is a gift to his narcissistic legacy. It is NOT a gift to the American people. 

In fact, it is another of his many “in your face” slaps to the American people.  Recent polls have shown that about 63 percent of the people of this country are opposed to any healthcare legislation at all. Does Obama care? Apparently not.  Reid and Pelosi and a whole lot of other members of Congress don’t either.

The so-called healthcare bill has little to do with what the title implies. What it does have to do with is immediate increases in taxes and an unconstitutional imposition of power that neither the executive or legislative branches of government have under our Constitution. Of course they don’t respect the Constitution so ignoring it is just something which comes to them naturally. This bill also means that additional small businesses will go belly up as the requirements of this legislation go into effect. Just what our ailing economy really needs, isn’t it?

Hopefully voters in this country are finally waking up to how much they have been lied to by Obama and his cohorts in Congress. Hopefully come the elections of 2010 and 2012 they will remember just how arrogant and unresponsive to the needs of the American people this regime is. Hopefully come November 2010 Reid and Pelosi and those of their ilk will be gone forever from elective office. Hopefully come November 2012 the same will be true of Obama.

This country simply cannot afford their unbridled spending, their blatant socialism, their backroom bribes, and their consistent deceit.

Jerry Boyd

Baker City

Let’s help the non-smokers first

With all of the controversy surrounding smoking in public places, we overheard a local merchant this morning stating how someone with a charge account had said: “Well, you don’t expect me to use my cigarette money for food?” When does the line get drawn, is our question.

Wonderful help is available to those less fortunate in our county. From the Rachel Center, Compassion Center, Salvation Army family services, Baker City Christian Church, St. Francis Catholic Church, DragonFly and several other non-profit agencies to aid families and children in their times of need for food, clothing, diapers/wipes and so on.

Seems to us that there should be a way to monitor or refuse giving such aid to people, or at least provide the help to smokers with children willing to get help through the state’s quit-smoking programs, which provide free nicotine patches, coaching hot lines and such.

Seeing people leaving the Rachel Center, Compassion Center, food banks etc., with diapers, clothing, baby furniture and valid needs for their loved ones, only to light up a cigarette in their car or on foot, is really unfair to those people who don’t smoke and are struggling to feed, clothe and diaper their children. Isn’t it time to help the non-smokers in need first? And then there’s the price, both financially and medically, of tobacco products to and on the users of those products.

Hopefully this would be more of a wake-up call to help these agencies providing essentials to needful families to use “tough love” on smokers. And to smokers of needy families, to buy diapers, formula, food etc. instead of that next pack of cigarettes.

We are ex-smokers, due to our granddaughter, age 6 and in kindergarten, asking us 1fi months ago: “Papa, Gramma, I don’t want you to die from smoking those stinky cigarettes, will you quit for me please?”

1-800-QUIT-NOW did it for us almost a month now. Happy New Year 2010 and God bless.

Kevin and Jodi Layton

Haines