Letters to the Editor for Oct. 20, 2010

Published 9:10 am Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Be patient with our president

To the editor:

What has happened to our national character? We could take lessons from our Chilean neighbors. We, too, got stuck in a deep hole that was long in the making. They, however, showed supreme patience during days of darkness and again when the tiniest improvements were made. Rescue efforts were slow but steady with laser-like focus on bringing every last man up alive and well.

Patience, endurance, and focus on the common good is in short supply

now in America. Rather than support those leaders trying to dig us out

of a hole after the bubble we created, we nitpick, whine, blame,

fabricate and obstruct. Then we heap on abuse for not fixing things

already. Forgetting how we got into this mess, we even act as though

our helpers created our problem in the first place.

In children, we call this behavior “childish.” That some call it

“patriotic” is alarming. Taking our “hurting” out on our leaders as

though they could “fix” a recession if they wanted to is naive at best,

and manipulative at worst. It makes matters worse by chipping away at

the hope and confidence we need to recover.

Those who want to deregulate and dismantle government now will point

fingers later when things go wrong, such as deadly melamine in pet

food, salmonella in eggs, and crude lapping at our shores. Stimulus

funds and social security and unemployment checks which some would nix

kept people spending right here in Baker City. More empty stores

anyone? (Businesses wait to hire until people spend no matter what tax

breaks are hawked by “new faces” hoping to get elected andndash; Chris Dudley

here). During a recession, lack of spending, not the deficit, is the

real boogie man.

Like the rescue capsule, we too will ascend – slowly. Let’s be like

the miners who kept their spirits up, encouraged one another, and did

what they could to help. When we get impatient with the President,

let’s ask ourselves how we’re doing on our last year’s resolutions to

quit smoking or lose weight. Maybe delivering on everything will take

him a little longer.

Suzanne Moses

Baker City

Wyden not looking out for Oregon

To the editor:

Ron Wyden no longer lives in Oregon and hasn’t lived here since 2005.

After he divorced his old wife of many years, he married a young rich

woman in New York City and has two young children by her. He is now the

49th wealthiest in Congress with a net worth of $5.4 million. He does

own a condo in Portland so he can say he lives here, but can you

imagine him, his wife, two little kids,living in a 1,000-square-foot

hovel, which isn’t much bigger than an over-sized outhouse, when he

lives in a mansion in New York.

He states he is “getting the deficit down and going after waste

wherever it is,” and then turns around vote $800 million for a stimulus

that did us no good but put over 10 percent of Oregonians out of work.

He voted to spend another trillion on a health care system that is

going to take over $500 million away from Social Security Advantage

Care which will hurt us senior citizens. He has enthusiastically

supported a budget that piled another $1.4 trillion onto our national

debt in one single year. He wasn’t born here, only was a lawyer for a

couple of years and has been free-loading off of hard-working

Oregonians almost all his life. It’s time he quit this state and run

for senator in New York.

George Wilder

Baker City

Marijuana wrongly described

To the editor:

This is in response to Jerry Boyd’s letter urging folks to vote no on

Measure 74. Regardless of anyone’s opinion on this issue I would urge

people to take with a grain of salt the opinion of anyone who

demonstrates they do not know even the first thing about what they are

talking about when they wrongly, three times, refer to marijuana as a

narcotic.

Gordon Bonebrake

Baker City