We Can’t Afford Not to Open Pool
This is regarding Centralia city councilor John Elmore’s comments about the Pearl Street Pool. I admit I left my three children at the pool one day — June 16, 1969. They were accompanied by their babysitter, Mrs. Schwiesow.
I hurried off to the hospital. I was in labor and shortly after my arrival, my son, Jim Valley, was born. The hospital did not give out cigarettes, tattoos or beer.
I challenge Elmore to come up with the name of just one mother who participated in the tomfoolery he described.
Sadly, two Lewis County youths have drowned in our rivers so far this year. Many young people float down the Skookumchuck on inner tubes. How many wear life preservers?
If the Pearl Street Pool was open, our children would be happy swimming there with lifeguards on duty, and they will receive lessons.
I say we cannot afford not to open the pool, giving kids a safe environment, friendly staff and learning life skills.
Doreen Valley
Centralia
Bittler, Lund and Averill Deserve School Board Positions
This year we have the opportunity to elect three of the five school board members of our Centralia schools. The three most qualified are Ron Averill, Jami Lund and Tara Bittler. These people are hard-working members of our community, active and responsible in many areas with successful, reliable track records.
Current board members have not delivered improved schools. They have made mistakes that have given our schools a poor reputation. They have let us and our children down.
Sadly, one in four students is not even a basic level reader. According to the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s “Washington State Report Card,” more than a quarter of the students drop out.
The current school board members do not have a plan to change this, nor have they shared a plan with us.
Every child deserves an effective education. It is the board’s responsibility to make sure this happens. The low expectations of the current school board is unacceptable.
Our children must be prepared to live in real life. They need an education that will prepare them for the opportunity and jobs that exist today and into the future. It is not fair for any child not be able to read. A lack of education leads to a drain on resources in society and our community.
This is why I urge everyone to vote for Ron Averill, Jami Lund and Tara Bittler. Proven candidates with the background, knowledge and experience to get things done.
Jennifer West
Centralia
American Dream Alive and Well at Centralia College
The American Dream is very much alive, but the path to get there is changing.
These days, people need to work hard, play by the rules, and pursue a lifelong education. Centralia College and Washington’s community and technical colleges offer the high quality to make it all possible. Each year, nearly 400,000 community and technical college students train for well-paying careers, start work on a four-year degree, or update their skills and knowledge. This week, Centralia College was rated among the very best colleges in the high percentage of students who successfully transfer to universities.
Unfortunately, even as we are doing so well, many students are still unable to afford the cost of earning a college degree or certificate.
In Washington, the Legislature already made great progress toward improving access for students. The College Affordability Program (Senate Bill 5954), co-sponsored by Deputy Majority Leader Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, reduced tuition at public two- and four-year colleges, making higher education possible for more students.
“I have been making this case since we introduced this bill, college access and affordability should be a priority for our state again,” Braun said in a news release. “We’ve had years of underinvestment in higher education and the results are bad for our economy. Our state faces significant challenges, but this is a long-term policy solution that middle-class families in our state deserve.”
This important cause has been taken up at the federal level with the introduction in both houses of Congress of legislation that would ensure all Americans can attend one of our institutions.
As introduced, the legislation, which is modeled on President Barack Obama’s America’s College Promise proposal, would allow new students to enroll in Centralia College (or any other public two-year college) without having to pay tuition. To be eligible, students must be first-time college students and take classes at least half-time. They would also need to make progress toward earning a transfer degree or workforce training certificate.
In return, the proposal would require states to allocate some higher education funding based on performance. Colleges would also need to work more closely with K-12 education, and all of higher education would need to function cooperatively. Ongoing innovation on college campuses would need to continue and accelerate. Washington is already very far along on all these points.
Centralia College is extremely pleased there is a far-reaching proposal to make community and technical college education universally available. Postsecondary education is a necessity for family wage jobs, and our colleges are the place for Washingtonians to receive it.
Centralia College, our hard-working faculty and staff, and our thousands of hard-working students have proven they merit the support embodied in this legislation. By approving America’s College Promise legislation, Congress will ensure the pathway to the American Dream remains open, accessible to all and full of promise.
Joanne Schwartz
chairwoman, Centralia College
Board of Trustees
Robert Frost
president, Centralia College
Marty Brown,
executive director, State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
What Don’t They Get About Hydropower?
I’ve been following the two-part story “Journey on the Cowlitz,” which covers the ways in which dams choke off our rivers and kill the salmon runs.
The same edition that ran the first part of this series also contained an article about Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler pushing hydroprower as a “clean and renewable form of energy” in the Federal Energy Plan and that her resolution is supported by Washington state representatives.
Are they just not getting it?
Valerie Spadt
Winlock
Secure Tax Base Allows Stable Businesses
I do not normally respond to letters in The Chronicle, but after reading the comments on the capital gains tax proposal, I want another viewpoint to be presented.
I am using the information from the Office of Financial Management on House Bill 1484/Senate Bill 5699. This is a seven-page document that explains the proposal in plain English. It proposes a 7 percent tax to capital gains on earnings above $25,000 for a single person and $50,000 for a married couple.
I do not know how many people in Lewis County this proposal would affect, but the proposal states 32,000 statewide. Here are some of the exemptions and qualifications I have paraphrased:
There is a provision for capital gains that are paid to other jurisdictions. Federal taxes are not considered for this exemption.
This is only on long-term earnings reported as capital gains. Short term capital gains are ordinary income. Losses are adjusted.
It would not apply to sales of assets on a 401(k), IRA, Roth IRA, individual retirement annuity, defined benefit plan or defined contribution program, 403(b) tax-sheltered annuity or custodial accounts or similar retirement vehicles.
Home sales have a special computation. Basically your primary residence, if lived in, would be exempt. Investment property probably would be taxed at the sale, unless you sold your primary and moved into the investment property. The cost would be a small share of what was gained at 7 percent.
Many public positions have defined retirements. How fortunate. Most companies are moving away from them. So where are the taxes going to come from to pay for those defined retirements, our education responsibilities and our infrastructure that is crumbling?
Eventually we need to face the music. I want everyone to have a secure retirement. I also want our students educated by teachers with secure futures. There is a long list of public service employees that are paid by taxpayer monies. They deserve their wages and retirement, just as those in private industry do. We as taxpayers are providing that for the betterment of all, just as other generation have done for us.
Many of our legislators are also business owners, so maybe this is more of a concern of a few legislators, and not the masses.
More revenue could create jobs, providing for infrastructure and education. That could help eliminate dependence on social services. That could help with our tax burden also. Some businesses actually thrive off of taxpayers. Every vehicle purchased by our government agencies are paid for with taxpayer dollars.
A recent CNBC poll says the best state for business is high-tax, union-friendly Minnesota. Washington is No. 8 in that poll. A state with a secure tax base has stability for business. We are not there yet. Our state needs to take a deep dive into our tax structure for everyone. Maybe the Democrats of this state are on to something. We need to start the conversation.
Carolyn Brock
Onalaska
Little Distinction Needed Between Union, Confederate Soldiers
In the wake of the horrific slaughter of nine African-Americans at a church service in South Carolina by a deranged white supremacist, the South Carolina legislature has determined to remove the Confederate battle flag from its position of prominence on the state capitol grounds. This is an entirely appropriate response and long overdue.
With similar motivation, the city council of Memphis, Tennessee, has called for the remains of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest to be removed from a public park. Forrest not only was a wealthy slave trader before the Civil War, but the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Forrest never should have been honored in a public park under any circumstances.
But how far should this process continue? Should the impressive bronze statue of Robert E. Lee in New Orleans be removed or destroyed? In addition to his unquestioned military talents, Lee generally was regarded as a man of the highest integrity.
And what of the spectacular carving on Stone Mountain, Georgia, of the images of Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson? Should this mammoth etching somehow be covered up or dynamited?
On Mount Rushmore, two of the four honored presidents were slave owners. Should George Washington and Thomas Jefferson be eradicated?
The influence of circumstance on the course of human events is often overlooked. The typical soldier in blue, born in Michigan or Ohio or Vermont, was swept into the Union Army by the standards and expectations of a specific geography. Had this same soldier been born in Alabama or Virginia, he would have fought in gray.
While the cause of secession was deeply flawed and massively tragic, the soldiers of the South fought with valor and pride against overwhelming odds and nearly won.
In particular, those who died in battle deserve to be remembered as, with some notable exceptions, do their commanders. History should be studied, not erased.
Should this line of reasoning apply to all armies of all nations at all times? No, of course not. But the Confederacy was not Nazi Germany or the Khmer Rouge, and southern cotton plantations were not extermination camps or killing fields.
The full process and reality of slavery, furthermore, is often forgotten.
The single most notorious slave trader was not a European or an American, but the murderous King Gezo of Dahomey. Gezo, whose panoply included a palace made of human skulls, enslaved thousands of his racial brethren for shipment to the New World.
Gezo’s funeral in 1858 reportedly was highlighted by 400 human sacrifices.
The argument that the enslavement of the black man by the white man was somehow even worse than the enslavement of the black man by the black man is unsustainable. Gezo was no Nelson Mandela, and his kingdom was a hellhole.
In 1865, in his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln urged the country to “bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.”
Lincoln drew no distinction here between the soldiers in blue and the soldiers in gray. Neither, for the most part, should we.
Joseph Tipler
Centralia
Inslee Owes GOP Appreciation for Halting Climate Move in Legislature
Gov. Jay Inslee, et al, should be thanking the Republicans for keeping Democrats from making a big economic mistake with the Cap and Tax “stranglehold,” the expensive low carbon fuel standard (which hit California hard), and putting Washington state into a deeper recession. These would not change global warming/climate change at all.
They should consider the following:
(1) The Sun always warms the Earth and oceans first, and then the oceans release some of their carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to 800,000 years of Antarctic ice core records. Global annual average temperature maximizes first and later carbon dioxide maximizes. The reverse never happens. The oceans have sequestered 50 times as much carbon dioxide as the atmosphere.
A small carbon dioxide release from the oceans makes a big difference in carbon dioxide atmospheric concentration. Deep ocean hot springs each release more carbon dioxide than a gigawatt coal-fired generating plant, and there are tens of thousands of these hot springs. Many deep ocean volcanoes also release huge quantities of carbon dioxide, and all this underwater carbon dioxide immediately goes into solution in the cold ocean water, at depth.
Carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide released by man is miniscule compared to that of natural sources. Ergo, the sun drives global warming, not carbon dioxide. Anthropogenic global warming is a fraud, a lie, and a myth. There is zero value in trying to reduce carbon dioxide since the present 400 parts per million has no deleterious effect on people, A total of 30,000 ppm is required for this, and it will never happen. Plants need 1,500 ppm for good growth. OSHA allows 5,000 ppm.
(2) The average annual global temperature maximized in 1998. It has not been exceeded since. Earth temperature measured by satellites show 2014 in third place, not first. The reason is that measurements of total solar irradiance shows TSI is now decreasing on the same curve as that of the most reliable reconstruction of the TSI of the Maunder (sun spot) Minimum of 1645 to 1715 AD, the coldest part of the 18th Little Ice Age in the last 7,500 years.
Astrophysicist Habibullo Abdussamatov published a paper in November 2013 that says we are now 20 years into the 19th Little Ice Age in 7,500 years. Satellite data show global warming is over and done with, kaput.
Now what we have to look forward to is another Chehalis record storm and flood the last of 2018 or beginning of 2019 — more torrential rains, crop failures, food shortages, cold, insufficient fuels for the folks to keep warm and travel, and sickness, as at the start of the 18th LIA (in 1280 AD). Note: By 1350, over half the population of Europe and China had perished.
Therefore, consider it serendipity that the Washington Legislature prevented Inslee and his Democratic crew from making a most terrible error in 2015. Hopefully, they will not continue the “Lemmings over the cliff” AGW opera (it is too serious to be comical), but will prepare Washington state folks for this 19th LIA that is upon us.
John F. Cramer
Onalaska
District Would Be Fortunate to Have Jami Lund on School Board
We have another election coming, and I am pleased to have direct knowledge of one of the candidates. Jami Lund is running for our Centralia School Board, and I happen to know some of his qualities.
My husband and I are health care professionals serving at Health & Hope Medical Outreach, the area’s free Christian health clinic. Each Tuesday night, those with health burdens who struggle to make ends meet are invited to see doctors and nurses near Providence Centralia Hospital from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
It is easy to wish for a free health clinic, but to successfully bring such a vision into reality requires hard work. Jami Lund is part of the leadership team who did that hard work, and our community is better off because he did.
Lund has served on the board since before the clinic opened, and he carried various responsibilities related to establishing this service. He built relationships with many allies in the community, developed policies, raised money, conducted outreach efforts, organized community events and attracted many to support the mission of the clinic.
Now the more than 100 volunteers serve in the clinic and nearly 1,000 individuals in our neighborhoods have been served. Jami wasn’t the only one on the team, but he was a definite catalyst to bring the vision to reality.
If Lund says he is going to lend his strength to the mission of the Centralia School District, then we will all be fortunate to have his gracious character and work ethic as part of the school board.
Please join me in voting for Jami Lund in November.
Margret A. Strohbach
Chehalis
