Posted: Monday, January 5, 2009 12:00 am
Israel only defends herself in Gaza
I knew it would only take minutes from the time Israel acted to defend herself from Hamas' repeated rocket attacks before the local apologists for Middle Eastern terrorists wrote to this paper. I want to ask them to respond to how they would feel, and what actions they would want to be taken, if they lived in San Diego and the city was under siege from many rocket attacks launched from Tijuana. After years of bombardment from across the border, and now six weeks of as many as 200 rockets per day, wouldn't they demand our government do something to make it stop? I know I would want something more severe than another polite request to cease fire.
Israel withdrew from Gaza; giving the people there a chance to develop a peaceful society on their own. How did they use this opportunity? They destroyed the green houses and other developments and used the time to bring in more weapons rather than peaceful progress.
The rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza had become intolerable. Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel. There is no question that it is a terrorist organization. Hamas unilaterally declared an end to a cease-fire and increased their rocket bombardment of southern Israeli cities. The Palestinians need to end their rocket attacks and renounce the suicide bombers before any real peace can be made there.
Jim Birken, Corvallis
Unions aren't opposed to the secret ballot
Huge thanks to Dennis Dugan for correcting the lies about the Employee Free Choice Act. The claim that unions are against the "secret ballot" is a pure propaganda meme. Nobody who makes that claim can do so with integrity.
EFCA is the equivalent of registering to vote, but even when an on-site workplace election is held, what right does the employer have to be involved at all? This is what the propagandists are keen to protect: the right of the employer to interfere with union organizing and punish the organizers.
Ideological opposition to unions is part of the nasty economic religion to which we have been subjected for several decades. It has led to the Second Republican Great Depression, a predictable result if one pays attention to history.
Dugan calls out the "scholars" who put out this line of hooey. He is right. They are either ideologically blind or conscious whores. But that is the GOP way, as we have seen.
Don Caughey, Corvallis
Poorly informed view doesn't help debate
Robert Gutierrez (Letters, Dec. 30) criticizes the media for perpetuating the "lie" about human contributions to global warming. But who is misleading the public? Consider a few of Mr. Gutierrez's discussion points.
"NASA manipulates data." NASA wasn't manipulating data: an error was reported, acknowledged, and corrected. The "70th warmest October" refers to the continental United States, not the globe.
As reported by NASA (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/), 2008 is the ninth-warmest year in the instrumented record: the eight warmer years are all between 1998 and 2007. On climate time scales of decades and longer, the planet is warming.
"Methane study shocks scientists." Rather than reporting someone else's skewed summary of the methane study, read the actual paper. Go to http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL036037.shtml. The authors do not say that it is simply Mother Nature's natural cycle, nor are they in any way "shocked."
"Warming raises CO2 levels." True, but increasing CO2 also raises temperature. This has been well understood for over a century. The extra CO2 now in the atmosphere is undoubtedly due mostly to fossil-fuel use.
The measured rise in global temperature is consistent with what you'd expect from the extra atmospheric CO2 and the positive feedback between warming and increasing CO2 levels.
Mr. Gutierrez is concerned about a carbon tax, and there's value in discussing this. But poorly informed criticism of the science is not the way to debate solutions for an identified problem.
Laurence Padman, Corvallis
Religion has no claim on the idea of marriage
I find I must, respectfully, disagree with Robert Gourley's letter ("A high wall is best between church and state"). In his letter, Robert says: "Who can argue that marriage is not a religious issue "
Well, Robert, I can.
For one, I am in no way "religious," but I am married. Religion plays no role in my marriage. Second, marriage was a concept usurped by the religious. The fact is, marriage was a pagan ceremony, originally. But, the Catholics liked the idea and took it for their own (they liked the idea of a winter celebration, too; that's why they celebrate the birth of Christ in December, instead of when he was actually born).
I am sad that so many well-intentioned liberals are buying into this idea that the church should own the concept of marriage. We liberals tend to want to find compromise, but I don't think we should settle for compromise on this issue. Just because some religious fanatics don't like gay people, doesn't mean we should find middle ground with them.
Finally, Robert talks about having a government-sanctioned form of marriage like civil unions; however, he fails to understand that marriage is recognized by virtually all countries in the world. It would take far more than an act of Congress to make civil unions be the same as marriage world-wide.
I'm sorry, Robert, I have great respect for you, but I think you are wrong on this issue.
Tom Johnston, Corvallis
Epstein's legal views outdated, reactionary
Vern McDonald's letter of Dec. 26 supports Richard Epstein's argument that the Employee Free Choice Act is unconstitutional. Richard Epstein, in his 1985 book "Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain," also argued that progressive taxation, workers compensation, rent control, and land-use zoning, among other things, were unconstitutional.
Professor Epstein, along with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who has similar if less-consistent views, appears to wish to return the social and legal structure of the United States to sometime back in the 19th century.
What is ironic about their views is that non-white, non-English, non-Protestant individuals had almost no opportunity to become law professors or Supreme Court justices in the first 100 years of the country.
Only through social legislation that expanded the universe of people eligible for basic rights of voting, but that also enabled union organizing and that limited excessive concentration of property by a few, were many people able to better their lives.
Denis White, Corvallis
Math in bailout e-mail just doesn't add up
Like many people in Corvallis, I have received on several different occasions the same e-mail K. Perkins alluded to in a recent letter. This is the one that states that rather than a $700 billion bailout for financial institutions and automakers, the government could give each taxpayer $500,000 and the cost would be the same.
Sorry, but no it wouldn't.
There will be about 140 million tax returns filed for 2008. If the federal government elected to send $500,000 to each of those filers, the total cost would be $70 trillion, which exceeds $700 billion by a mere 69 trillion, 300 billion dollars. The actual cash equivalent is $5,000, not $500,000.
The math is off by a factor of 100. That's such a whopper of an error that one can't help but wonder if that e-mail was originally drafted by someone in the Congressional Budget Office.
John Brenan, Corvallis