Once again, local Democratic leadership chose to go "against the grain," wasting taxpayer dollars in attempting to impose a 5 percent tax on cell phone companies.

Vigilant citizens were forced to take matters in their own hands and launch an expensive anti-tax referendum. Anti-war resolutions, anti-conventional marriage, anti-growth planning and now our fearless dictators tried to ram an unconventional cell phone tax down our throats by threatening cuts to our protection services while expanding social services to persons who are not even United States citizens.

The next referendum should be to limit elected officials' powers by requiring all new laws and resolutions to be directly approved by citizen vote using new, available technologies. Give the power back to the people instead of continuing to operate an electoral system that was put in place when ships and horses were the mode of transportation.

Corvallis is in a unique situation compared to most college towns that witness the return of students in the fall: Returning students do boost retail sales, but towns outside Oregon also reap the benefit of rental and retail sales tax collections used to support their government infrastructure.

Corvallis has a transient rental tax in place, paid by our local motels and hotels. Unlike the proposed new cell phone tax, it is supported by administrative staff already in place. We should expand the transient rental tax to include all rentals. This would create millions of additional tax revenues and should lead to some reduction in property taxes paid by homeowners.

Larry Henderson

Corvallis

Reinstate the local option levy

In 1991, voters in Oregon passed Measure 5 and transferred responsibility for school funding to the state.

In 1999, Measures 47 and 50 provided an opportunity to reclaim some local control. Shortly thereafter, Corvallis became the first of many school districts to exert that control by passing a local option levy.

Please join me in affirming our local commitment to quality education by reinstating a local option levy with a "Yes" vote on measure 02-58 on your November 7 ballot.

Arnold Larson

Corvallis

How city, paper should do better

With regard to the defeat of the cell phone tax my observations are these: The City Council continues to make the same mistake: not providing enough information. The city must educate voters and make its case. Otherwise, more taxes will not be palatable to voters.

An idea that I passed along to the City Council was that it could use the $16,000 spent on televising council meetings and the $67,000 spent on the city newsletter to provide a budget document that citizens can understand. Even if one has a financial background, understanding where our property taxes go is a monumental challenge.

Additionally, the current budget is based on total property taxes increasing 4.45 percent for operations. Yet the city continues to reiterate over and over again that Measures 5 and 50-47 are the culprits of our city's financial woes. If my family must live on a salary with no increases in four years, it is tough to understand why the city can't live with a 4.45 percent increase.

My final comment is this: the Gazette Times has done nothing, really, to report on the city's budget. It has failed miserably in its civic duty as a community newspaper in this regard. The Gazette-Times' editorial opinions are largely uneducated on city finances and I have yet to see any reporting at all on the city's tax-supported services. Did the

G-T even report that the city passed a budget? Shame on the Gazette-Times and shame on our city council.

Yvonne McCallister

Corvallis

Where has past America gone?

I lived in a country of freedoms that protected its citizens; where one's home was his castle, not to be invaded without search warrants; where one's phone calls were private and where only you could read your mail; and where book purchases and library checkouts were only your business.

It was a country where you were entitled to a jury of your peers and a right to see evidence against you; a country that defended itself in a nasty war, but didn't arbitrarily attack sovereign nations that were not threatening it.

Where is my country? The "emperor with no clothes" sits on the "throne," appointed by a supreme court. This emperor knows no diplomacy, misuses our army attacking nations at will, throwing away $300 billion in Iraq alone, while killing thousands and thousands of innocents. In the process, he creates the very terrorists he says he fears!

This emperor takes $12 billion away from college loans to throw to his rich friends in tax breaks and to crony companies in no-bid contract waste. He advocates torture while our kids, not his, bleed in the sand to benefit Halliburton and Dick Cheney types!

Do we fight this dictator, or do we just go "baa, baa, baa" all the way to our sandpiles to hide our heads?

Did someone steal our country, or did we merely hand it over out of fear?

Marilyn Maurais

Corvallis

New Orleans could use Iraq monies

Reality seldom - if ever - penetrates the West Wing walls of our wacky White House, where truth is a stranger and deception reigns supreme.

The denizens of this absurd alternate universe dismiss as alarmist the persistent reports of violence and death in the war-torn Middle East.

And just when you thought things couldn't get any more bizarre, we now learn that the Iraqi forces, in cooperation with their U.S. "liberators," are erecting "berms."

One almost can envision the delight of the natives as they gather to promenade on these unexpected landscaping additions.

From the elevation of these berms, the bedazzled Bedouins may behold the flowering of democracy erupting - nay, exploding - all around them.

All of this benevolence comes thanks to the tireless efforts of a thoughtful Bush administration and the selfless contributions of Halliburton, KBR and a myriad of affiliates, subsidiaries, limited partnerships and sub-contractors and, of course, the limitless generosity of the American taxpayer.

I don't want to sound like a wet blanket, but I have a thought: Is it possible that quite a few of the folks in New Orleans, still attempting to recover from last year's Hurricane Katrina, would love to see some of those berms put in place in their ravaged neighborhoods?

Leo de Vogel

Corvallis