Posted: Monday, February 4, 2008 12:00 am
City should proceed carefully on budget
I am somewhat confused by reports regarding the City of Corvalis' finances.
Last year the city projected large budget deficits for many years to come and indicated the need for tax and fee increases or, alternatively, service reductions. The City Council even formed a citizen committee to advise them on future increases to taxes and fees.
Then, several weeks ago, the city announced that revenues were actually adequate for the next several years and the citizens committee was, therefore, to be disbanded.
Now, in the Gazette-Times, we see that revenues actually exceed those needed to fund current service levels and city staff are being asked to recommend service increases, apparently to spend this new-found revenue.
It is this dramatic and quick turnaround in city finances that confuses or even alarms me. The implication is that new-found funds must be spent on service expansions rather than saved for a later day.
I do not know the true condition of city finances. But I do not want to receive additional services now just to find out, later, that taxes and fees must increase to fund these new services.
Before the City Council and Budget Commission approve any service increases, they should be able to assure citizens that the increased services can be funded on an ongoing basis without future tax and fee increases.
If they cannot, then the new-found revenue should be saved to offset future cost increases in base-level services.
Rolland Baxter, Corvallis
To help Hillary, Bill should stay home
The recent Opinion page piece about Bill Clinton's campaigning antics being "unbecoming to an ex president" ("Bill too tough for Hill," Jan. 29) seems to me to miss the point entirely.
Quite a lot of his past behavior belongs firmly in that category, quite as much as his recent purple-faced rants in apparent support of the much-reviled Hillary.
However, I feel it is time to share the real truth about Bill, which everyone seems to have missed.
He doesn't actually want Mrs. Clinton to be president.
Such a massive ego could not comfortably ride in the fourth vehicle in the motorcade, or climb four steps behind his wife up to Air Force One (on the premise that he got an invitation in the first place.)
The idea that history would have two Clinton dynasties would come very hard to him, particularly as improvement on the first one would be very easy to achieve, however mediocre it turned out to be.
And to tap politely on the Oval Office door and hear the words, "later Bill, I'm busy," would be the final straw.
If Hillary stands a ghost of a chance, he will have to stay home for the few more weeks, wherever that is.
Mike Colling, Corvallis
Stimulus package gift to big business
The stimulus package passed by the House is yet another giveaway to big business. And it may have a reverse effect - businesses may postpone purchases until they find out the details of the package.
The money would be better spent rebuilding bridges on the interstates. Or providing incentives for alternative energy. Or extending unemployment or expanding food stamp benefits. Any of these would stimulate the economy more than a misguided bailout for business.
Philip Scott, Corvallis
U.S. supported rule of brutal dictator
The Jan. 28 headline news of President Suharto's death woefully failed to show American involvement in this brutal dictator's pillaging of Indonesia's people, resources and culture.
It is well documented that the 1965 takeover was aided and abetted by our nation's CIA.
Our hard-earned tax money was used by the CIA to provide "lists" of leading "leftists" in Indonesia. Who were these so-called leftists? Union leaders/workers, religious leaders and social workers: the core of a nationalist, sovereign country that cared about its people.
They rejected redistribution of wealth to American corporations and rejected the World Bank and paid with their lives.
Suharto filled many of his economic posts with economists taught in the neo-liberal schools in the United States.
Indonesia's wealth of copper, trees, rubber and oil was protected by a strong nationalistic past and that had to be undone for the benefit of multinational corporations with no allegiance to workers, culture or sovereign status of a nation.
This "shock and awe" program of torturing Indonesia's citizens and the economic blitzkrieg of dismantling social programs and redistributing wealth to benefit mining and agriculture interests was done under the watchful eyes of American interests.
Suharto now resides in hell with the likes of Stalin, Pinochet, Hitler and Mussolini. Yet there are spaces being reserved for Americans still alive today with blood on their hands as they sold out Indonesians for the mega-profits of corporate America or "ugly Americans."
Tell that story, teach our children the truth.
John F. Borowski, Philomath
Global warming: We have four choices
In reply to John Jones ("Scientific data shows no global warming," Letters, Jan. 30) and everyone else who disbelieves global warming:
Why even bother? Why bother arguing against global warming? There is nothing to gain by denying it, and everything to gain by accepting it.
Think about it this way. There are four possible futures. Either global warming is real or it is not, and either we do something about it or we don't.
If global warming is just in our imaginations, and we don't do anything about it, all is well.
If global warming doesn't exist, but we prepare for it anyway, well, we've wasted some money. Worst case, money spent on non-critical projects plunges the United States and the world into a depression. That future sounds pretty bleak. It seems to present a rational reason to not spend money on preventing global warming.
However, if global warming is real, we face a very different future.
If it exists and continues to worsen, but we spend money fighting to preserve the environment and ourselves, then we'll be fine. We will have spent enormous amount of money, but it will have been for a good cause.
But if global warming is real and we don't do anything about it, frankly, we're screwed.
Instead of just economic depression, we would end up with wars over dwindling resources, diminishing land, millions displaced by rising sea levels, and the same economic depression as if we had spent the money in the first place.
Aaron Gable, Corvallis