A citizen's advice to the City Council: Stick to home issues

After six months with an empty seat, the City Council finally has representatives for all of Corvallis. Now, we can ask them to please be a city council, representing and caring for city residents. They weren't elected to represent the world, the United States or Oregon. Residents want to live in our city and thrive. That means being able to meet our needs here, including employment and necessities.

Most businesses in Corvallis are small and privately owned. They need support, not road blocks or extra fees, to start up, grow and prosper. The council should facilitate the journey through the various obscure permits and regulations involved in being a small business owner. They enacted a living wage; they should make it easier to pay it.

They should remember what they've already asked of the city. Maybe this will reduce council accusations against city departments only to find out they are doing what the council had requested of them.

If the council creates a citizen review system, they should keep track of it and not put it in place, forget about it and then say it isn't working. They should listen to their experts and not order the installation of traffic lights against the advice of the city's engineering department!

With job losses, bankruptcies and foreclosures, budgets are tight everywhere, including the city. When the council chases departments that are doing their job and listens to resolutions outside the realm of a City Council, resources are wasted, reducing Corvallis' livability.

Joy Linn

Corvallis

Help to envision health care's future tonight

Many times, citizens complain because they don't have a voice in decisions that are made about their neighborhoods, communities, or even their state. Tonight, in Corvallis, we have a great opportunity for Oregonians to make their voices heard about the future of health care in our state.

Oregon leaders are developing a proposal for high quality, affordable health care. Listening sessions have been held throughout the state, and 7 p.m. at the First United Methodist Community Center is our turn for mid-valley residents.

Everyone's voice matters: people with or without health care, seniors, employers, people with disabilities and health care professionals are invited to express their opinions about how Oregon's health care system should be planned and how care should be delivered.

There will be small and large discussion groups, informal and inclusive. Participants don't have to be intimidated by giving formal testimony. Another opportunity for Oregonians to have their say about health care is to communicate through www.talkhealthforum.org. Make your voice heard now!

Betty Johnson

Corvallis

Teen thief should consider returning boy's stolen bike

My 11-year-old son received a new bicycle for his birthday last week. And Wednesday, while he was at Heart of the Valley Festival Choir rehearsal at First Presbyterian Church, he learned three very important lessons:

1. Listen to your mother when she tells you to always lock your bicycle because she might know a thing or two.

2. Always lock your bicycle. If you forget your bike lock, take the bicycle inside with you.

3. Even though Corvallis is a wonderful town in which to grow up, there are dishonest people who will steal from you.

And if your Caucasian high-school-aged son (there was a witness to the theft) suddenly has a new Trek bicycle, ask him to return it so that the very sad boy who took the bike can learn an important lesson: It's never too late to say you're sorry. That would be an important fourth lesson that he could teach my son.

Susan McDonald

Corvallis

No one would ever believe

this outrageous war story

I have an idea for a fictional story. It goes as follows:

A president of a powerful nation and his cronies want a new source of oil in order to further line their pockets. Just like Pearl Harbor allowed Roosevelt to get the United States actively into World War II, a terrible tragedy allows the administration to start a war in one oil-rich country, although they have to go through many machinations, including spreading much disinformation, to wrongly tie that country to the disaster.

When, after a couple of years, they realize it is not going to be easy to get that oil, they try to start a war with a neighboring oil-rich country by spreading more disinformation to get the legislature and their own citizenry to back them. But this causes so much negative feedback they are unable to do so, but continue to try.

They create confrontations in a nearby body of water with the latter oil-rich country, but this skullduggery fails.

Without the ability to get at these two countries' oil, they begin to look for other avenues to line their pockets. Manipulations to create extremely high oil prices allow the administration to call for drilling of off-shore and certain on-shore protected sources of oil with a grudging mention for development of alternative energies. Of course, all this is only in my mind. No one could believe that any respectable government would stoop to such disreputable, egregious tactics. But it might make a good novel.

Werner A. Mukatis

Corvallis

U.S. needs to rethink, realign its national, global priorities

Don't ya gotta just love this country? South Carolina is now offering believers special license plates with an emblem of a stain glass window and a cross. What about Jews, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists? Do atheists get a financial break since they don't believe?

Wow, we even get to display The Ten Commandments in public. I wonder if they will display the punishment for breaking them? (Getting stoned to death.) I don't think it's referring to overdosing on medical marijuana. Nothing quit like Bronze Age justice to keep the proletariat on the straight and narrow; sort of like Iran's dress code police.

How about our watchdogs of public morals, televangelists, who tell us that God brought the hurricane on New Orleans to punish this grossly immoral city? I guess that all the homes flooded in the Midwest was the only way God could get all those gays out of their closets.

This same great country gives CEOs, many in the military industrial complex (read that as "war profiteers"), a median annual pay package of $8.4 million, up $280,000 from 2006. And yet we can't find the money to care for the young men and women injured in their wars.

To misquote and take out of context Michelle Obama's statement; "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country." Don't ya gotta just love it?

Roger Paul

Corvallis