March 2011
Dear Watchers
Readers Write In
SOB’s, Ours or Theirs!
To the Editor:
This past week (Feb. 7), Cairo’s streets ran red with patriots’ blood, a tyrant’s day numbered, all the while our U.S. State Department is uttering high-sounding suggestions about “orderly transitions.”
Our own U.S. overthrow of George III’s dominion surely wasn’t orderly, as does every Egyptian know, begging the question, “why United States and not Egypt for real freedom and independence?”
Seems we’re really not in it for real revolution, as it might then be out of U.S. control, our billions of foreign aid be realized as wasted, except for the lid it helped Mubarak place on the Egyptian population’s bubbling cauldron of discontent and frustration with their lives during his repressive regime.
Diplomacy’s a Machiavellian world, epitomized and immortalized by Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) when commenting on the Latin American generals and dictators his administration supported during the 1930’s and 1940’s “Good Neighbor Policy” as functionaries of U.S. corporations with commercial interests in natural resources and agricultural products of those countries, noting, “they may be SOB’s, but they’re our SOB’s.” You count the dots from there to here.
Bob Hendricks
Blaine
Jail Questions
To the Editor:
It was great to see a packed house of citizens at the recent meeting for the new $150 million jail. But for me, what I learned just raised more questions.
How will we pay for the new jail? The county said they won’t raise taxes. Is there a magic source of money?
Where did the sales tax money for the new jail go? In 2004, I voted to help pay for the new jail because that’s where they said the money would go. We’re still paying that tax but they haven’t been saving the money for the new jail? That doesn’t seem right.
Why is the county planning to buy a swampy parcel off Slater Road for the jail? It will cost an extra $9 million just to deal with the swamp and bring in sewer, water, power, etc. There are other, cheaper places. Why this land?
These things don’t add up: they spent the money, don’t plan to get more, and are burning cash we don’t have on a piece of rural swampland when there are other buildable parcels with infrastructure in place. Do they really plan to build a new jail? I’d like some answers.
Marian Henderson
Bellingham
Marian Henderson is a member of the RightSizeJail Coalition.
