Dear-Editor

Why are immigrants coming here? Could it be because of what is going on in their countries? Have we anything to do with it?

Could it be that multi-national corporations aided by successive U.S. governments have raped those lands for their resources, creating havoc and war, putting their desperate people into total poverty and forcing them to come here?

NAFTA, CAFTA and the WTO have made this situation worse, and are now bringing down the average income of U.S. workers too. We are told that the economy is doing well and average incomes are going up, does that feel right to you?

Here’s an example: If a group of middle class people and one rich man were together in a room and their combined incomes divided between them became the average. What if that rich man went away to be replaced by Bill Gates, it would look as if average incomes as a whole had gone up, when of course they hadn’t.

Nothing is quite as black and white as it seems.

Congress has ways of getting projects funded. One of them is called Earmarks and it’s being abused. In 1995 there were 1,439 earmarks, in 2005 there were 13,997! In fact there have been some 66,000 earmarks since 1991.

This is where the word “pork” comes from, where the $231 million for the Alaskan "bridge to nowhere" and the $50 million dollar “rain forest” project in Iowa comes from, when our soldiers need armor, VA funding is being cut, homes need to be rebuilt in New Orleans etc.

Earmarks are put into Conference reports, where they can’t be removed, the reports can be up to 280 pages long and are purposely brought to Congress for vote that day, with no time to read them, so they go through with no oversight.

This is corrupting the legislative process, as it uses up so much of congresses time, one sub committee alone got 15,000 requests!!

Everyone is encouraged to put in their pet projects so that they can bring back money to their constituents, thus helping their own next election. What happens is that members won’t vote for bills unless their earmarks are in them. It also means that they are forced to vote for bills that they would never normally vote for, or that their constituents would never want them to vote for.

Law makers are trying to make changes to this corrupt system.

It came as a great surprise to me to find out how much of America is owned by other countries. I was alerted to this by the concern brought on by the UAE, Dubai Ports World purchase of 6 U.S. ports.

(Having been told over and over for the past 5 years about terror and to be fearful, it is hardly surprising that the country turned against this idea so strongly).

Why have we sold off so much of this country? Could it be that other countries own so many of our dollars, (we just keep on buying things from them), so these countries need to spend their dollars, and the only things for sale are our industries and utilities.

This is an interesting turnaround, as for decades, U.S. administrations and their corporate benefactors have gone into countries full of mineral wealth and taken that wealth from the people who live in those countries.

The only people who benefited from those transactions were the multi-national corporations and the ruling elite that ran those countries. The result of so many years of this misuse is now showing as many countries are turning away from America. For how this went down, read The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins.

Now it looks like the tables are being turned on us and we are being bought out. Is it the multi-national corporations and the ruling elite that are benefiting again? Are we going to end up a 3rd world country having sold out?

Dear Editor,

Are we joining the rest of the country and going green?

There are so many of us being hosted by this planet. We take care of our houses, our desks and our cars, how about our planet? It looks like it’s going to happen.

A poll conducted this year by the Pew Research Center found that nationwide some issues go down well with everyone. Republicans, Democrats and Independents were all in favor of “requiring better fuel efficiency for cars, trucks & SUV’s” (86% for, 12% against), and “increasing federal funding for research on wind, solar, and hydrogen energy” (82% for, 14% against). There was even bipartisan support for “spending more on subway, rail and bus systems” (68% for, 26% against).

This is exciting as we have an Initiative to go on the ballot this November in Washington State. It’s I-937 and it’s for 15% of our energy to be from wind, solar and conservation by 2020. Amazingly all the Public Utilities have signed up for it. It is going to create thousands of family supporting jobs, stabilize household electric bills, support clean air and wean us off foreign oil.
We need 160,000 throughout WA State. Sign the Initiative at Mail Unlimited in Yelm or the ITEX office in Rainier, and help get the Initiative on the ballot.

Dear Editor,

Are you a good citizen?

Do you pay for what you use? If you damaged a neighbor’s property, would you fix it?

It’s been 16 years since the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and Exxon Mobile hasn’t paid a penny to those devastated communities in the Prince William Sound! Instead, they spend millions on court appeals to delay payment. Why aren’t they doing the right thing? Having made more money than any company in history, it isn’t as if they are short of money!

Exxon Mobil also under reported the amount of oil they drilled from Alabama state lands. Once they were found out, they were taken to court and charged. Again they appealed the charges and have yet to pay a penny. That money belongs to the people of Alabama, and don’t you think they could really use it in the aftermath of Katrina?

Dear Editor,

Our Children Are Our Future

In the biggest international study ever conducted; U.S. high school seniors ranked near the bottom in math and science.

More worrying, is that even the American students taking advanced courses could not measure up to students from other nations. In math, they ranked 15th out of 16 nations. In physics, they ranked dead last. In general math and science, they ranked near the bottom among 21 nations.
Japan and China, who are the best, didn’t even take part in the multiyear study. Instead, U.S. seniors were beat in basic math by Sweden, Switzerland and Germany; in science by Canada; and in physics by Russia, the country that is supposed to look to us for scientific expertise!

It’s a crisis in American education. Are we loosing our position in the world community?
These are the fields where the good paying jobs are and it’s our generation's responsibility to make sure that we don’t have to bring in kids from other countries to fill these places. We certainly can’t blame the kid’s.

Bruce Alberts, the disappointed president of the National Academy of Sciences says “Only 10% of high school graduates qualify for even entry level jobs”.

About 55% of students taking physics in the U.S. are taught by people who never majored or minored in the subject! The dismal results point out the urgent need for stronger graduation standards and much improved teacher education.

Dear Editor,

Scientists & Church Leaders come together over the Climate.

Top Scientists agree with 85 evangelical Leaders that they don’t want to destroy the Creation, because that's what’s happening, and at an accelerating rate. They’ve started a new coalition called “Creation Care”, a major initiative to fight a global warming catastrophe.

Scientists agree that rising temperatures are caused mostly by man-made greenhouse-gases from burning fossil fuels, and will devastate the poorest on Earth first and, in the coming decades, have a catastrophic effect on civilization itself unless emissions are sharply cut.

In the past two years, two major glaciers in Greenland are melting at double the rate to the ocean, after years of slow movement. We have underestimated the problem as millions could drown from 23 foot high rising sea levels as the ice sheet melts. The ice sheet contains one-tenth of the world's freshwater reserves. Global average temperatures will rise by between one and six degrees Celsius this century unless urgent action is taken to reduce carbon emissions. Even a rise of three degrees could result in cataclysmic results.

Scientists say that if we don’t stop these emissions within two decades, we will watch the planet spiral towards destruction. Annual global temperature analysis showed that 2005 was the hottest year since records started in the late 1800s.

The Gulf Stream water current raises temperatures in northern Europe by some 18F -8 degrees by pumping warm water from the tropics and the Gulf of Mexico, up into the colder waters around Scandinavia. But researchers have discovered that the circulation has slowed by 30% over the last 12 years. If Europe freezes, the Inuit Eskimos loose their ability to live and island nations are drowned, will we take in 25% of the world’s inhabitants, given that we create 25% of the pollution?

There are 57 Iraq and Persian Gulf War veterans entering congressional races for government positions in 2006. At least one of them is running as a Republican, the rest are running as Democrats. (There are more now! FV)

OK, so you and I won’t get to speak in the halls of Congress, but surely it’s OK for our Senators to do so! Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist won’t allow any time for speeches regarding Samual Alito until Jan 25th, the day after the Senate Judiciary Committee votes on his nomination. It is normal practice for the majority leader to give senators time to make speeches about the nominee, but Sen. Patrick Leahy, Sen. Ted Kennedy & Sen. Dick Durbin are being forced to make statements every other place to get heard.

The right wing media machine is telling us the nomination is a done deal, but there are many people who are deeply worried. In 1984, as assistant to the U.S. solicitor general, Alito started the ball rolling by writing that government officials should be able to order domestic wiretaps without fear of legal retaliation. He also found more power for the government and doesn’t seem to be interested in individual rights. I thought that was what American history is all about.

Do we really need to give up our rights? Are we in more danger today than when the British Army surrounded our American ancestors fighting for the Republic, or in more danger than during the 1st and 2nd world wars, or in more danger than when the Soviets had nukes aimed at us? We didn’t give up our rights then, why are we being terrified and brainwashed into allowing it now?

We are the only country in the industrialized world that doesn’t have a national health system.

A reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle who lived in Canada and in the U.S. tells the story of two female friends that both had the same devastating cancer. The difference was profound.

His Canadian friend was able to focus completely on healing her virulent cancer, because she was completely supported by the government and the Canadian health care system, whereas his American friend spent all of her time worrying and had to focus on paying bills and fighting the health care system, instead of healing her cancer.

Dear Editor,

An ethical dilemma? Another Side to Abortion.

The U.S. Territories Northern Marianas Islands have weaker labor laws than we have on the Mainland, due to Jack Abramoff’s lobbying and Tom DeLay’s actions. Abramoff gave nearly $9 million in lobbying money to stop the House from strengthening those laws. Now happy garment industry owners bring in Chinese and Asian labor, keep them behind barbed wire, in rat infested labor camps where they work for 12 hours a day and are paid $3.05 an hour, even though the products they make say ‘Made In America’. Some are forced into prostitution.

Abramoff invited DeLay and his family to a fun 1997 New Year’s trip. While there, DeLay approved these immigrants working and living conditions. ABC News shows DeLay complementing these factories as a model of capitalism.

So bad were these working conditions that in 2000 the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Murkowski worker reform bill, but DeLay, as House Republican Whip, stopped the U.S. House from even considering it.

So here is the ethical rub! ABCNews 20/20 investigation finds that if a woman gets pregnant there, they are made to have an abortion. There are 11,000 Chinese women and no babies.

Dear Editor,

Don’t let Spin Dilute the Facts

There were many Republicans that took money directly from Jack Abramoff.
Both parties received donations from lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s CLIENTS. Although that is NOT a crime, many lawmakers are paying back these donations to charities in the wake of last Tuesday's guilty plea to corruption charges by the lobbyist.

Which brings me to, The Abuse of Charity. Donating to charity is one of the best things American’s do. When we hear that Abramoff’s Capital Athletic Foundation took in millions but spent less than 1% on it’s stated purpose, with the rest given to his pet projects, like overseas golfing trips and sky-boxes; or that a lot of the $4.4 million World of Hope’s money went to Dr. Bill Frist’s political friends, it stop’s us from trusting charities.

Many of these charities employ family and friends. Tom DeLay’s wife Christine earned $3,200 a month for 3 years for a total of $115,000 for making lists of favorite charities of members of Congress. She and her daughter were also paid more that ½ million dollars since 2001 by DeLay’s political action and campaign committees, (per documents filed with the Federal Election Committee).

In 1998 DeLay wrote, “We are for full and immediate disclosure” regarding campaign contributions. So let’s apply what he said about campaign contributions to charities connected to politicians.

Did you ever call or email a friend and say something like, “Did you see the report on TV of the latest Bin Laden tape?” If you did, there is every possibility that your call or email was data mined. As things stand at the moment, we have no idea if this is true, but how does that make you feel? We already know they have been listening to Quaker meetings and groups that are against the war. What’s to stop them from listening to other political parties? (Watergate again?)

Do you really think that our enemies don’t know that we wire tap? After all, they were clever enough to plan 9/11? Every kid in the world who ever watched TV or a movie knows about wire tapping!

If this is now such a terrifying specter that we need an urgent criminal investigation into who leaked “national security information” to the Times, then why wasn’t an investigation called a year ago when the administration first found out about the story. Instead of calling for an investigation, the president asked the Times to not publish. How come, now that it’s public, we suddenly need an investigation?

Why is the administration and media telling us we need no oversight over the NSA (National Security Agency)? In 1978, the congress passed the FISA laws. The FISA law allows wire tapping for days before having to tell the court. The court said yes to virtually everything. What was being tapped that they needed go around the court?

Let’s not loose this Republic.

"People ask the difference between a leader and a boss . . . . The leader works in the open and the boss in covert. The leader leads and the boss drives."
Theodore Roosevelt

Report from the Non Partisan General Accounting Office to Congress in September 2005.

“The United States is the only major democracy that allows private partisan corporations to secretly count and tabulate the votes with proprietary non-transparent software. The CEO of one of the most crucial suppliers of electronic voting machines, Warren O'Dell of Diebold, pledged before the 2004 campaign to deliver Ohio and thus the presidency to George W. Bush.”
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1529No

This GAO’s report raises questions about the results in Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico where last minute shifts changed the results of the election.

“Examples of Voting System Vulnerabilities and Problems
• Cast ballots, ballot definition files, and audit logs could be modified.
• Supervisor functions were protected with weak or easily guessed passwords.
• Systems had easily picked locks and power switches that were exposed and unprotected.
• Local jurisdictions misconfigured their electronic voting systems, leading to election day problems.
• Voting systems experienced operational failures during elections.
• Vendors installed uncertified electronic voting systems.

While electronic voting systems hold promise for a more accurate and efficient election process, numerous entities have raised concerns about their security and reliability, citing instances of weak security controls, system design flaws, inadequate system version control, inadequate security testing, incorrect system configuration, poor security management, and vague or incomplete voting system standards, among other issues.

For example, studies found
(1) some electronic voting systems did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected;
(2) it was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate; and
(3) vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level.
It is important to note that many of the reported concerns were drawn from specific system makes and models or from a specific jurisdiction’s election, and that there is a lack of consensus among election officials and other experts on the pervasiveness of the concerns. Nevertheless, some of these concerns were reported to have caused local problems in federal elections—resulting in the loss or miscount of votes—and therefore merit attention.”

2GAO’s Executive Council on Information Management and Technology is made up of
leading executives in government, industry, and academia.

Dear Editor,

Why are we letting Congress cut $50+ billion from Medicare, Food Stamps, Heating Assistance, Farm Subsidies and Student Loans while giving the wealthiest another tax cut?

Will you get Tax Cuts? More than 70% of benefits go to the top 20%, and more than 25% go to the top 1%.

Tax Cuts over Time? 54% of some benefits would go to those earning more than $1 million a year. Another 43% of benefits would go to those earning between $200,000 and $1 million. Thus, 97% will go to the 3.7% earning $200,000 or more. Virtually none of the benefits go to families with incomes under $100,000.

In 2018, the year we are told Social Security will be in crisis because it will pay out $23 billion more in benefits than it will receive in revenues — the tax cuts would cost $323 billion
1.1 million more Americans slipped into poverty in 2004. The 4th year the rate climbed. The increase was borne completely by whites, the only group that saw its poverty rate rise! Poverty starts at $13,020 for a single parent with one child and $19,157 for two adults with two children.
These are people who have to choose between paying rent, heating their homes or buying food. Are we going to sit by and watch old people die of the cold this winter, and even more children go hungry?

Dear Editor,

I was enchanted with the delicious pictures on page B2 Nisqually Valley Spice. Taste of the Future. It wasn’t until I started reading, that I realized it was a virtual advertisement for the Biotech/Genetically Modified food industry. Rather than take what was said as fact, I would like to counter their comments.

On the website Nature.com, they discuss the fact that in 2003 99% of all GM foods were grown in just 6 countries. Although there are field tests in 34 other countries, the rest of the world’s 153 countries feel that the technology is not trustworthy, and many see it ruining their farming communities? (The profit-hungry GM industry would require third world farmers to buy their expensive seeds every season instead of using century’s old seed saving methods).
There have been huge battles as companies like Monsanto & DuPont have unsuccessfully tried to lobby and bribe other countries. (Six government scientists testified before the Canadian Senate that a Monsanto official offered them a bribe of $1-2 million, if they approved the company’s GM bovine growth hormone (rbGH) without further study).
Most Americans don’t know that most of the rest of the world won’t eat genetically modified food, and that just about all the milk on our shelves has rbGH in it.
Yes it is true that 70% of food in American supermarkets is already genetically modified. Monsanto once claimed that PCB’s, DDT and Agent Orange were safe! Are we part of a huge secret health experiment?

Ask people if they would rather buy regular food or genetically modified food, most would rather buy food that hasn’t been messed it.

This is why companies like Monsanto, and Syngenta, lobbied for food on our supermarket shelves not to be labeled as genetically modified.

Big money talks. Monsanto, one of the largest corporations pushing this technology has had an interesting group of employees. Working for it, or one of its subsidiaries have been, Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Anne Veneman and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Receiving large donations were U.S. Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson, Chairman of the House Agricultural Committee Larry Combest and John Ashcroft.

As usual, spin is all important. It hasn’t been proved that yields are greater, in fact other countries are finding that organic methods are more productive, and although they say that GM foods resist pests and weed killer, they have the pests and weed killer in them, which you then eat! Over time pests and weeds get used to them and create super bugs and super weeds, which is a real problem for farmers who have to use even more weed killer.

Farmers have cross pollinated plants for centuries, but they always crossed same species, like roses with roses or tangerines with oranges.

These corporations say there is no difference, but research disagrees. Does it feel right to implant fish genes in tomatoes, or root worms in your corn. If God had wanted to cross fish and tomatoes, he would have made it easy to do. The technology pushes unnatural modifications. The process of gene insertion creates dangerous gene mutations and is consistently uncertain and may be dangerous.

Personally, I feel these foods are more difficult to digest. It would be interesting to see if this nation’s digestion problems have been worse since these foods appeared silently on supermarket shelves. Research by Russian scientists showed that GM Soy flour caused 46.6% more deaths in rats that regular soy! http://www.regnum.ru/english/526651.html Although there was no follow up tests, soon after GM soy was introduced to the UK, soy allergies skyrocketed by 50%.
The World Health Organization developed a list of criteria designed to minimize the likelihood that a foreign protein from a GM crop will be allergenic. Unfortunately, the GM soy, maize, and papaya already on the market fail those criteria, (and they are all in last weeks recipes)!
For more information read: Seeds of Deception by Jeffrey Smith, or go to http://www.organicconsumers.org/

Dear Editor,

September 28th, CBS and the Associated Press reported that the President granted pardons to 14 people, amongst them was a bomber, a counterfeiter, a bootlegger, people committing mail fraud and felonies, a person delivering LSD, a cocaine distributor, importers and users of marijuana, and selling Quaalude tablets, embezzlement, illegal firearm possession. It’s an interesting list. What does it mean for us?

Dear Editor,

September 21st, the Washington Post reported that the President has decided to waive any financial sanctions on Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for child trafficking! So these counties can just go ahead and bring in as many little boys and girls for sex as they please, and it’ll be ok with us!

Dear Editor,

I want to thank the Nisqually Valley News for being a beacon of democracy. By printing all letters to the Editor, you are giving your readers a more diverse understanding of what is going on.

Most television and radio is owned by a few huge corporations who have a very one sided view of what is going on. As much as we are always being told the media is liberal, this administration finally admits, they are not. “We own the media” they now say.

The death of the media is the biggest disaster to hit this democracy. An uninformed public have no idea what is going on, so they are unable to make well reasoned judgments. People are being forced to go to foreign news media, or the internet, to find out what is really going on.

It is fascinating to me to see how a disorganized response by the government to Hurricane Katrina enabled the press to be embedded with the hurricane victims, whereas in Iraq, the press was only allowed to embed with the troops.

Look how the Katrina reporting and pictures affected us as the facts were before our eyes. Now that the government is back in control of the situation, we hear that reporters are being stopped from reporting the full recovery efforts, with reports of film being confiscated and cameras being smashed.
I suppose the idea is to stop pictures of bodies being found, just like we aren’t allowed to see the flag draped coffins of our U.S. war hero’s.

Dear Editor,

We know that maintaining our national security will require reducing our dependence on foreign oil. But the Administration is using the current crisis to push through a reckless energy agenda, that gives billions to the already unbelievably mega rich oil companies and the nuclear industry, but gives little to the alternatives.

They want to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which will not improve America's security. Even the conservative Cato Institute has called President Bush's claim that Arctic oil would reduce gas prices or American dependency on foreign oil "not just nonsense, but nonsense on stilts."

There is a quick and easy way to reduce our dependency fast. Since 40 percent of the oil used by America, fuels light trucks and cars, an increase in mileage per gallon, called CAFE - could have a dramatic impact, but the Administration has offered nothing but platitudes in this area. In the late 1970's, President Jimmy Carter implemented CAFE standards to combat an oil shortage driven by policies OPEC. The standards raised fuel efficiency in American cars by 7.6 miles a gallon over six years, causing oil imports from the Persian Gulf to fall by 87 percent. Our economy grew by 27 percent during that period. Detroit, predictably, figured out how to build more fuel-efficient cars largely without reductions in size, comfort or power. The CAFE standards worked so well that they produced an oil glut by 1986. That's when the Reagan administration intervened to rescue America's domestic oil industry from gasoline price collapse. Ronald Reagan's rollback of CAFE standards caused America, in that year, to double oil imports from the Persian Gulf nations and to burn more oil than is in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

How can an administration that professes to value every life, turn on unborn children in this way?

Did you know that Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that has been shown, even in minute doses, to seriously harm young children? The largest source of mercury in our environment is emissions from coal-fired power plants. Incredibly, this administration now wants to relax the rules and allow these plants to continue polluting our environment with high levels of mercury.

Pregnant or nursing women, childbearing aged women, and children are now advised not to eat ANY of the high-mercury fish species such as tilefish, shark and swordfish, and no more than two servings of other types of fish (such as tuna) per week. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in 12 women of childbearing age currently has a mercury level in her blood that is unsafe for a developing fetus!!
Yet in response to this widespread public health threat, this Administration has proposed a ten-year delay in implementing regulations designed to cut mercury emissions by 90 percent. They also want to remove coal-fired power plants from the list of mercury sources that can be regulated under the Clean Air Act. In response, Senators Snowe and Leahy have introduced a bipartisan resolution of disapproval to prevent these proposals from going forward.

I was TV clicking and came across a Joint Senate & House Committee Hearing on CSPAN, (go to www.cspan.org, Hearing on Security Implications etc). Two of the speakers, where highly respected former Republican CIA operatives. They shared their concern about current events pertaining to the revealing of Valerie Plame, as a covert CIA operative. (She is the wife of former Bush Senior’s Ambassador to Iraq Joseph Wilson).

They feel that because this Administration now allows CIA operatives to be revealed, operatives no longer feel supported by this Administration. (Federal law forbids government officials from revealing the identity of an undercover intelligence officer). This is an extremely serious situation. They say that operatives no longer trust that they are safe, and are fearful that they will be undermined, putting themselves and their families at risk. These people are now afraid to come forward. It also means that informants around the world will think twice before offering the sort of information that is vital to our security not being compromised.

Bill Clinton was impeached, not for what he did, (which was awful), but for lying to the American people.

This administration told us in September 2003 that Karl Rove had nothing to do with Plame’s outing. Now, after Bush’s special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald’s inquiries show that Rove did leak her identity to Robert Novak, even though Rove knew she had Top Secret clearance, “We The People” are being lied to again. Will there be any ramifications this time? Last time, it affected a few people, this time it will effect our whole nation at a time of war.

Interestingly enough, George Bush Senior’s Administration actually fired Karl Rove in 1992 for leaking information to, would you believe it…..Robert Novak!

Letter to the Editor

The time has come to take real action on this issue. As the USA Today summarized in its June 13 cover story "The debate's over: Globe is warming." We have a responsibility to leave our children a healthy, clean world.

On June 9, the heads of twenty-three global companies called for strong action to mitigate climate change. These leaders from companies such as BP, Ford and British Airways urged the world's leading industrial nations to set up a global system for curbing heat-trapping emissions.
As reported in the New York Times, a former oil industry lobbyist Philip Cooney, who once headed the oil industry's lobbying on climate change, and was the chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, left Friday, two days after it was revealed that he had removed or adjusted administration reports on climate change/Global Warming in 2002 and 2003. Saying he left because he wanted to spend more time with his family, Cooney as been hired by Exxon Mobil who has long financed advertising and lobbying efforts that question whether warming caused by humans poses risks serious enough to justify curbing carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted by smokestacks and tailpipes.