Letters to the Editor

So, Gov. Gary Locke vetoed the "top-two" primary giving the political parties a "partial" victory over a freedom-of-speech issue. My question for lawmakers is, where is my freedom of speech? I want to be able to choose the best candidate and not be restricted, but like so many other liberties that have disappeared recently, this one is gone now too. Locke and others decry the workings of Tim Eyman, but what they don't see is that people like him are created through actions like this. A democracy is based on one person getting one vote. However, since not everyone can vote on every issue, we have supplanted our democracy with a representative government that is anything but.

Stephen J. Cole
Redmond

Top-two system leaves out a million votes

The Grange says the top-two primary system is "most like" the old blanket primary, but I don't think that knee-jerk reaction is what's best for voters. Forty percent of Washington voters don't go to the primaries. The top-two system would leave out a million votes for third-party candidates in the general election. That will give the political parties even more power, not less.

In Louisiana, where the top-two system was pioneered, congressional incumbents are almost never unseated by challengers, and extremist candidates who can rally a strong primary turnout can advance to the general election while four or five moderate candidates split the mainstream voters.

This is how Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke was nominated for governor in Louisiana in 1991. I hope the voters and the Grange will read more about the results of the top-two system in Louisiana before they sign a petition to institute it here.

There is a much better alternative. We should replace our winner-take-all voting with a system of proportional representation. There are several ways to do this, but the simplest is to have a smaller number of districts and each district elects three to five legislators. The candidates who are elected tend to reflect the full range of opinion in the district this way. If a district is more liberal, there will be more liberal legislators, but there will still be a conservative or two who represent the minority voice. Third-party candidates have a much better chance of winning a seat. Robert J. Koerner
Seattle

TRANSPORTATION

Voters know roads is not the way to go

In their guest column regarding the proposed Regional Transportation Investment District package ("Transportation light is green," Thursday), King County Council members Rob McKenna and Julia Patterson write, "Eastern Washington voters have shown no interest in supporting statewide tax increases" because they voted down the 9-cent statewide tax increase (Referendum 51) in 2002.

Their implication is that a package like R-51 would pass if it was just voted on by Puget Sound voters. What they failed to mention is that R-51 failed in every county in the state except San Juan County.

Why did Puget Sound area residents vote down a referendum that would have raised billions of dollars to address transportation problems in this traffic-choked region? Because the majority of money raised by R-51 would have been used to build roads.

Puget Sound area residents have made is clear that they will not support transportation proposals that do not give balanced amounts of money to road building, road maintenance and transit options. As long as our elected officials fail to recognize this fact and ask citizens to support transportation plans that primarily build roads, they cannot expect to get the majority of Puget Sound residents to support their proposals.

Robert Pregulman
Executive director, WashPIRG

Seattle

CHARTER SCHOOLS

WEA doesn't act in students' best interest

In going after charter schools, its clear the Washington Education Association is placing its members' self-interest above the students.

Charter schools have been approved in 40 states, hardly an untried concept. One-size-fits-all doesn't work. If the students' needs were placed first, we'd include vouchers as well as charter schools.

Monopolies aren't any more benign in the public sector than in the private sector.

Rex Nelson
Olalla

ABORTION

Pro-choice rhetoric removes the real issue

Regarding your Monday editorial "More erosion of right to choose," what if I said that "any step toward recognizing full legal rights" for a female rape victim "constitutes a crucial erosion of the foundation" of rape rights: "that a [man] has the right to control [his] own body"?

It's disgusting, isn't it? The "pro-choice" rhetoric has removed the real issues from the abortion debate with its catch phrases. Abortion does not just affect the woman, any more than rape just affects the man.

Daniel Reed Martin
Burien

IRAQ AND THE U.S.

'Kill the messenger' is SPO for White House

The staged White House attacks on Richard Clarke's book and testimony, coordinated with conservative radio and television pundits, are of two sorts. They attack his supposed motive (money-grubbing, partisanship) and/or his low moral standing (dishonesty, quirkiness, egoistism). One thing the denunciations don't include is any evidence that Clarke was wrong on the core facts.

We all know this routine as attacking the messenger, not the message. The Bush regime has made it standard operating procedure when dealing with dissent. It represents McCarthyism at its worst and is the most shameful abuse of power since the Nixon White House.

How many Americans will buy into the slander? Only time will tell.

William Woods
Seattle

Reader's patience over the war has run out

From our armchairs here in Western Washington, it's been relatively easy to be patient about the situation in Iraq. Give it time and things will work out for the better. But seeing pictures of U.S. civilian contractors dragged through the streets and hung on poles is the last straw. Along with our troops, these people were there to help the Iraqi people and they don't deserve this kind of reception. I'm tired of seeing American boys and girls coming back in body bags. I realize that there are internal factions that are using us to further their positions.

While probably not popular, I think we should withdraw our troops to Iraq's borders and let the factions sort things out for themselves.

Larry Andriesen
Maple Valley

Rice's testimony traded for Bush-Cheney privacy

I am outraged that the 9/11 commission has traded sworn public testimony by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice for a private, unsworn chat with President Bush and Vice President Cheney, where the contents won't be released to the public.

Why does the president not want to make clear the record -- in a public forum -- to the American people?

Why do the president and the vice president have to make a joint appearance before the commission?

Could it be that they need to make certain they get their stories straight?

Could it be to help prevent the president from perjuring himself, either accidentally or on purpose?

Or is it that, in fact, we have two "presidents" -- one the figurehead/leader and the other the brains and political operative?

If any of the above is true, then the political health of our republic might be in a far worse state than we could even imagine.

Tim Withee
Auburn

Pesky facts belie Rice's statements

Did President Bush do all he could to prevent 9/11? Condoleezza Rice responds in his behalf by claiming Bush "increased counterterrorism funding severalfold in order to be more aggressive on terrorism."

Yet those pesky facts remain: Before 9/11, Bush proposed cutting $65 million for counterterrorism grants, refused FBI funding requests for analysts, agents and translators and vetoed diverting millions into counterterrorism. After the horrific 9/11 attack, Bush slashed emergency counterterrorism funding requested by the FBI.

Talk is cheap, but facts are revealing. Sherri Cornett
Bothell

Closing newspaper at odds with democracy

Closing down a newspaper in Baghdad because it was deemed to be a mouthpiece for anti-U.S. coalition factions?

My heartfelt desire for not one more death or injury notwithstanding, what kind of "democracy" is being built here?

Allen R. Hill

Renton

If media to be silenced, how about Fox Network?

So the U.S. Army, at the direction of presidential Envoy L. Paul Bremer, has closed down an Iraqi newspaper on the charge that it is printing lies. When the heck is Bremer going to shut down Fox News?

Sean Taylor
Seattle

NOT FUNNY

President makes joke of deadly serious matter

We've recently had White House frivolity over weapons of mass destruction. Can we expect an encore? The Bush media flaks have a wealth of comedy material. What's funny about the agonizing war in Iraq? Unending terrorism and new atrocities with mounting American and Iraqi deaths? The actual chances of democracy? Afghanistan slipping away?

They've got more: the loss of well-paying American jobs, their replacement with low-wage and no-benefits employment, the increasingly unbearable cost of heath care, education and housing, the runaway deficit, the vision of bankrupted social programs, the unrelenting assault on environmental safeguards, the budget deception on the Medicare Rx bill.

Stop it, really. You're killing me.

Ed Mikel
Brier

SEATTLE CENTER

Reader prefers greenery to monorail machinery

I am so disheartened to read that the monorail board of directors approved the Green Line route right through the middle of Seattle Center, one of the city's last great open civic spaces where people can get away from the noise of machinery and enjoy greenery, art and quiet walkways in a large public space. It has also served as a great gathering place for public events. A monorail roaring overhead several times an hour will utterly ruin the place.

This proposal continues our city's sorry history of saving small bits of money by locating facilities in public spaces. The list of shame includes Metro's huge Westpoint sewage treatment plant in Discovery Park, another water facility in the middle of Carkeek Park and a fish hatchery in the middle of Seward Park. A vast acreage of adult playfields is now proposed to occupy the middle of Magnuson Park, with the fields to be lit up well into the night.

Seattle loses some of its soul every time we site facilities in public green spaces. Seattle Center is a cherished resource of our community. We cannot allow it to be destroyed to save a few million dollars in the monorail budget.

I applaud City Council member Peter Steinbrueck for opposing any route through Seattle Center and encourage other council members to follow his lead and to direct the monorail board to go back to its drawing board.

Mark Lawler
Seattle

DRUG INDUSTRY

System doesn't deliver unless you have money

Peter Neupert describes the U.S. drug industry as the "safest system in the world" (March 30). People who can't get the drugs they need would hardly agree. A baseline performance for a delivery system is that it deliver. Our system doesn't do that unless you have money.

In the real world, the Food and Drug Administration is staffed by people who came from industry and will, if they favor the industries they regulate, return to industry. The American people pay for development of important new drugs in universities while the drug companies focus on designer variations that can extend their patent protections. Products without commercial clout, like medical marijuana, are opposed by the FDA, which favors the more expensive patented drugs derived from marijuana.

This is accompanied by the repeated discovery that drugs weren't tested properly and that they are being improperly prescribed. The flip side is the continued refusal to allow terminal patients enough pain medication.

This system is so broke we should start over from scratch with the help of experts from abroad.

Terry Scott
Belfair

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