Letters to the Editor

Judging from Sunday's editorial, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer spent no time studying the critical areas ordinances the King County Council urban Democrats loaded onto rural private land owners.

Since only 15 percent of King County is designated rural, there is no way, even if rural people were eliminated entirely, that this minuscule back-to-nature rural area could solve the county's environmental problems -- real or imagined.

State growth-management rules do not require that already-working critical areas laws be increased. A report stating the laws already meet/exceed state requirements is sufficient. When, several times, rural Republican council members asked in what ways current laws were not protecting the environment, there was never any response. And the county's own maps show the rural area to be in excellent condition.

State law does require that traditional rural character be protected, and county law encourages agriculture. Under these new, pre-European preservation/restoration requirements, a new, productive and profitable livestock or horticultural activity won't be found.

Maxine Keesling
Woodinville

SEATTLE CENTER

Property not the city's only item on budget

While it is exciting to think of what can be done to fix up the Seattle Center with the money from the sale of property, please recall that there are some other one-time expense items still to be resolved on the current budget.

Still in limbo is the sale of Soundway West, the Duwamish greenbelt property in West Seattle. At budget time, the City Council was given the choice between preserving greenbelt and funding the Northwest African American Museum and the Wing Luke Museum. This was a grueling position to put council members in and they chose to give the community a nine-month window to buy the property as a compromise.

There seems to be concern that the money be spent only on the Center because of its location. Where was that concern with the Soundway property? All the projects that the money from Soundway property is proposed to fund are closer to the Seattle Center than they are to Soundway West.

The City Council now has an opportunity to transfer the remainder of the Soundway property over to the city's parks department, while still funding those other worthy projects.

Alan and Lyn Robertson
Seattle

MONTESSORI

School district decides without public input

I was astonished to read that Seattle Public Schools will not allow Martin Luther King Elementary School to start a Montessori program (Friday's P-I). I thought that the district believed in site-based decision-making and local control of schools. It appears that the district won't allow the school to start the program because the district has already decided to close the school. As is so often the case, the school district makes a show of seeking public input on decisions, but the decisions have already been made by the senior staff.

Charlie Mas
Seattle

WMD

High-ranking officials need to restore trust

In recent days, the Bush administration has acknowledged that it has officially concluded its search in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, having found nothing to indicate that a WMD program existed.

Citizens of this great nation deserve a thorough explanation as to how our government could make such a grave misjudgment regarding an issue of the utmost importance. Further, if the United States is to be taken seriously by world leaders in the future, some high-ranking officials must be held accountable for this terrible error. Despite two years of U.S. "official" military involvement in Iraq and numerous lives lost, the WMD debacle has been reduced to an afterthought, an almost irrelevant footnote in the story of Saddam Hussein's decline, as well as a source of humor.

The administration should tell the truth of how the president and his top advisers were able to mislead our country and the rest of the world into war.

Meghan Kelly
Seattle

ERA

Apathy has made feminism a dirty word

The marathon of civil rights speeches on public radio on Martin Luther King Jr. Day was filled with strong emotion about whites sleeping through the revolution. It made me hark back to the year 2002 when most of this state slept through the 30th anniversary of the passage of our state's Equal Rights Amendment, which provided equal rights for women under the law for the first time. Not only did Washingtonians sleep through this "herstoric" period, but the younger public and the media have decided that "feminism" is the new F-word. What will it take to complete the gains that were made in equality during the 1960s and '70s for minorities and women? Do we have to constantly reinvent the wheel?

Georgie Bright Kunkel
Seattle

POVERTY

Remember the phrase 'Charity begins at home'?

I read in Monday's P-I that if the rich nations were to double aid to the poorest nations, poverty could end by 2025.

When will poverty end in this country? Thousands of our own people, especially children, would love to have three square meals a day and a real bed to sleep in.

Howard Smith
Port Angeles

MIDDLE EAST

No mention of source of continuing conflict

Steven Erlanger's Friday piece on the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis omitted mention of the source of the conflict -- Israel's occupation of Palestine.

"We are not going back to the days when we had attacks in the morning, funerals in the afternoon and negotiations at night, as if nothing had happened," Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom is quoted as saying.

I beg Americans to learn the facts and realize that pretending as if nothing had happened is at the heart of this matter. For years, Israelis have and to this day continue to bulldoze Palestinian homes and orchards to expand their (illegal) settlements and then act surprised at Palestinian resistance. Israelis belittle, demean, delay, ridicule Palestinians going and coming from work, school, family visits at innumerable military checkpoints inside Palestine and then are righteously indignant when Palestinians react.

No military occupation has ever produced peace.

Israel needs to withdraw to the pre-1967 borders, dismantle all illegal settlements, take down that wall and leave Palestine to the Palestinians.

Veda Stram
Puyallup

WHERE'S THE HELMET?

Even if scooter is small, head should be protected

How can anybody be dumb enough to spend $1,100 for that undergrown "scooter" and then compound that stupidity by riding without a helmet (Monday's P-I)? On second thought, if he bought the thing, that is proof enough that there is nothing in the head requiring protection.

Bill Crowder
Oak Harbor

INAUGURATION

U.S. troops duck while movers and shakers party

According to CNN (Monday), the Bush Inauguration ceremony will cost taxpayers more than $40 million, and this tab of party-goers says it "honors the troops."

Homage and thoughtfulness of our young people in Iraq and elsewhere who are in harm's way while those who put them there party is not my idea of "compassionate conservative" individuals, but it fits the definition of hypocrite.

Bink Owen
Walla Walla

GEORGE WILL

Well, look who cried loudest over CBS stories

Regarding George Will's Jan. 13 column ("Good judgment left behind"), I guess this is Will's way of getting around to telling people how the administration distorts the truth and does business.

Why doesn't he come out and say it? The Bush administration pays people to pretend they are reporters to pass out misinformation, half-truths and lies to the media. Didn't four people from CBS just get fired for doing a similar thing? Who were the biggest crybabies when that story hit? The administration, of course. The biggest liars always cry the loudest and the longest.

Stephen Waite
Everett

TONY ROBINSON

Thanks for broader picture of Christians

In a post-modern world and a politically correct city, it was freeing to read Tony Robinson break open the box that Christians are often placed in (Sunday). Yes, the Christian faith has a blessed and refreshing diversity that reflects uniqueness and offers challenge. I appreciate the attempt at portraying a broader picture.

Cynthia Sink
Shoreline

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