Letters to the Editor for May 28

I’ve noticed you are swift to sacralize conservative standard bearers, thus I won’t direct you to Krugman, Reich, or Friedman in hopes you’ll believe any anarcho-Marxist economists on this hypothesis; you needn’t listen to the left for this. Instead I’ll point you back to the 1950s, when Peter Drucker, “the dean of this country’s conservative business and management philosophers,” according to the Wall Street Journal, wrote his prophetic “The Practice of Management.” In pages 37-38 of his book, Drucker explains, “Marketing is a distinctive function of business. A business is set apart from all other human organizations by the fact that it markets a product or a service … Neither the church, nor the army, nor a government does that … Any organization like these in which marketing is absent or incidental is not a business, it should never be run as if it were one.”

Mr. Davis — Drucker seemed like a good savant to heed: a conservative business guru living in the ‘50s (an era conservative reactionaries would love traveling back to), who wrote under Eisenhower, famous for being the very last Republican president to balance a budget.

Nevertheless, I invite you to read any other liberal economic or management thinkers, be it Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, or Von Mises on the libertarian side, and please see if you can find who it is that discovered government should be run like a business. “The Art of the Deal” is not a preferable source.

If you cannot find what I was unable to, I suggest you read Drucker’s “What Business Can Learn From Nonprofits,” and remember — though he encouraged research and knowledge, he was still a conservative.

Nicolas Salter

Hood River

Answers

RE: Pastor Mike Harrington’s question to me (Our Readers Write, May 21): “How is that you think it is all right to make fun of my faith with your silly little story, ridiculing my faith, but I can’t put up my statement of my faith (making fun of no one, just statement of faith) on my property?”

My answer: I re-read the quoted story I submitted to the Hood River News and have failed to see where I expressed or implied that you can’t “put up your statement of faith.” It did however, compel me to share another:

“We despise all reverences and all the objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.”

“Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor’s religion is.”

“Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion seems great enough or divine enough to add this new law to its code.”

— Mark Twain

Mike Stroud

Hood River

Imagine

What does 44 million tons of coal look like? Imagine The Bridge of the Gods, which is about 44 feet above the water; now add about 1,450 feet to that, which would be the top of a pile of 44 million tons of coal, the length of a pile of 44 million tons of coal would be approximately twice as long as the bridge that spans the Columbia River. To transport 44 million tons of coal per year will require 18 trains of 120 uncovered cars each a day, each train spewing about 10,200 pounds of coal and coal dust as it travels 85 miles through the Gorge.

That’s what we, the residents of the Gorge, will be breathing, eating, hearing, and seeing, if the Millennium Coal Export Terminal is built in Longview, Wash. Forty-four million tons of coal must travel through our towns and neighborhoods to get from the coal pits to the coal export terminal.

If you are concerned about these impacts on your health, the health of your families and environment, I urge you to get more information. This is the time to make your voice heard by submitting your comments online at www.millenniumbulkeiswa.gov, to sign a petition against coal trains; for dates and locations of public hearings, go to www.gorgefriends.org.

This phase of public comment on the draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is the last phase where the public can officially weigh in before the federal, state and local agencies finalize the EIS, which will be used to make a final decision about whether to approve or deny the coal terminal. Public comments on this project will be taken through June 13.

Janet Lumiansky

The Dalles

Thanks for support

I want to thank everyone who supported my effort in the recently concluded Oregon Democratic primary as their choice to represent our interests in the Oregon legislature. Although unsuccessful at getting the win, we were successful in offering the voters of District 52 real choices.

I hope everyone who supported my effort will join me in congratulating and supporting our newly elected Democratic candidate for state representative, Mark Reynolds. He is a great candidate and with our support will make an excellent representative.

I look forward to doing whatever I can to help get him elected in November.

Walt Trandum

Sandy

‘Solemn pride’

President Lincoln concluded his letter to Mrs. Bixby, after learning she lost sons in the Civil War, with these words: “...The solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.” This Memorial Day reminds us of the sacrifices made by families of fallen soldiers who sacrificed all for the cause of freedom throughout the world. In not too many more years, the last of those who have firsthand knowledge of sacrifices made during World War II will be gone.

Bombardier Lt. Stuart Jakku from the 457 Bomb Group was mortally wounded by flak on a raid over Politz, Poland in October 1944. The B-17 lost two of its four engines and initially the entire crew was to bail out.

But Stuart was too severely wounded to bail. So the crew decided that Stuart was not to die alone and managed to fly the crippled plane to Sweden before they crash landed. Stuart died of his wounds in a Swedish hospital. His earthly remains are in Idlewilde Cemetery in Hood River, not far from where we stand for the Memorial Day ceremonies. His sister Rosalie survives and lives in the county.

Infantryman Pvt. Wilbur Covey’s earthly remains, facing home, are in the Normandy American Cemetery in France. He died liberating the Cherbourg Peninsula in France in June 1944. Two sisters live in the Hood River Valley.

USMC PFC Kenneth Likens remains were never found. He died in the battle for Tarawa in November 1943. His squad leader, Harry Schultz, who lives in White Salmon, looked for his remains after the battle. Not to be forgotten, Kenny’s name is forever etched in the Garden of Honor in the National Cemetery of the Pacific (Punchbowl), Honolulu, along with thousands of others. The inscription: “This memorial has been erected by the United States of America in proud and grateful memory of her soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen who laid down their lives in all quarters of the earth that other people might be freed from oppression.”

And so we are.

David Bohlmann

Hood River

Celebrate differences

It saddens me to read about the preacher at Hood River’s Baptist church on Belmont who appears to have found the only way. You can say nearly anything you want under our federal constitution. A few years back Nazi’s marched in Skokie, Ill., a town at the time of many holocaust survivors. We have members of the Jonesboro Baptist Church desecrating veteran’s funerals. During the intifada, I spent time in Jerusalem, where I had rocks thrown at my car by ultra-Orthodox Jews (I’m Jewish); I also had a Muslim try and run me down on the Via Delarosa with a tractor. It’s unfortunate that so many see differences and point them out as making those different worth less in their eyes, or to be demeaned for believing differently. For me, I prefer to celebrate differences and practice inclusion, not always easy, but certainly important in the multicultural world we all live in.

Rob Brostoff

Cascade Locks

‘Colorful’

I sure wish I could’ve gone to the Columbia Gorge Community College Culture Day! Thanks, Hood River News, for the colorful coverage (May 25), which was the next best thing to being there. I really appreciate Kelly Sullivan and the other organizers and participants for creating such an obviously joyful, multicultural event. Special thanks, too, to longtime Ballet Folklorico teacher Sandy Salazar for all the richness she brings to our community.

Tina Castañares

Odell

Mistake

I believe the vote to block the Nestlé facility in Cascade Locks was a mistake.

First, the State of Oregon controls the water rights in this state, not the counties.

Second, four out of five of the Hood River County Commissioners opposed the ballot measure because of the above.

And third, people of Hood River should not have the right to tell Cascade Locks what is best for their citizens. A few years ago they were denied the opportunity for the Warm Springs Tribe to locate a casino there, even though the Cascade Locks citizens overwhelming supported it.

Yet again, because of people not living in their community, they are being denied the opportunity for economic growth. I believe that the voters in Hood River have no more right imposing their agenda on Cascade Locks than Portland voters would on Hood River.

Julianne Gray

Mt. Hood

Focus on future

Seeing Hood River County voters approve measure 14–55 by an incredible 69 percent, despite Nestlé’s record-breaking campaign spending, made me proud to be a Hood River County voter. While it is unfortunate our county commissioners who opposed the measure are out of sync with the will of the voters, I hope they nonetheless will respect and defend the choice we have made.

With 42 percent of voters even in Cascade Locks voting to support the measure, it was a real sign Nestlé’s water bottle plant is highly controversial even there. It’s time to declare the Nestlé project dead and focus on a future for Cascade Locks that provides real jobs for real people and does not put the rest of the county at risk.

Alanda Stelzer

Parkdale

Sensational

With all the horrible, deplorable diseases coming our way, I find it rather strange that only the president and a very tiny, minuscule number of Americans are suffering sensationally from … T.G.B.I. “Transgenderbathroomitis.” So please, send what you can spend to cure this dastardly disease and tell the Commander-in-Chief you don’t support see-through showers and stalls.

Bill Davis

Hood River

Some math

Based on your latest article, “Water bottling ban passes” (Hood River News, May 21), wherein you quote a water right of 225 gallons per minute of Oxbow Spring water for the proposed Nestlé bottling plant, and if my math is correct, that works out to about 117 million gallons of water per year available to Nestlé Corporation.

And if you multiply that number by the retail amount Nestlé charges for “pristine, spring bottled water,” which from what I see is give or take around $3.50 per gallon. Not bad for a year’s gross income! And how long is the proposed lease or water right for? Fifty years?

Phillip Lane

Parkdale

Editor’s note: The proposed water exchange between the City of Cascade Locks and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife wouldn’t change or swap either party’s existing water rights.