Your voice: Oct. 22, 2025

What stood out to me was how fuel treatments — funded by government agencies but implemented in partnership with private landowners — helped contain the fire before it consumed more homes.

When our tax dollars, our elected leadership, our government, steps in not just to respond, but to prevent harm, the return is clear: lives and homes are saved.

We often talk about government “waste” or “bureaucracy,” but this is the kind of government I want: funding programs that make a difference on the ground, supporting folks to act, and creating the conditions for resilience. The fact that homeowners like the Murphys were able to participate in cost-sharing for mitigation projects shows that this isn’t top-down imposition, but genuine collaboration.

My hope is that local and state policymakers take note: cuts to programs like DNR’s cost-sharing for wildfire prevention are short-sighted. As the article notes, reductions in funding risk larger fires, higher costs, and more damage down the road.

Let’s support the kinds of public-private partnerships that give us tools to intervene early, to mitigate risk, and to ensure that government is working for us, not just reacting to crises. Or lately, creating them.

Thank you for publishing an article that tells a more hopeful story about what’s possible when we get involved in our government and its systems.

Sasha Bentley

White Salmon

Use caution

The night of Oct. 11, I was driving through the small hamlet of Klickitat, Washington, on my way to a campground. Motion to my right grabbed my eye when I noticed a man exiting the road. Then, eyes front and center, I gasped and slammed on the brakes!

Encountering rocks, roadkill, wild and domestic animals, and unidentified debris suddenly on a dark road makes them nearly impossible to avoid hitting. Two little girls were dutifully following “daddy” across the road, the way fawns follow their moms. Two little girls. Pink coats. Tiny bikes. I had my low beams on and was driving the speed limit (25 mph). They. Just. Appeared. Right. In. Front. Of. Me.

Shocked to my core, I must have stopped breathing for a few minutes. If I’d challenged “daddy” about this, he probably would have pointed out that I was the one with the headlights. If I had hit the girls, I would have been implicated as guilty. If I’d hit a dog or a deer, the tragedy would have been seen as unfortunate judgment on the part of the animal. In my opinion, “daddy” should have waited with the girls to the left of the road and crossed WITH them when NO traffic was approaching. Traumatized, when driving through this sleepy community after dark again, I’ll drive below the speed limit with my high beams on.

Cynthia Hovezak

White Salmon

We need them

“Nobody wants to work anymore!” — a complaint voiced by some in response to the post-COVID reality that many businesses can’t find workers. A common assumption is that it’s easier for dissatisfied workers to take advantage of government retraining programs, food stamps, welfare, or lax disability retirement criteria than to work hard with pride for the good of the country.

In truth, the U.S. doesn’t have enough workers now and will have even fewer in the future to fill all available job openings. The number of retired people has grown from 39.6 million in 2015 to 52.8 million in 2025 (Social Security Administration), and the rate of retirements is increasing. Although some workers elect to work past retirement age, there are simply not enough available workers to fill all the job openings. 

We need to face it. America needs immigrants — millions of immigrants. Doctors and nurses to sustain our healthcare system, engineers to build and maintain America’s infrastructure, agricultural workers to pick, process, and pack the nation’s food supply, and “essential workers” to do the hard low-paying work to keep the economy running. Yet the administration is removing and deporting workers from existing jobs as fast possible. The reason: they are immigrants with “criminal records,” including old traffic violations. Some deportees are legal residents, some were arrested while applying for legal status, and many are “illegal” because Congress has refused to create a fair, straightforward, and affordable legal pathway for immigrants to enter and remain in this country. In addition, the White House recently increased the cost of H-1B visas (for skilled workers) from $995 to $100,000 when our country is desperately short of doctors and nurses (AARP, 2025; Seattle Times, Sept. 18) and trained engineers and technicians with specialized skills (Bureau of Labor Statistics). The message from Washington seems to be that any immigrants are simply not welcome.

The Statue of Liberty commemorates America’s goal to be a country that welcomes hard-working immigrants, skilled and unskilled, to help build a stronger America. Is it in our character or in our best interest to reject that goal? In voting, we have a say in this issue.

Tom Pierson

Glenwood

‘Not soft’

Our current Secretary of Defense Hegseth seems to me like an ignorant lamb wandering into a cave of sharp-toothed hungry wolves. He describes the generals as fat. But he seems to miss that they are not soft. Quite the contrary, they are for the most part tough, experienced, and competent. And they can be, and will be, utterly ruthless if necessary.

They have not much problem with his incompetent, showbiz blundering and jaw-droppingly stupid, worse than ineffective attempt to intimidate the top brass wholesale. But if he should show any indications of actually affecting revenue streams in the billions of dollars, revenue streams carefully cultivated over decades, then I expect they will deal with him in some thoroughly effective manner.

Jerrold Richards

Lyle

Cognitive dissonance

As a retired law enforcement professional, United Nations Peacekeeper and county commissioner, I am appalled and disturbed as I witness our federal law enforcement agencies disregard and dehumanize constitutionally provided protections for all.

Local law enforcement officers are trained to be community allies, supporting and looking for solutions, always trying to find the best approach to resolving conflicts, minimizing trauma and maximizing community safety. When I see federal law enforcement, specifically ICE, demonstrating thug-like behavior by masking and not displaying ID, using physical force without due process, this is the antithesis to the values and training of our sheriff’s and city police professionals.

Please continue to support our local emergency services, who I believe are experiencing dissonance observing unlawful and inhumane behavior by ICE violating constitution protections as supported by our community values. A quote from Mayor Wilson of Portland gave me hope: “The actions of certain federal officers continue to be deeply disturbing to our community, and the lack of accountability and transparency for what appears to be unconstitutional behavior against individuals expressing their rights will only serve to deepen the divide between this facility and our community.”

Please show support to our local first responders as they work to reinforce our values as supported by the Constitution.

William Lennox

The Dalles

Scam

Even politically engaged constituents of eastern Washington Republican U.S. Reps. Michael Baumgartner and Dan Newhouse may have been puzzled by abrupt referrals to the “Working Family Tax Cuts” bill in their recent emails. Weekly since Sept. 19, identical sections of Baumgartner’s emails began with “As part of the Working Family Tax Cuts bill, applications are now open for states to apply for funding through the Rural Health Transformation Program, a historic $50 billion investment aimed at strengthening rural health care across America.” Newhouse’s was similar.

If you’ve never heard anything about the “Working Family Tax Cuts” bill being passed, it’s because it never was. The misnomer “One Big Beautiful Bill,” passed by House Republicans — including Baumgartner and Newhouse — without one Democratic vote, was so unpopular with the public that congressional Republicans renamed it the greater misnomer “Working Family Tax Cuts” bill without telling anybody.

But a simple reading of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report on this renamed bill reveals it is anything but a help for typical working families. The CBO report clearly states that loss or increasing cost of healthcare for most working families will more than cancel out their minuscule tax cuts while billionaires receive massive cuts. Widespread loss of Medicaid and elimination of Obamacare subsidies for low- and middle-income Americans will overwhelmingly counteract the (again misnomer) “historic $50 billion investment aimed at strengthening rural health care across America” and make working families’ healthcare unaffordable.

Republicans shut down government to save their scam rather than negotiate with Democrats’ demands to restore affordable healthcare.

Norm Luther

Spokane