Your Voice

The American people are not being provided any clear information how ICE and Department of Homeland Security are spending the $130 billion they already have, which is more money than several other federal departments combined. What is the rationale and purpose for the additional $70 billion? More deportations?

And more importantly, if Republicans are willing to add billions to the budget, what if it were for programs people really need? Things like money to help families recover from national disasters, restoring cuts to our national parks and forest service, supporting veterans and their families, educating students with disabilities, restoring funds to SNAP for seniors and children, and helping local law enforcement fight drug trafficking. These proposals were denied by the Republicans’ vote.

Republicans say they are concerned about the federal deficit as a reason to cut many programs that serve the American people, but then gave large tax breaks to the wealthy. Now they are adding to the deficit with this $70 billion on operations that damage people’s lives and communities across the country, ignoring laws and the Constitution.

Is this example, plus many others, of Republican policy and spending that really serve you? Do you really want to have your tax dollars going to incarceration and deportations when Republican budgets are cutting and eliminating programs and services for the American people? We have choices in the coming election to make a change — let’s use our vote to do it.

Steven Woolpert

White Salmon

Write in for Congress

Greetings to voters of Washington’s 4th Congressional District. I’m Sverre Dean Bakke of White Salmon, in the southwest corner of the district. I’m running as a write-in candidate for Congress, Farm-Labor Party, in the Aug. 4 Primary Election.

I launched my campaign because I’m mad as hell about what is happening to our beloved constitutional republic. The rampant corruption of Washington, D.C., is staggering. Our government has become the tool of greedy plutocrats and corporations who don’t care about America and its small businesses, workers, and family farms — the people who make America an exceptional nation. This election cycle, we can ill afford to send a bought-off yes-person to Congress in 2027. We need a Congress that levels the playing field and puts the needs of people first and foremost, not the plutocrats who control and corrupt virtually every aspect of our daily lives.

I’m a former two-term Klickitat County commissioner and longtime newspaper reporter, photographer, and editor in White Salmon-Bingen and western Klickitat County. A vote for me is a vote for restoring independence, honor, integrity, decency, empathy, accountability, and principled leadership to Congress. It’s a vote for creating an economy that offers opportunity for everyone but that doesn’t guarantee outcomes; embracing universal health care that covers all health-related services; investing in education, from pre-school to trade school; building the infrastructure for a modern, mobile society, establishing trade practices and policies that benefit workers and farmers; reforming campaign finance law, undoing the Supreme Court’s corrupt, disastrous for democracy Citizens United ruling; making sure artificial intelligence works for American small businesses, workers, and farmers, and not the plutocrats who want to shove AI down people’s throats, damn the consequences. We have to do better for the future of our children and grandkids, the diverse communities of the district, and an America that stands tall and proud on the global stage again.

I’m asking voters to take a leap of faith and write in Sverre Dean Bakke for Congress, Washington 4th, because common sense never gets old-fashioned.

Sverre Bakke

White Salmon

Blowing smoke

The article “White Salmon fuel treatment moves forward” in your June 10 issue contains some inaccuracies and is misleading. It leaves the reader with the impression that, within the next year, the City of White Salmon will be well protected from Gorge bluff fires due to efforts by Washington’s Department of Natural Resources.

Unfortunately, the reporter missed asking a key question of the experts interviewed: “Will the measures being planned and completed by DNR significantly affect the outcome of a fire similar to the 2025 Burdoin fire or the 2023 Tunnel 5 fire, if that fire started on the bluffs adjacent to the city?”

The answer to this question is easy to conjecture from the annotated satellite photo published with the article. It is striking how narrow the “fire breaks” are, and how little of the bluffs are included.

The first paragraph in the article is clearly inaccurate. As all of the City of White Salmon residents who use Dock Grade Road know, the “treatment” along the road was mostly an educational experience for DNR on how difficult it is to work on steep slopes covered with vines and poison oak. DNR’s contractors took out the “white flag” early in the effort, and contrary to the first paragraph of the article, we can’t see any significant difference between the areas treated (2 years ago) and the untreated areas.

I haven’t hiked through much of the treated areas away from the bluffs, but I do frequent the segment between the Skyline Hospital and Gaddis Park. As with Dock Grade, I can see no difference between treated and untreated areas.

The DNR operators of this effort are the division which assists landowners with getting support for making their properties more fire resistant. While this “sounds like” it is the same as protecting the city because they both have to do with fire prevention and trees, there are key places where the goals diverge.

Wayne Thayer

White Salmon

Editor’s note: As explained in the article, the work by DNR is meant to knock down a wildfire by eliminating ladder fuels, not remove fire from the landscape entirely. The project ranges in width from 70 feet to more than 500 feet, largely due to the complexities of acquiring landowner approval. DNR officials have since clarified, however, that the project should not be referred to as a “shaded fuel break,” which the article does once. More proper terms are fuels “reduction” or “mitigation.” We regret the error.

New era ‘robber barons’

I have heard our era described as being similar to the Robber Barons Era from 1865-1900, only on steroids. However, in that previous era, there were results beneficial to society: railroads, shipping, steel, oil, electricity, telecommunications.

This is in contrast to our era, where, especially at the federal level, raw, ruthless, corrupt greed runs amok, inherently criminal by gleeful intent, undertaken by liars delighted with the cleverness of their lies, with pretty much no positive results for us or the world. Except perhaps for developments in AI, that is, if it doesn’t try to kill us.

And this undertaken by people who enjoy cruelty, who have contempt for the very concept of social good. People who value the manifestation of narcissistic greed by any means. And this especially includes methodical corrupt raids on whatever public goods there are to be grabbed. Obviously the result, if this is not addressed, must be catastrophe — social, economic, environmental.

But, hey, look on the bright side. The reaction against the Robber Barons hogging all the dough produced essential reforms that today we tend to take for granted, such as the 40-hour work week, work accident compensation, social security. It is not impossible that we will see, in response to our Era of Crooks, even more far-reaching reforms.

Imagine dental care for all, like most other prosperous countries.

Imagine voting for the boards of the largest banks.

Imagine an annual wealth tax for anyone with a net worth exceeding $50,000,000.

Imagine owning your own data, and, only if you prefer, charging corporations to use it. For example, I’d be OK renting my data to Fred Meyer, but I’d want $1,500 a year.

Imagine a strict public permit process for street intersection snoop cameras, which presently steal your face without your permission, for who knows what dark reasons.

Many possibilities!

Some of the super-rich might support such essential reforms. Too often in history, the eventual alternative is us peasants declaring enough, and hunting them as they hide desperately in damp culverts. Some of the super-rich are not so entirely blinded by greed as to be unaware of this possibility.

Jerrold Richards

Lyle