Letters to the Editor, Jan. 5, 2012

By Gazette-Tribune • January 5, 2012 5:32 pm
The tranquility of servitude
Dear Editor,
I find it interesting that the sound bit of: “the rich need to pay their fair share” has so many in the nation hypnotized and deluded into thinking that this will solve our financial problems.
From the sound of Dan Dixon’s letter our situation can be fixed now that 200 millionaires have stepped forward and asked to be taxed at a higher rate. Has Dan and these millionaires he speaks of forgotten that our legislative body broke their own bank with over 8000 personal bounced checks and then after promising to fix the problem that they made, they bounced another 4000 checks? These same people who can’t handle their own money now have their fingers in 500 other banks around the country, but apparently all we need to do is remember that “if the rich will just pay their fair share” we can get thru this crisis.
Our Demander on Chief was part of that problem and now has continued down that path of elitist incompetence, spending money that isn’t his, to buy votes for himself, in the same way other politicians have done. As so many in our nation “crouch down and lick the hand that feeds them,” believing the bogus sound bits that our leaders emit like flatulent designed to be a kind of incense for the masses, I wonder if more money spent on the Ponzi schemes, and created crisis, and bailouts (for votes), and stimulus packages (for votes) and the promise of jobs, (created by a government that can only produce more of itself) will ever be seen as the lipstick on a pig solution that it is. How can this nation ever expect to recover from the fiscal calamity that our “public servants” have put us in by practicing the same phony policies of debt continuation and expansion?
To those who envy the rich and call for more of their wealth to be thrown into the government-created canyon of waste, fraud, political payoffs, influence pedaling, unwanted and useless bureaucracies, I would close with more of the warning Sam Adams gave this nation,”may your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen” as you look for the “tranquility of servitude” offered by a body of leaders that in most cases need to be stripped of their assets and thrown in prison.
Steve Lorz
Tonasket
Improve the world
Dear Editor,
Well 2011 will be like the geese. In fact, by the time you read this 2011 will have left. And, unlike the geese, 2012 will be upon us. How will you live 2012?
How you live it will be by your choice. I can remember many, many years ago when the principal, under whom I was teaching, had all the eighth grade students rate each of their fellow eighth graders as to who put forth the most effort. The number three represented those students that their peers saw them as not putting forth much effort. Number two represented the average and number one indicated those who put forth the most effort. These numbers represented effort not grades achieved.
Without the students knowing how they had been rated, they were then put into one of three groups and told that number one represented those who put forth the most effort and number three represented those who put forth the least. Then., we as teachers, were supposed to grade strictly on improvement, not the quality of work produced. But we were also told to tell the students that they had been put into a special group.
There was an amazing result. There were a few students who didn’t improve on the quality of their work; but, a high percentage of students made a significant improvement. The reason being that each of the students began to see themselves as being different from what they had been, began having a different persona about themselves because the teachers also expected quality results.
As a teacher, and as a person, I learned an incredible lesson. If you are not phony in your appreciation of others but are honest, articulate and expressive of what others do for you most, if not all, of your daily contacts will be a far more pleasant experience.
I share this experience with you as we enter a new year. Be appreciative of what you have and what others do for you. If you are reading this, then you have eyes that can see. If someone is reading this to you, then you have the gift of hearing. Be appreciative and thankful for what you have, not wasting time complaining what you don’t have. Strive to improve what you have and who you are. If you open a door, look behind you because maybe you’ll have the opportunity to hold the door for the person behind you. Or, if someone holds the door open to you, thank them. In other words, be appreciative of what others do for you and be thankful when you have the opportunity to do something for others.
2012 is upon us. Let us seek to improve the world in which we live. Let us set a goal of doing this one day at a time and let it begin with you and me. Have a great and wonderful New Year. These words come from the Old Coffee Drinker.
Randy Middleton
Tonasket
Politics and politicians
Dear Editor,
As has been the case for the past few decades, the vast majority of professional politicians believe that the citizens of America do not deserve a chance at self-government. It is suggested that we genuinely do. What we experience and participate in today is no longer reflective of a fully self-governing society.
With small to medium sized protests occurring across America, and in Europe where some violence has taken place, it is obviously the right time to recognize that our governmental branches need to evolve to a level in which the government supports the direction that our particular society (and along with a few other around the globe as well) wants to go, versus tolerating an overreaching national government that insists on being in control of the general populace one-hundred percent of the time.
Another great challenge for us today is not what we can do for our country, but rather what we can for ourselves and our communities that will lessen or eliminate the societal damage that is presently being caused by high-level politicians and mid-level bureaucrats that are largely unseen.
We need to consider a new method of thinking and comprehension, which will in turn increase our awareness of wisdom and how it can provide inspiration for ourselves, our great country, and last but not least, all of humanity.
Ray Gattavara
Auburn, Wash.