Letters to the editor for Oct. 18
Culp or Inslee?
Loren Culp confuses me. He says he’s for Law & Order. He’s a police officer, pledged to protect and serve. Really?
As he rallies followers to disobey science and our elected governor’s and local leaders’ admonitions and ordinances to wear masks, etc., one has to ask: How is that “protecting” the community called Washington? How is that serving the public good or respecting the law? It’s not. Rather it’s promoting individualism over community, and with the surge in deaths and infections due to the selfish Trumpian view of ME, not WE, it’s hard to see how Culp believes in the concept of community at all.
He claims to firmly believe in individual freedom and liberty, his rationale for personal choice about masks. “Give people information, then let them choose,” he says. Really?
If I adopt that mantra, then after I take a information-filled driving course, will you still pull me over if I exercise my “personal freedom and liberty” to go 80 mph in the fog? Sure, you’ll arrest me because I’ve chosen to be a clear and present danger to others, to community. As a police officer, you know individual freedoms do not trump community safety; my freedom of expression stops when it endangers others! It’s established law via the courts; see the Schenck and Brandenburg cases.
See why I’m confused? See why I’m voting for Jay Inslee? I want a governor who values community, who knows and applies the law for our benefit, and who models integrity, not hypocrisy.
Gery Gerst, Olympia
Biden’s health care plan
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris care about people like me.
I survived breast cancer in 2010, the same year that the Affordable Care Act was passed into law. Cancer, and female health care, are preexisting conditions, and both would have been reasons to deny my ongoing health coverage before the ACA. We are on the cusp of losing those protections, with the Republicans’ Supreme Court challenge of the law, the rushed and blatant political nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the court, as well as ongoing erosion of the ACA’s popular protections.
But Biden cares about people like us, which is why he’s made affordable and comprehensive health care a durable plank in his presidential platform.
Google the Biden/Harris health care plan. Vote. Our health and our lives depend on our active participation in this 2020 election.
Kate Severson, Lacey
Give your write-in vote a voice
Barring a direct hit from an asteroid, Kevin Shutty will be a Mason County Commissioner for another four years. But it won’t be Mr. Shutty’s failure to lead, budget manipulations or lack of business acumen that ascend him to a second term; it will be because he’s running unopposed.
So what’s a voter to do if they don’t want to cast a ballot for an unchallenged incumbent? Typically, they leave that box empty or write in the name of a cartoon character, their dog or maybe their mother-in-law. But there’s no escaping the fact that what they’re really doing is throwing their vote away.
Why waste your vote when you can use it to support quality-of-life issues, such as government accountability; public and environmental health; a fair and equitable taxing system, and a less costly, more effective criminal justice system — all improvements I’ve been advocating for at commission meetings for over a decade.
Let me be clear, I’m not a candidate for any public office; I am is an outspoken citizen-advocate for better government who tries to bring focus, context and history to local issues under discussion or not being reported in the local media.
So, if you want your vote to count for something but don’t want to vote for the unchallenged incumbent, write in my name, Tom Davis for Mason County Commissioner District #2, and give your write-in vote a voice.
The power of the people does not lie in their silence, but in their raised voices.
Tom Davis, Mason County