Letters to the editor for June 16
Olympia needs a change in direction
The City of Olympia is in crisis. Our City Council and City Manager have become completely subservient to wealthy developers such as Walker John, J. Brent McKinley, Aaron Angelo and Ronald Dean Newman.
This subservience has transformed our downtown into an exclusionary zone for the rich while using our property taxes to subsidize their profits. This means increased evictions, homelessness, the collapse of home ownership and the commercialization of our neighborhoods into rental farms. We all see it.
Most working people in Olympia can’t afford the increased rents, property taxes or new home prices. There is a reason for this. The City Council does not work for us. They facilitate land speculators bent on clear-cutting the last tree while ignoring sea level rise and the needs for reasonably priced housing.
I’ve lived in Olympia for 38 years. I want council members who will vote against property tax exemptions for developers, work with the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI) to build housing affordable to service workers, veterans and the poor and demand their own staff for policy direction. Please vote for Sara Destasio, Talauna Reed, Tyrone Brown and Bruce Wilkinson in the August primary.
Dan Leahy, Olympia
Bees are essential
Many of us appreciate the role bees and other pollinators play in our food system. Now it’s time to take more serious legislative action to protect them from collapse.
I hope to see more local and state legislation to limit unnecessary outdoor use of neonicotinoids. Overwhelming evidence confirms that neonics are a leading cause of pollinator declines. Neonic treatment of just 1 square foot of turf at approved rates can have enough active ingredient to kill up to a million bees. Designed to make all parts of plants toxic to insects, neonics spread through various water sources to pollute new soil, plants, and water supplies. They’ve done great damage. It’s high time to reverse this trend.
Pollinators are fascinating critters in their own right; they also are critical to the human food system. Numerous plants depend upon pollination to yield delicious crops we relish, such as almonds, peaches, and flowers.
We can take matters into our own hands by planting native, pollinator-friendly plants in our yards (the less lawn and the more native plants the better!). And we need not use strong pesticides or herbicides in our yard; both the health of our own families and pollinators will benefit greatly.
Rebecca Canright, Olympia
Selective socialism
We need to make a trade with the Republicans like they do in the sports world.
We will give the Republicans Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and take Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski and throw in Liz Cheney.
This trade will benefit each team, such as ending the minority-holding-majority-hostage senate filibuster rule and establishing the Jan. 6 insurrection commission.
Meanwhile, 14 Republican governors have refused to pay $300 extra per week to their unemployed. This was part of the COVID-19 Economic Relief Bill.
Republicans believe this extra money prevent people from going back to work. They cite plenty of job openings in the hospitality, food, and service industries. But these are low-paying jobs meant to subsidize income and aren’t enough to live on.
Paying an extra $300 a week to sit home, instead of working, is outrageous, they say. This brand of democratic governmental socialism has got to stop, they say.
Forget about the $12 billion going to subsidize soybean-farmers when Trump started a trade war with China, tumbling soybean prices.
But that’s the kind of Republican governmental socialism they get behind. The free market isn’t free when Republican corporate America suffers an economic downfall. But giving $300 a week temporarily to some poor working stiffs really breaks the backs and banks of the Republican Party.
Republicans like the rich man’s, not poor man’s, socialism.
David Cahill, Olympia
This story was originally published June 16, 2021 at 5:00 AM.