Letters to the editor for July 22
Smoky air and a healthy future
In anticipation of the smoky air and fire season in the Northwest, I worry about several of my health conditions.
These days, my asthma has become very serious. Viable treatment is an issue. It’s scary when you take an inhaler and it doesn’t work.
I’m also concerned about my Parkinson’s Disease. My symptoms are often mild — just occasional tremors in my hands and fingers — but I know the condition can progress rapidly and will eventually seek new treatments for that too. Unfortunately, neither of these conditions have a cure yet.
Recently, Congress introduced H.R. 3 (again), the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act, and if it passes, I believe scientists may not invent one. I have written U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland about the fact that H.R. 3 could inhibit the research and development of new drugs and treatments. Many of us with untreatable and incurable diseases can’t afford to wait for help. We need to support bio-pharmaceutical innovation, like we got in the vaccine for COVID, so we all get the help we need.
The air is just going to get worse this summer and some of us need protection from the smoke and help from D.C. Thanks.
Lawrence Jacobson, Olympia
Tell the Port to work with the county on expansion
As a citizen, I am dismayed at the lack of fiscal responsibility of our Port of Olympia. They are taking a hurried action to expand the number of Port Commissioners without thinking about the consequences. Right now there are three commissioners: EJ Zita, Bill McGregor and Joe Downing. Zita has only one vote and the other two have been voting together for years and are responsible for many poor fiscal decisions.
The Thurston County Commission, like the Port Commission, also has three members: Tye Menser, Gary Edwards and Carolina Mejia.
Menser commented on behalf of the County Commissioners. He urged the port to wait until the county reaches 300,000 population and then work with the county to come up with two new districts for a total of five.
He asked that the port and county collaborate on the new district boundaries. “Jurisdictional boundaries are confusing enough without us muddying the waters by creating two sets of districts.”
E.J. Zita urged the commission to coordinate with county as well.
Mensner asked that the port and county run their ballot measures to expand at the same time to lower election costs and coordinate public education on the issue. He asked that the port delay elections to allow “adequate time for good sensible boundaries to be determined.”
I agree. November is too early to have this vote. Time is needed to create new districts and then take a vote.
Patricia Holm, Olympia
Billionaires in space?
I love editorial cartoons — they can be funny and wise. They can also be downright dumb. The one that appeared on July 15 was one of the latter. The artist is saying that if billionaires had gone to the Moon, the flag would have been a dollar bill. Yeah, that’s right, capitalists like money — but so does everyone else. To get a paper copy of The Olympian isn’t free now, is it? Anyway, I get that the artist is making a joke about billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk. Ha ha, very funny.
What happened with NASA and the Moon, on the other hand, was that they went there a few times, looked around, and then didn’t bother anymore. All we have to show for the government’s squandering of President Kennedy’s vision is a few hundred pounds of rocks. If the billionaires had been in charge, there would now be a Hilton Hotel on the Moon, and regular folks would be flying to the Moon for their honeymoons!
We also would have been able to give up destroying Earth’s scenery mining for minerals, because there’s all we’d ever need to be found on the Moon! And we could be processing them there, too! So, save the Earth! Mine the Moon instead! And if we don’t want to bother the appearance of the Man in the Moon, fine, we could do it all on the far side that we never see.
Michael L Clark, Olympia