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Letters to the Editor
Tuesday, February 29, 2000
GONSALVES COLUMN
Sean Gonsalves' Feb. 15 column concerning gun control asks for a "straight-shooting argument" for gun rights. Since being a pro-Second Amendment advocate is not the most popular position of the day, my argument is that if one right (the right to keep and bear arms) can be compromised, then any right can be compromised.
Would Gonsalves object to having his right to free speech eliminated if the political powers of the day deemed it dangerous? Would Gonsalves object to having authorities break into his home and search it illegally? Would Gonsalves object if his right to due process under the law was eliminated for expediency in the courts? As soon as we are willing to compromise any right granted to Americans, then the precedent has been set to compromise them all. Be careful, the ice is thin. Steve Colberg
DEVELOPMENT
Why is it that citizens are always left to do the government's job? On Feb. 2, the P-I ran a story about citizens who have had to use their own time and money to fight a development that will straddle a wetland in Lake Forest Park.
The city is allowing the development to proceed even though it conflicts with the city's Sensitive Areas Ordinance. As lax development regulations and land use practices make a mockery of salmon protection throughout the region, citizens are left fighting to preserve the remaining productive habitats in increasingly marginalized watersheds. What is the point of a city having environmental laws if they are so easy to bypass? It should not be left up to citizens to oversee development practices.
Lake Forest Park owes it to its citizens to enforce the laws on the books. If the very laws designed to balance habitat protection with development (the same laws that protect salmon) are not enforced, they are nothing but a masquerade of our environmental responsibilities. Joseph T. Hauth
TRANSPORTATION
Because of the booming economy, Sound Transit has excess revenue and, in true bureaucratic fashion, wants to spend it. Saving surplus funds to cover the cost overruns we all know will be the byproduct of the rail system is beyond governmental reasoning.
The P-I reports that Sound Transit will consider a $50,000 study of Kirkland-to-University of Washington passenger ferry service -- that's private, not public ferry service. Also to be considered is a $128,000 study of year round Elliott Bay water taxi service that now operates only in the summer months. Boats, not trains or buses. We thought Sound Transit was about trains. Turns out Sound Transit can spend on anything that moves people.
If a private company meets Coast Guard, environmental and the myriad other governmental requirements, let them set out in catamarans, speedboats or kayaks and succeed or fail in the true entrepreneurial spirit of private enterprise, as businesses do every day. Let the market sort it out. The only study this public agency is capable of conducting is how to subsidize transportation.
If we're not careful, Sound Transit soon will be studying the efficacy of skateboards and tricycles as public transportation. After all it's only taxpayers' money. Leonard Lighburne
AUSTRIA
Conservatives are not (they say), endorsing the extreme positions of the far right, but are so determined to cut welfare, eliminate worker rights and repeal social legislation that they are willing to sell their soul to the extremists -- not unlike some of the pandering going on in the U.S. political scene. Carl Schwartz
If one right topples, others sure to go
Kirkland
Citizens shouldn't have to do the government's job
Lake Forest Park
Excess money should be saved to pay for inevitable overruns
This is regarding "Kirkland-UW ferry service on agenda for Sound Transit" (Feb. 17).
Mill Creek
Political scene in Europe not unlike what happens here
Contrary to some reports, the news from Austria is not that a minority of voters have chosen candidates from the far right, but that the Christian Conservative Party, ostensibly mainstream, has chosen to partner with the far right party rather than with the (much larger) Social Democratic Party.
Redmond
· State Budget: A new landscape
· Torture: End practice forever
· Bush Administration: Burrowing in
· Bush can do plenty as days dwindle down
· Bolivia's Morales offers his hand in peace
· Cultural differences inhibit good health care policy
· Keep Africa on D.C.'s radar
· Impetus of suicide often is an underlying illness
· Obama, Misha and the bear
· Think radical -- think trains
· Where can the Republicans go now?
· America descends on D.C.
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