March 29, 2007 Shelton Mason County Journal | ![]() |
©
Shelton Mason County Journal. All rights reserved. Upgrade to access Premium Tools
PAGE 4 (4 of 46 available) PREVIOUS NEXT Jumbo Image Save To Scrapbook Set Notifiers PDF JPG
March 29, 2007 |
|
Website © 2025. All content copyrighted. Copyright Information Terms Of Use | Privacy Policy | Request Content Removal | About / FAQ | Get Acrobat Reader ![]() |
00ournal or_Opinion:
Warming shots
That was quite an exchange between conservative Ardean
Anvik representing the environmental ardeanists (EAs) and
some more liberal folks he calls the environmental extremists
(EEs) jousting about global warming in recent letters to the
editor. Ardean argued that the jury is still out on the human
contribution to Earth's fever while the EE politburo contended
Americans should be seriously reducing their output of green-
house gases to save the planet as we know it. The most
intriguing theme in the EE mob's letters was that Americans
should be concerned about future generations.
Concerned about the next generation? In America?
This is the country with the credit-card, "What, me worry?"
mentality and the $8.5-trillion national debt, much of it owed
to foreigners. Our kids will be paying so much interest through
taxes that their government services will be slashed.
Consider the air that vehicle-crazy Americans keep
leaving next generation after next generation. It's so
filthy it kills a percentage of the people who breathe it.
If we can breed enough obstinacy into our kids, they can
continue our sprawl-and.crawl commuting. We can
already see the brown haze hanging over the cities, but
we can give our descendants so much more: On their
daily trips to and from work, urban commuters breathe
air with eight times the pollutants of downtown air.
And speaking of doing favors for the next generation, we're
making our oil-producing enemies rich and giving their leaders
more power by driving so much that world oil prices skyrocket.
Americans leave their children at the mercy of an
idiot box they watch four hours a day to develop their
sense of morality and at the mercy of a no.limits
Internes on which one out of seven girls will be solicited
and a multi-billion-dollar porn industry flourishes.
We provide our kids with professional athletic heroes who are
hoodlums and with entertainers who model insane lifestyles.
Think about the next generation? We ingrain in boys
and girls an attitude that women are sex objects.
We fill ourselves and our children with prescription drugs,
raising them in a culture where they expect drugs to solve all of
their health and emotional problems - the illusion of a free
license to abuse themselves.
Is it having concern for the next generation to feed
our children so many calories of grease and sugar that a
major portion of them are obese?
We bring them up worshiping the god of materialism.
This is the country whose landmark "education" bill,
the No Recruiter Left Behind Act, ensures that schools
will give the war machine contact information for our
children. It's the nation now celebrating four years of
staying the curse that is killing a bunch of the next
generation, building up debt for them while foregoing
more worthwhile expenditures and destroying the repu-
tation of the U.S. in the world they're going to inherit.
We use the next generation as guinea pigs in education. In-
stead of simply vowing to find the best ways to each material
and tap natural desires to learn, we talk tough and play
psychological games with kids before blinking and saving face
with more rhetoric. And, for their part, millions of parents are
too busy, drunk or apathetic to insist that their children get a
solid education. Often they're so busy destroying their own
lives that they don't have time for their most important respon-
sibility - the lives of the next generation.
The Journal has been running stories about pollution
of Hood Canal for a quarter of a century - an entire
generation. That's 25 years of thumb-twiddling while we
continued to pour nitrogen into the water for our kids.
In some areas of Puget Sound we have given the next
generation fish with chemicals in them.
Shelton is a microcostm of Mafiana America. Its resi-
dents pushed tens of millions of dollars worth of street
work onto the next generation and made the next gener-
ation drink chlorine by neglecting the water system.
Fifty years ago city fathers were trying to figure out
how to find $88,000 to overhaul the sewer system, which
was overflowing onto the streets during rainstorms.
Half of that era's Sheltonians aren't even alive to see the
present generation pick up the $20-million-plus bill.
The stormwater still runs off the streets of the city into Oak-
land Bay, but, then, that's the next generation's problem, just
as i was the next generation's prqblem when loggers got rich
filling the Skokomish River with silt.
So the EE horde has a lot of nerve asking Americans
to think about the next generation. Showing such con-
cern would be un-American, which is why EAs needn't
be too worried about new environmental laws that
would kill the U.S. economy or force them to drive more
fuel-efficient cars. Nature will discipline Americans
because they didn't discipline themselves. But that's
way off in the future. It ain't our generation's problem.
-CG
mUllll
ournal
)Hason 9 usps 492-800
County
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Shelton-Mason
County Journal, P.O. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584.
Published weekly by Shelton Publishing Inc. at 227 West Cota Street, Shelton, Washington
Mailing address: P.O. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584
Telephone (360) 426-4412 * www.masoncounty.com
Periodicals postage paid at Shelton, Washington
Member of Washington Newspaper Publishers' Association
SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $31.00 per year in-county address,
$45.00 per year in state of Washington $55.00 per year out of state
Charles Gay, editor and publisher. Newsroom: Sean Hanlon, managing editor, Port of Shelton;
Steve Patch, sports editor; Jeff Green, general assignment, city government, schools; Rebecca
Wels, society editor, county government; Mary Duncan, police, courts. Advertising: Stephen
Gay, advertising manager; Dave Pierik and Harvey Morris, ad sales. Front office: Julie Orme,
business manager; Kathy Lester, circulation; Donna Kinnaird, bookkeeper; Cricket Carter, mailroom
supervisor. CompoMno room: Diane Riordan, supervisor; Margot Brand, Jan Kallinen, pagination;
Monica CarvajaI-Beben, pagination, darkroom; Kolesn Wood, typesetter, computer system manager;
William Adams, ad builder, computer system manager; Clinton Kendall, proofreader. Pressroom:
Kelly Riordan, pressman; Nick Carr, pressman's assistant.
lUUlllllllllllllllllllllllllll, n tlmlanUmnllllllll uuuuuuuuuu
Page 4 - Shelton-Mason County Journal - Thursday, March 29, 2007
}
/
it a|
,t
Readers" 00ournal:
Demos here pretty normal
Editor, The Journal:
I would like to comment on the
rambling letter from Mr. George
Van Cleave in the March 22 Jour-
nal ("Democrats destroy
country"). This country has only
two major political parties and
one of them, according to Mr. Van
Cleave, consists of people being
communist, Nazi, socialist and
ihscist.
I could agree that the last 40
years were not glorious years, but
Mr. Van Cleave should remember
that Republican Presidents were
"running the shop" for 26 out of
the last 40 years.
His family dates from 1600; my
family dates from October 16,
1964 entering the United States.
Between 1940 and 1945 I ob-
served Nazi occupation in Hol-
land fbr five years and my wife
three years of Japanese occupa-
tion in Indonesia. So I can assure
you that the Democrats here are
pretty normal folks, but maybe
not always agreeable to your
ideas. However, is that not the
purpose of having more than one
party?
Now after more than six years
of one-party majority rule, we are
soon having a nationwide election
coming up, with also the electio
of a new President. And there are
plenty of candidates this time.
Now speaking of Mr. VaP
Cleave's rotten apples in a barrel,
let's hope that one of his
candidates who is a c
three-time adulterer is not
ed. That would be a bad start
should be very confusing to hi,
At that point he may consider
finding the good ship MayfloWer
and booking a return passage
somewhere he thinks he would
able to agree with everyone.
Dirk GroenhuizeP
Shelt0
Hysterical crisis-mongers
Editor, The Journal:
In the '70s the all-consuming
fear was global cooling. Today it
is global warming. In both in-
stances the public was propa-
gandized into believing in the cer-
tainty of apocalyptic doom.
Hysterical crisis-mongers have
made fear their religion. They ag-
onize over "saving the planet"
from a dubious distant doom
while ignoring more immediate
and undeniable problems such as
world poverty, which is a .real
danger to environmental ruin.
Every day, 20,000 people in the
world die from waterborne diseas-
es and a half-billion people go
hungry.
Why are these zealots expend-
ing so much emotional energy try-
ing to "control" the climate while
their fellow human beings are
ing from poverty, dirty water
the lack of accessible energY
sources?
Perhaps the."crisis" of
warming is the political agenda
guilt-ridden, pampered,
people with too much time o
their hands.
Mary SwobodS
Belfir
Objective to gain recognition
Editor, The Journal:
William Eickmeyer is getting a
lot of press lately, both pro and
con, relating to his ability to prop-
erly serve as our representative
to the 35th District.
The March 8 Journal front-
paged his recent ethics training
order from the Legislative Ethics
Board, tbllowed by a letter to the
editor in his defense from Neal
Nogler and one from Lisa Tread-
way listing what she considers
his numerous misdeeds.
Amid all this we are reminded
of an illuminating episode back in
May 2006 when Eickmeyer, in a
published brochure, attempted to
display his great concern and
knowledge of conditions in Hood
Canal by announcing the exist-
ence of a mysterious tide-blocking
sill "... made of solid stone rising
450 feet from the bottom." He lat-
er described this "phenomenon"
as a "real monolith" somewhere
near Bangor.
Of course no nautical chart has
ever indicated anything of the
sort. In response to public doubt,
Eickmeyer later backed off on
this claim in personal letters.
While still clinging to his wo t
"monolith" he admitted to its a¢
tual form being "... somethivf
like a seven-mile ramp slopi
down to the south." Seven mile.
of mud; hardly a 450-foot tower d
rock. And this while acting as the
appointed chairman of the Seled
Committee on Hood Canal.
Loosely formed ideas like theS
would seem to reveal that hiS.
main objective is to gain politic
s
recognition by choosing Hood Cs'.
nal as simply a convenient a d
currently popular target.
Robert Hoi
UnioS
Pioneers would run into 'no'
Editor, The Journal:
Gee whiz, I am insane, Jack
Mallinger is stupid, and the
name-calling goes on and on and
on.
How about a good laugh?
America then, America now: My
story, "Oh, No, Pioneer!"
Today's pioneers would never
have made it and settled a nation.
Upon learning of their intended
journey, Uncle Sam would say,
'Tou can't take those children out
of school. You can't endanger
their sensitive natures by subject-
ing them to the hardship of cross-
ing the nation. They might get
hurt, or be damaged emotionally
forever, or they might not want to
go."
"You can't carry those guns
across the territorial lines, or
you'll be arrested."
'Tou can't cut down those trees
to build your wagons and your log
cabins, or if you do, you'll need a
permit."
"You can't use those other
trees, because the horned 'winged
bleeding heart lives in them, or if
you do, you'll have to relocate
every single bleeding heart."
'Tou need a special permit to
lead these people out of state."
'Tou can't take those oxen and
cattle across country. They'll
spread disease amongst the buffa-
lo and other wildlife."
"You can't take those horses to
pull your wagons. It's cruelty to
animals."
'Tou can't cross Indian terri-
tory, because you'll tempt the In-
dians to want to do violence to
you, or else you'll turn them into
beggars or wards of the state."
'Tou can't cross the rivers, be-
cause the dung on your wagon
wheels will pollute the water."
"If you get bogged down and
leave your possessions, you'll be
charged with littering."
'Tou can't have any babies on
the trek without government su-
pervision so as the supervisor can
issue the babe a Social Security
card to track you all down the
rest of your life. (But if you snuck
into America on the sly and are
hoping to hide yourself in the vast
West, it's okay. You can have as
many babes as you want and no
card.)"
'Tou can't cook food out there
without an inspection so every-
body on the wagon train won't die
of food poisoning."
'Tou can't hunt or kill any ani-
mals to eat without a hunting
license."
'Tou can't gO"if your vehicle ii'
cense has expired."
'Tou can't go if your drivi
(harness and saddle horse) per $
has expired."
'Tou can't kill any of the ai
the?
reals you meet, because
might die out 600 years down te
road."
'Tou can't take those wago$
over fragile desert plants. 0 s
wagon wheel track will destrOY
the desert forever."
'Tou can't go #1 or #2 out the@
in the sand. It's just NOT done bY
the American people!"
'Tou can't cart those cigarette#
and booze across the nation'
You'll get fined and jailed by the
Interstate Commerce CommiS"
sion, the FBI, the CIA, the Bettd,
Business Bureau, the Ladies
League, and worst of all, tbs
Down With Everything people." s
'Tou can't fix up anyone wb
gets hurt, because you can't pr s¢
tice medicine without a license."
'Tou can't hold worship
vices on Sunday, or pray to
for safe passage, as the
Court has ruled against a
preme Being."
'Tou can't, you just can't!"
Norma VinceP i
Star L kd
00ournal or_Opinion:
Warming shots
That was quite an exchange between conservative Ardean
Anvik representing the environmental ardeanists (EAs) and
some more liberal folks he calls the environmental extremists
(EEs) jousting about global warming in recent letters to the
editor. Ardean argued that the jury is still out on the human
contribution to Earth's fever while the EE politburo contended
Americans should be seriously reducing their output of green-
house gases to save the planet as we know it. The most
intriguing theme in the EE mob's letters was that Americans
should be concerned about future generations.
Concerned about the next generation? In America?
This is the country with the credit-card, "What, me worry?"
mentality and the $8.5-trillion national debt, much of it owed
to foreigners. Our kids will be paying so much interest through
taxes that their government services will be slashed.
Consider the air that vehicle-crazy Americans keep
leaving next generation after next generation. It's so
filthy it kills a percentage of the people who breathe it.
If we can breed enough obstinacy into our kids, they can
continue our sprawl-and.crawl commuting. We can
already see the brown haze hanging over the cities, but
we can give our descendants so much more: On their
daily trips to and from work, urban commuters breathe
air with eight times the pollutants of downtown air.
And speaking of doing favors for the next generation, we're
making our oil-producing enemies rich and giving their leaders
more power by driving so much that world oil prices skyrocket.
Americans leave their children at the mercy of an
idiot box they watch four hours a day to develop their
sense of morality and at the mercy of a no.limits
Internes on which one out of seven girls will be solicited
and a multi-billion-dollar porn industry flourishes.
We provide our kids with professional athletic heroes who are
hoodlums and with entertainers who model insane lifestyles.
Think about the next generation? We ingrain in boys
and girls an attitude that women are sex objects.
We fill ourselves and our children with prescription drugs,
raising them in a culture where they expect drugs to solve all of
their health and emotional problems - the illusion of a free
license to abuse themselves.
Is it having concern for the next generation to feed
our children so many calories of grease and sugar that a
major portion of them are obese?
We bring them up worshiping the god of materialism.
This is the country whose landmark "education" bill,
the No Recruiter Left Behind Act, ensures that schools
will give the war machine contact information for our
children. It's the nation now celebrating four years of
staying the curse that is killing a bunch of the next
generation, building up debt for them while foregoing
more worthwhile expenditures and destroying the repu-
tation of the U.S. in the world they're going to inherit.
We use the next generation as guinea pigs in education. In-
stead of simply vowing to find the best ways to each material
and tap natural desires to learn, we talk tough and play
psychological games with kids before blinking and saving face
with more rhetoric. And, for their part, millions of parents are
too busy, drunk or apathetic to insist that their children get a
solid education. Often they're so busy destroying their own
lives that they don't have time for their most important respon-
sibility - the lives of the next generation.
The Journal has been running stories about pollution
of Hood Canal for a quarter of a century - an entire
generation. That's 25 years of thumb-twiddling while we
continued to pour nitrogen into the water for our kids.
In some areas of Puget Sound we have given the next
generation fish with chemicals in them.
Shelton is a microcostm of Mafiana America. Its resi-
dents pushed tens of millions of dollars worth of street
work onto the next generation and made the next gener-
ation drink chlorine by neglecting the water system.
Fifty years ago city fathers were trying to figure out
how to find $88,000 to overhaul the sewer system, which
was overflowing onto the streets during rainstorms.
Half of that era's Sheltonians aren't even alive to see the
present generation pick up the $20-million-plus bill.
The stormwater still runs off the streets of the city into Oak-
land Bay, but, then, that's the next generation's problem, just
as i was the next generation's prqblem when loggers got rich
filling the Skokomish River with silt.
So the EE horde has a lot of nerve asking Americans
to think about the next generation. Showing such con-
cern would be un-American, which is why EAs needn't
be too worried about new environmental laws that
would kill the U.S. economy or force them to drive more
fuel-efficient cars. Nature will discipline Americans
because they didn't discipline themselves. But that's
way off in the future. It ain't our generation's problem.
-CG
mUllll
ournal
)Hason 9 usps 492-800
County
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Shelton-Mason
County Journal, P.O. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584.
Published weekly by Shelton Publishing Inc. at 227 West Cota Street, Shelton, Washington
Mailing address: P.O. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584
Telephone (360) 426-4412 * www.masoncounty.com
Periodicals postage paid at Shelton, Washington
Member of Washington Newspaper Publishers' Association
SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $31.00 per year in-county address,
$45.00 per year in state of Washington $55.00 per year out of state
Charles Gay, editor and publisher. Newsroom: Sean Hanlon, managing editor, Port of Shelton;
Steve Patch, sports editor; Jeff Green, general assignment, city government, schools; Rebecca
Wels, society editor, county government; Mary Duncan, police, courts. Advertising: Stephen
Gay, advertising manager; Dave Pierik and Harvey Morris, ad sales. Front office: Julie Orme,
business manager; Kathy Lester, circulation; Donna Kinnaird, bookkeeper; Cricket Carter, mailroom
supervisor. CompoMno room: Diane Riordan, supervisor; Margot Brand, Jan Kallinen, pagination;
Monica CarvajaI-Beben, pagination, darkroom; Kolesn Wood, typesetter, computer system manager;
William Adams, ad builder, computer system manager; Clinton Kendall, proofreader. Pressroom:
Kelly Riordan, pressman; Nick Carr, pressman's assistant.
lUUlllllllllllllllllllllllllll, n tlmlanUmnllllllll uuuuuuuuuu
Page 4 - Shelton-Mason County Journal - Thursday, March 29, 2007
}
/
it a|
,t
Readers" 00ournal:
Demos here pretty normal
Editor, The Journal:
I would like to comment on the
rambling letter from Mr. George
Van Cleave in the March 22 Jour-
nal ("Democrats destroy
country"). This country has only
two major political parties and
one of them, according to Mr. Van
Cleave, consists of people being
communist, Nazi, socialist and
ihscist.
I could agree that the last 40
years were not glorious years, but
Mr. Van Cleave should remember
that Republican Presidents were
"running the shop" for 26 out of
the last 40 years.
His family dates from 1600; my
family dates from October 16,
1964 entering the United States.
Between 1940 and 1945 I ob-
served Nazi occupation in Hol-
land fbr five years and my wife
three years of Japanese occupa-
tion in Indonesia. So I can assure
you that the Democrats here are
pretty normal folks, but maybe
not always agreeable to your
ideas. However, is that not the
purpose of having more than one
party?
Now after more than six years
of one-party majority rule, we are
soon having a nationwide election
coming up, with also the electio
of a new President. And there are
plenty of candidates this time.
Now speaking of Mr. VaP
Cleave's rotten apples in a barrel,
let's hope that one of his
candidates who is a c
three-time adulterer is not
ed. That would be a bad start
should be very confusing to hi,
At that point he may consider
finding the good ship MayfloWer
and booking a return passage
somewhere he thinks he would
able to agree with everyone.
Dirk GroenhuizeP
Shelt0
Hysterical crisis-mongers
Editor, The Journal:
In the '70s the all-consuming
fear was global cooling. Today it
is global warming. In both in-
stances the public was propa-
gandized into believing in the cer-
tainty of apocalyptic doom.
Hysterical crisis-mongers have
made fear their religion. They ag-
onize over "saving the planet"
from a dubious distant doom
while ignoring more immediate
and undeniable problems such as
world poverty, which is a .real
danger to environmental ruin.
Every day, 20,000 people in the
world die from waterborne diseas-
es and a half-billion people go
hungry.
Why are these zealots expend-
ing so much emotional energy try-
ing to "control" the climate while
their fellow human beings are
ing from poverty, dirty water
the lack of accessible energY
sources?
Perhaps the."crisis" of
warming is the political agenda
guilt-ridden, pampered,
people with too much time o
their hands.
Mary SwobodS
Belfir
Objective to gain recognition
Editor, The Journal:
William Eickmeyer is getting a
lot of press lately, both pro and
con, relating to his ability to prop-
erly serve as our representative
to the 35th District.
The March 8 Journal front-
paged his recent ethics training
order from the Legislative Ethics
Board, tbllowed by a letter to the
editor in his defense from Neal
Nogler and one from Lisa Tread-
way listing what she considers
his numerous misdeeds.
Amid all this we are reminded
of an illuminating episode back in
May 2006 when Eickmeyer, in a
published brochure, attempted to
display his great concern and
knowledge of conditions in Hood
Canal by announcing the exist-
ence of a mysterious tide-blocking
sill "... made of solid stone rising
450 feet from the bottom." He lat-
er described this "phenomenon"
as a "real monolith" somewhere
near Bangor.
Of course no nautical chart has
ever indicated anything of the
sort. In response to public doubt,
Eickmeyer later backed off on
this claim in personal letters.
While still clinging to his wo t
"monolith" he admitted to its a¢
tual form being "... somethivf
like a seven-mile ramp slopi
down to the south." Seven mile.
of mud; hardly a 450-foot tower d
rock. And this while acting as the
appointed chairman of the Seled
Committee on Hood Canal.
Loosely formed ideas like theS
would seem to reveal that hiS.
main objective is to gain politic
s
recognition by choosing Hood Cs'.
nal as simply a convenient a d
currently popular target.
Robert Hoi
UnioS
Pioneers would run into 'no'
Editor, The Journal:
Gee whiz, I am insane, Jack
Mallinger is stupid, and the
name-calling goes on and on and
on.
How about a good laugh?
America then, America now: My
story, "Oh, No, Pioneer!"
Today's pioneers would never
have made it and settled a nation.
Upon learning of their intended
journey, Uncle Sam would say,
'Tou can't take those children out
of school. You can't endanger
their sensitive natures by subject-
ing them to the hardship of cross-
ing the nation. They might get
hurt, or be damaged emotionally
forever, or they might not want to
go."
"You can't carry those guns
across the territorial lines, or
you'll be arrested."
'Tou can't cut down those trees
to build your wagons and your log
cabins, or if you do, you'll need a
permit."
"You can't use those other
trees, because the horned 'winged
bleeding heart lives in them, or if
you do, you'll have to relocate
every single bleeding heart."
'Tou need a special permit to
lead these people out of state."
'Tou can't take those oxen and
cattle across country. They'll
spread disease amongst the buffa-
lo and other wildlife."
"You can't take those horses to
pull your wagons. It's cruelty to
animals."
'Tou can't cross Indian terri-
tory, because you'll tempt the In-
dians to want to do violence to
you, or else you'll turn them into
beggars or wards of the state."
'Tou can't cross the rivers, be-
cause the dung on your wagon
wheels will pollute the water."
"If you get bogged down and
leave your possessions, you'll be
charged with littering."
'Tou can't have any babies on
the trek without government su-
pervision so as the supervisor can
issue the babe a Social Security
card to track you all down the
rest of your life. (But if you snuck
into America on the sly and are
hoping to hide yourself in the vast
West, it's okay. You can have as
many babes as you want and no
card.)"
'Tou can't cook food out there
without an inspection so every-
body on the wagon train won't die
of food poisoning."
'Tou can't hunt or kill any ani-
mals to eat without a hunting
license."
'Tou can't gO"if your vehicle ii'
cense has expired."
'Tou can't go if your drivi
(harness and saddle horse) per $
has expired."
'Tou can't kill any of the ai
the?
reals you meet, because
might die out 600 years down te
road."
'Tou can't take those wago$
over fragile desert plants. 0 s
wagon wheel track will destrOY
the desert forever."
'Tou can't go #1 or #2 out the@
in the sand. It's just NOT done bY
the American people!"
'Tou can't cart those cigarette#
and booze across the nation'
You'll get fined and jailed by the
Interstate Commerce CommiS"
sion, the FBI, the CIA, the Bettd,
Business Bureau, the Ladies
League, and worst of all, tbs
Down With Everything people." s
'Tou can't fix up anyone wb
gets hurt, because you can't pr s¢
tice medicine without a license."
'Tou can't hold worship
vices on Sunday, or pray to
for safe passage, as the
Court has ruled against a
preme Being."
'Tou can't, you just can't!"
Norma VinceP i
Star L kd