Carbon tax just another tax
This is in response to your guest column on Oct. 12, 2018, by Dr. Mark Vossler in the Redmond Reporter on Initiative 1631.
We all agree that air pollution is bad. However, taxing industrial emitters, and only some emitters of air pollutants will do nothing to reduce or even effect air pollution in the slightest.
This is a misguided attempt to do good whose sole effect will be to raise energy and fuel costs to the consumer. Who do you think will bear the costs of these taxes? The polluters? Evidently some dreamers really believe that polluters will suffer higher costs and mend their ways. No, these costs will simply be passed along to their consumers (eventually all of us) as one of those miscellaneous added-on charges at the end of our monthly bills and gas pump prices, and paid with a shrug.
And what will be done with this newly collected tax revenue? It seems that has not been determined at this point. You can be sure that whatever would be left over after new administrative costs will be greedily debated by our friends in government. And let’s remember there have been no reductions in air pollution, and you and I will simply have one more insidious cost increase buried in our monthly bills.
Joel Druckman
Carnation
County gun law shows fear of firearms
King County’s passing of the latest gun control bill shows how illogical and lack of common sense is used by our council.
In your article (“Secure gun storage ordinance approved by King County Council” published on Oct. 5), councilmembers Joe McDermott and Jeanne Kohl-Welles said this bill will help with the suicide rate. What makes them think that a person who has a gun locked up in a safe and wants to commit suicide will suddenly magically forget the combination?
Also conveniently forgotten in their arguments was the FBI fact that in 2016 43 percent of justifiable homicides were by citizens protecting themselves and this bill just took my right to do so away. This is almost as many times as the police have done. Do they really think that a home invader will wait until I go to another room and unlock the safe to retrieve my firearm and then proceed to commit the crime?
The same common sense prevails for domestic violence. You have destroyed the right of the recipient of that violence to protect themselves.
The council should be ashamed. Their arguments for this bill show a senseless fear of firearms and no common sense whatever.
Dee Williamson
North Bend
Rossi takes low road
District 8 candidate Dr. Kim Schrier is a knowledgeable articulate candidate to replace U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert. She takes positions I find make sense for our district on all the issues from cimate change and education to gun safety and national security.
But we aren’t hearing about them through the noisy deluge of false TV advertising attacks centering on Schrier’s career and issues irrelevant to the campaign. The source is U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s Super PAC and designed to help elect candidate Dino Rossi.
The misfortune for we, the voters, is this campaign has driven Schrier’s campaign to spend time and assets defending against the truth-twisting charges. She shouldn’t be on TV defending an open-book career in medicine. Turn about would have been finding false grounds to force Rossi to defend his career in commercial real estate. Rossi went along on the low road. Further, we aren’t getting a fleshed out campaign from Rossi. Obviously he believes unnecessary exposure will only hurt his chances of winning and help hers. That’s why he dodged Schrier’s many calls for multiple debates — finally agreeing to one in Ellensburg. No other reason makes sense.
Dave Olson
Issaquah
I-1639 unfair to young combat vets
On Oct. 25, 1968, I enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and in April 1969, I began a 12-month tour of combat duty in Vietnam.
Before my 19th birthday on May 20, 1969, I was wounded in action by Viet Cong mortar fire and received the Purple Heart Medal for the same.
After being wounded in action I spent the remainder of my combat tour over in Vietnam with Mike Company, 3rd Battalion, First Marine Division packing an M-60 machine gun through the rice paddies and jungles hunting down the dreaded Viet Cong as well as North Vietnam Army soldiers.
Based on the same, I know firsthand the terrible destruction and carnage an assault weapon can do, so as a result I’m in favor of banning assault weapons in our society with the exception of our police officers.
But I really can’t support or vote for I-1639 since it unjustly discriminates against young adults in our state, many of whom are young combat veterans who had put their lives on the line for our nation like I was when I returned home from combat duty back in the spring of 1970.
Jim Curtis
President North American Self-Defense Association
North Bend
