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Take a Hike!

I found Jason Miller's May 15 article very satisfying. Every day I hate cars and the people who drive them just a little bit more. My four-year-old and I walk and bus everywhere. There I am every day, the only parent who walks my kid to his preschool, with trucks, cars, humvees, semis, and vans roaring around us, while my little boy stops to pick a dandelion. The other day we saw a raccoon one block off the highway. Twenty cars belch their nasty exhaust at us as we climb the hill to our home, and I feel like a space alien because I never ever want to join that angry impatient selfish and ugly throng of DRIVERS. Nearly everyone I know thinks I must buy a car, but I never ever will. When will people take responsibility for the fact that they arrange their lives around their big ugly polluting expensive hunk of metal?  With a little patience, you can get anywhere in this city on a bus. Buy some walking shoes, people, live near your office. It's the most selfish form of egoism for one to think they not only need but deserve to carry around a huge, heavy vehicular extension of their own body. This earth was made for your two feet. Nothing bad will happen if you join with others on the sidewalk or bus, and you might actually notice a flower blooming and have a conversation with your neighbor. Car-free living is cheaper and less lonely, and will teach you to dress for the weather and give up your gym membership. And then, finally, you can proudly say as I do, that you are no longer part of the problem.

--Rebecca Snow Landa and Ahren Mical Martin, Seattle

Read a Book!

Now is the time to inform the younger people of a small book published in 1935: War Is A Racket by Smedley D. Butler, by Round Table Press, Inc. It was also republished in around 2003.

--Leon Lewin, Seattle

A Nation Founded on Hate

Where are the seniors in America? Do you see many of them on the bus? In a movie? In a coffee shop?

I believe if I am to support a government, my taxes are to go to the weakest members of the community, not the strongest groups.

The people who are getting things the worst are the people who worked from sunrise to sunset. They had no unions, no vacations, no "perks," worked hard, paid taxes, voted. At the last of life, not only can they lose their homes, living on basics, they wait for death to release them from an inhumane world. Few in the community even notice the loss of them.

The community could have figured into the system how to protect them all. As basic needs went up, the cost to them would remain stable or less, not more. The community chose not to do that. It's more important to have toys for moneyed brats and for people who think they are entitled because they are stronger.

Do you really think that raising the bus fare, and taxing them out of homes for bonds and levies, is humane? Is this why we formed a government: to make the rich richer, the poor poorer and more plentiful?

The government is supposed to be "public servants" for the people. It is not to turn the US into a land of slavery, a land that kills off the weakest and fuels the strongest.

The government needs me, my money. I do not need a government that holds me at gunpoint to support itself.

Has anyone looked at how sick this country is in all areas? We are a nation founded on hate. A nation of bullies and cowards. A nation of groups that pick on the weakest, those who have no protection. A nation that looks at lying, cheating, stealing, and killing as being virtuous.

A nation that punishes the truth and rewards the liars. A nation so stupid and mean that when told who to hate, who to kill, what to wear, what to eat, and who to love, does it.

This nation has always been like this, but it does not have to be like this. We have a choice.

--Carolyn DeVita, Seattle