State of the Union
Dear Editor: I am sending this letter to Senators Murkowski and Sullivan.
Dear Senators: I am registered as an Independent and have voted in every presidential election since Nixon/McGovern. Some of the candidates I supported won and some didn’t, but no matter who won the office, I knew that the American democratic system would prevail. Today, I am not so sure.
I am concerned for our country. Our President’s policies seem to be sending us in a direction that is not in America’s best interest.
His actions seem rash and without the counsel of experienced advisers.
His comments alienate our allies and his actions embolden those who do not have our best interests at heart.
He has used racist, xenophobic and sexist slurs toward those who do not agree with him.
He seems more willing to bolster the economies of other nations before he aids those American citizens in crisis in Puerto Rico.
For the grandson of an immigrant and leader of a country of immigrants, his policies are unnecessarily harsh and short-sighted. And now, we are taking children from their parents at the border and putting them in confinement. The stated policy is that this will act as a deterrent for prospective immigrants. That is just wrong.
As a United States senator, it is your role and duty to be a check and balance to the Executive Branch. I am asking that you take a proactive role in keeping our country from becoming something other than a world power and a beacon of democracy.
As Ronald Reagan said in his election eve address, “These visitors to that city on the Potomac do not come as white or black, red or yellow; they are not Jews or Christians; conservatives or liberals; or Democrats or Republicans. They are Americans awed by what has gone before, proud of what for them is still… a shining city on a hill.”
Ted O. Howard, Sitka
Utility Rate Hike
Dear Editor: Another utility rate increase? Sitka is in a death spiral.
Crushed by taxes and unending utility bill increases, lower income people, small business, and retired pensioners are being punished for past mismanagement and extravagant spending. Spending that many people had warned against, and spoke out against.
Due to the elimination of the senior tax exemption, our family, living on a small retirement pension, will have over $400 a year less to spend. That’s $400 that will not be spent in the local Sitka economy. Now utilities are going up again! Now we will have even less money to buy from our local merchants. I will repeat, we and many others living in Sitka will now have less money available for buying merchandise from our local merchants.
For some reason Sitka local officials do not understand simple economics 101. That if you overspend, and then raise taxes and fees, it will only hurt a local economy. You will destroy a community’s lower middle class, and punish its retirement community, forcing many to relocate.
Small businesses struggle. Low income workers work like serfs, and the pensioners are told to apply for public assistance in order to pay their ever-increasing taxes and utility bills.
Sitka is in a death spiral debt, and raising taxes and fees on the ‘‘little people’’ in Sitka cannot solve the debt and financial problems. The ‘‘little people’’ don’t earn, or have that kind of money. Only the high-income earners do.
The city needs money? Then control spending, sell assets that do not pencil, and collect tax from the high-wage earners. A graduated income tax has always been the fairest type of tax. Tax and collect fees from where the money is, not from the most vulnerable in the community, where it is not. What’s the city afraid of?
David Rice, Sitka pensioner
