Kirby Neumann-Rea has done some photos with “find this item” in the valley, which are great. He needs to use this more often rather than rely on his finding sites. This is rather evident in the April 30 edition as on page 5, he identifies the old Columbia Gorge Motor depot as a current building that it is impossible to be. If you compare the photos at all you will see that the sidewalk is sloping in opposite directions. The slope of the sidewalk says the depot was on the south or east side of a street, not on the north side as identified by your reporter. Maybe other readers can help him find the location.

Meters are smart

Storm Drain Tax meet Parking Meter Increase. Finally some smarts downtown. Unfortunately they’re machines.

Tax is now

School bonds pass! No new tax? I have tried to ignore the no-new-tax propaganda but reading that our Superintendent Pat Evenson-Brady also believes “It is wonderful the things to be able to do “all without having to raise taxes.”

I have decided to ask a question of our chief educator. The special levy and the bond both expired. The good people of Hood River County voted to approve two additional taxes and provide additional money for a given period. If this is not a new tax, why did we have to vote on the levies?

Also the signs saying “support our schools.” If the bonds hadn’t passed do you think we aren’t supporting our schools? All property owners are paying a very high tax anyway, most of which go to the schools. Isn’t that supporting the schools?

Yes, we are paying more and more taxes all the time. The city has become an expert in weaseling every fee it can think of out of the people (wonderful new parking meters with 50 percent increase, 25 percent sewer increase) and then giving the administrator a pay raise because he figured out a way to tax us more.

I expect the next item will be the library operating levy. No new taxes; just how do you come up with that line and actually believe it?

I voted for the building bond.

Globalization

In this election year, while all eyes are on the cost of the war in Iraq and the price of gas at the pump, control of the world’s affairs is quietly slipping into the hands of international financial institutions. It’s called globalization, and it may be the most significant historic development of this new century.

Part of this is due to the inordinate accumulation of wealth by so very few. It used to be that the names of the world’s millionaires would fit on a single page of Fortune magazine. Today, there are 10 million millionaires worldwide, 1,100 of whom are billionaires — some earning in 10 minutes what their workers earn in a year!

This growing disparity between the rich and poor is morally obscene, especially when the price of basic food commodities in the Third World has jumped 60 percent in the past year and more than 50,000 of the world’s poor starve to death each day.

The worst part, however, may be that even the CEOs have lost control of their sprawling globalized corporations — through multiple mergers, outsourcing, “creative” but opaque bookkeeping, offshore offices and bank accounts and other strategies that keep their operations invisible and their auditors in the dark.

Like cancer, many of these globalized corporations have taken on a life of their own, defying and even nullifying the sovereign laws of nations, even in the U.S. By hook or by crook, they are becoming richer and more powerful than many of their parent countries.

The bottom line seems to be that these amorphous giants are rapidly widening the gap between the privileged and the poor without much oversight or accountability for their actions.

Chokehold

Now, with the cost of gasoline at nightmarish proportions, it’s time for the environmentalists all across the country to release their chokehold on America’s oil companies and give them the “will to drill” so we can begin our escape from the chokehold foreign oil has us in.

Using our newest technology safely and effectively, the “will to drill” in the U.S. would result in lower prices at the pump and provide great relief to our “bashed about” economy.

Turbine effects

I can’t help but wonder what effect there will be on the artists (and those of us who enjoy their artwork) in the community if the new zoning changes proposed by Skamania County are approved allowing the turbines that SDS is planning for the Underwood area, as well as in other many areas of that county.

Will photographers have to Photoshop out the turbines so that they don’t show up in their pictures, or in the photos that Hood River and other communities’ businesses use in their local and national advertisements, or will they just stop taking pictures down that whole stretch of the Gorge corridor? Will people want them in the background of wedding and other photos taken at the Columbia Gorge Hotel, or at the event site?

Are they just going to be left off of T-shirts and paintings and the hundred other artistic works that are created by our local artists and visiting artists? Who would want to buy a photograph (or other artwork) with our beautiful mountains and wind turbines on it? Not I!

At a time when we’re struggling to keep our community alive and thriving, big business is trying to destroy not only the beauty of the Gorge, but also part of our livelihood! I for one am tired of everything being about the almighty dollar. I can’t figure out why Skamania County can hold all of us in Hood River hostage by putting these things up where they can be seen across the river and we don’t have any say about it. (Only county residents are allowed to vote.)

As big as Skamania County is, it seems as if the turbines could be built somewhere that they are not visible throughout the scenic area and are not visually forced on other communities against their will. I’m asking for support from the people of this community and all communities in the Gorge to stop the wind turbines from invading our beautiful communities.

Popular vote counts

Once again it looks as if the candidate with the most popular votes will lose to the candidate who wins the vote of the majority of the “super delegates” unless the few remaining delegates take the popular vote into consideration and vote accordingly.

The fact that my candidate is the likely winner one way or the other doesn’t change how I feel about it. Everyone’s vote in a democracy should count. Deciding who should run the country should not be left up to the elite few. It just isn’t fair.

And if it happens in the Democratic Party, we just very well might lose to the other party if people stay away in November because they feel their vote doesn’t count anyway.

I’m holding my breath! But whether Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton gets the nod, I urge all Democrats to get behind the party. Another four years of the Bush administration is unthinkable!