ETS! encourages comments, feedback, tips, corrections, and info! Please keep them as concise as possible so we can print as many different voices as possible: ETS!, P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail ets@scn.org.

Maybe We're Not All So Bad

Your newspaper is great!! I have it bookmarked on my computer and read it voraciously. The only thing I don't like about it is that it is forcing me to rethink my thoughts about Americans. Being a Canadian, the media portrait of Americans we get these days is not very flattering. All right wing, women-hating, religious fanatics carrying guns and wanting an end to welfare bums and single mothers. You people definitely don't fit into that category at all. Guess I had better get out there and see for myself.

Patricia Renard, via e-mail

G.P. replies: There's more of us than you think. And we may all be seeking political asylum soon. Do you have a guest room. A big one?

Why You Should Watch TV

I have noticed recently a lot of progressive shows on the public access channel. Protest videos, imagery of Amerikan destruction, conferences against the war, documentaries, Free Mumia rallies, and the like, frequently interrupted by religious propaganda. I was wondering if you could put a small part in your paper encouraging readers to watch and send videos to public access. I can't afford to "advertise," but its not really advertising.

Another reader, via e-mail

How to Advertise

The Pacific Northwest is well-endowed with places to get anti-war yard signs and stickers:

http://www.nowarsign.org/signfinder.htm

Please help spread the word!

In solidarity,

Dylan Clark, Boulder CO

Fairy Tale Tax Breaks

Thanks for Maria Tomchick's well researched article, especially in some of the subtler (to me) effects of the bond markets.

Because of this, and also in response to reader Roger W. Hancock's letter (Tax Breaks Do Not Penalize), I have a wish: That any discussion attempting to maintain seriousness about tax policy in this country, taking place in print, TV, or around coffeeshops, watercoolers, etc., would take into account the following not-insurmountable complicating facts:

1. Local and state taxes tend to fall on the poor at a higher percentage rate, and when we are counting, should include alcohol, tobacco and telephone taxes, which are all often not mentioned, but do add up.

2. Tax free bonds affect the numbers.

3. Capital gains taxes affect the numbers

4. Social Security taxes affect the numbers (and how!)

5. Corporate income taxes affect the numbers (and corporations are legally recognized as "entities" in law--to eliminate corporate income taxes, withdraw their corporate charters. Otherwise, live with it!).

Armed with these points, you can inject some sanity into any discussion of tax policy. Draw the lines where you may, but don't pretend ignorance of the whole enchilada. Thank you.

Russ Newsom, via e-mail

Nationalize Them!

The answer to the state funding problem is at hand. Two of the richest men in the world conduct their business in our area. They are in the category of corporate executives widely criticized for making 400 times as much as their employees.

Governor Locke plans to cut Medicaid benefits as his solution to a $175 million deficit. Yet Bill Gates and Paul Allen are worth $88 billion between them! You'd think that such staggering wealth would contribute to the state coffers. Why aren't they taxed sufficiently to support the state and the people who use and build their software?

The sole business tax, the B&O, isn't applied to sales out of state; it lets Microsoft, as well as Weyerhauser, Paccar, and Boeing, off the hook for most of their revenues. For goodness' sake, Microsoft earnings are expected to be $32 billion this year. The state's entire shortfall is small change to them. Isn't it obvious the company is ripping us off?

The governor needs to let up on poor, working, and laid-off people and instead introduce tax laws that will make enormously wealthy corporations and individuals pay for the transportation, education, and social services they so abundantly use.

Sincerely,

Henry Noble, Zsffls

The State "Anti-Terror" Update

To: Richard Jackman

You got that right.

The Locke administration will propose a substantive "anti-terrorism" bill that is much more tame than last year's version. It will use existing felonies, with their narrow wording and well-understood meanings, rather than create new broadly-worded felonies, as they proposed last year. Over the past summer, I worked out the language with the Attorney-General and the Governor's staff, and I'm confident that it does no harm. In its current status, it even has no death penalty provision--in a bill on terrorism, that's highly unusual. I expect one to be added by amendment.

As to wiretapping, we expect any bill to originate in the House. After the experience of last year, I can assure you that there is a united front of about 29-32 Senators who will oppose any expansion of the police authority to tap. We expect to have this fight all over again, and to win again. And again, this will be with no help whatsoever from the Governor.

Thanks for your e-mail. This is my favorite issue.

State Sen. Adam Kline, Seattle

Just Kill Him

I just saw a back issue of your paper and noticed the movement to bring Pinochet to justice. I also happen to have several family members from Chile. So I asked them about whether they think he will be brought to trial. There are two main reasons. The first is he has dementia, so he's not "fit to stand trial," (kill him anyway!) and the second is they don't want him to be seen as a martyr. If he were to be killed now, the neo-fascists would glorify him as being murdered for saving Chile from the Russians (or from the Chileans). Now, he is thought of as just some old crazy guy. Nobody cares about him. I think we should just kill him.

--"Vladimir Lenin," via e-mail

"What Are We Waiting For?"

I was listening to the radio this morning to a very informed and concerned group of pundits discussing the cost to US taxpayers of the impending war in Iraq. Estimates place the price somewhere between $200 and $500 billion, with an additional price tag of about $200 billion to rebuild Iraq from the rubble. Not bad at all given our economy of several trillions of dollars a year.

What about the human cost? Well, our armed forces are about 35% African-American, so no great risk of loss there, if casualties don't go too high. As for the people of Iraq, well, we've all seen the housing over there in the TV reports, and any one of those hovels could be replaced for 250 bucks. If the "smart" bombing only destroys around 100,000 dwellings, we're talking a paltry $25 million for replacement.

The human cost in Iraqi lives was not discussed, but in George Bush's view, the average value of Middle Easterners would probably be about two bits a head. So we can see that the human cost of a million Iraqi dead would be only about $250 thousand; an insignificant figure.

The consensus reached in the discussion? "Bush's unwarranted delay in launching the final attack on Iraq is a drag on the stock market and is raising oil prices. What are we waiting for?"

--Bob Royce, Bainbridge Island WA

And They Dress Funny, Too

A fundamental difference between the Israeli and the Palestinian cultures was highlighted this week.

On the one hand, Israelis celebrated a new hero, Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut to venture in space. Ramon's flight symbolizes the limitless heights a human being can reach in pursuit of his dreams.

On the other hand, Palestinians celebrated an old "hero": a suicide bomber who murdered 29 people and injured many more in an Israeli hotel last year. The occasion for the Palestinian celebration was the opening of a soccer tournament in the bomber's honor.

The Israeli astronaut symbolizes man at his best. The Palestinian suicide bomber, man at his worst. In their choice of heroes, the two cultures reflect their basic difference: one values life and achievement, the other death and destruction.

David Holcberg, writer for the Ayn Rand Institute, Irvine CA

Get with the program. The Palestinian suicide bombers see a market demand, and seize on it, consequences to others be damned. They're the modern face of global capitalism.