Havoc wrought by federal government

To The Eagle:

We just returned from a fortnight odyssey to Wichita, where our six Irish Wolfhounds served as the reception line at Judy's mom's 90th birthday party. The visit was delightful but the drive, over on the northerly routes and back along old Route 66, was a graphic tour of the havoc wrought by a federal government trying to turn us into a European style social democracy by strangling free enterprise in a web of taxation, regulation, and litigation. The southwest looks particularly hard hit, and southern California is all shabby, bumpy freeways through miles of closed businesses and dried up farms.

Sure was nice to pull back into our clean, neat, quiet little town. Main Street may indeed need revitalization, but there are no boarded up windows or abandoned buildings, and the only cobwebs are Halloween decorations. We generate a lot of community squabbles, but lots of them are about repelling boarders (outsiders with wily schemes like LNG and CLT) or trying to figure out what we really need and how to pay for it-- more like old New England town meetings than Appalachian feuds.

Hopefully, when this letter appears, election results will be out, showing a conservative takeover of Congress, so some course corrections will get underway, but they will be awhile in taking effect. In the meantime, we rustics can help by weaning ourselves from asking for government handouts for non-essential services. Our library wants 3,000 county dollars--how about we donate a few hundred more books instead? Our museum has forsworn government money for three years now; they are making it on volunteer help, and selling memorial bricks, root beer floats and kids' train rides. As to the Health and Human Services suggested housing project: We have a couple dozen homeless people in the county but well over 100 peopleless homes. Seems like there oughta be an easy solution there somewhere.

If our town and county leaders want to be proactive, they could hook up the highway market mall to the unused sewer line that we taxpayers already paid for, and install sprinkler systems in the downtown buildings that lack them, so that those businesses can go ahead and operate. We also have a couple of food vendors who have been hampered by overzealous regulation. A helping hand, rather than policing from our so-called permitting agencies would go a long way toward our recovery.

Howard Brawn

Puget Island