Readers write: Letters to the editor, August 15, 2017

Use 'Canoe Politics' to steer us to meaningful legislation

With regard to the recent failure of our state and federal political process to promote any form of worthy and long-term solutions for our legislative needs, I contend we need to return to across-the-aisle politics and accomplish some meaningful governing with input from all political parties. The recent political chaos reminds me of a political quote from many years ago.

What we need is "Canoe Politics" and input from both sides to accomplish meaningful legislation. The left-handed canoe politicians just go in circles to the right and the right-handed canoe politicians just go in circles to the left. At the end of the day they are spinning in circles while the voters get madder and madder with the lack of progress on any solutions for the prevailing topics.
"Canoe Politics" is an expression conceived by California Gov. Jerry Brown in his first term in the 1970s. When asked why he supported legislation from the left and also the right, his response was, "To get ahead, he said, you paddle on the left, paddle on the right, and you ultimately follow a straight line." Our state and Congress could use some of this canoe politics to accomplish real, meaningful legislation that will follow a straight line and represent generations to come.

I commend Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and John McCain who see the failings of this recent partisan political process and recognize garbage legislation for what it is. Now is the time for our state and federal politicians to be statesmen and get the state and nation moving ahead with canoe politics, or any other nonpartisan process. There is no shame in crossing the aisle if the end result is a straight line forward with real solutions for our future needs. If politicians can't realize this, they are not statesmen and got into politics for the wrong reasons. The election process needs to seek out more statesmen to represent us and not the partisan politicians that produce junk.

Alaska has one statesman and we could use two more.

— T. David Boyd
Wasilla

Alaska needs statewide paper

There have been times in the past I have read letters here crying about how this paper is a liberal rag and the writer is going to cancel his or her subscription. Granted, the former publisher was a Democrat, but I always found the paper to be a fair source of information.

I assume that will not change now that at least some of the new owners are Republicans.

Either way, we need a statewide paper and our president will still be a lousy one.

— Fred Nelius
Houston

Destined to rent forever

Something insidious is occurring in Anchorage, and maybe elsewhere, but I am only familiar with Anchorage and Mat-Su.

I refer to the phenomenon of the disappearance of affordable homes. The average person is no longer able to afford a home. With all the people who we hear are leaving Anchorage and its surrounds, one would think there would be more, rather than fewer, lower-priced homes available. This is not the case.
I suppose there are causes that my inexperience can't account for, but here's a big one: The increase of upper-income people buying houses to use as rentals. Real estate "professionals" are capitalizing on peoples' natural greed. I see ads touting how the average guy can "invest" in rental property and never have to work again. Do these so-called investors realize they are cheating families of the opportunity to live in their own homes? Renting is the usual step toward becoming a homeowner, but now it seems that many are destined to rent forever.

I would encourage people to work for a living and limit their investing to the usual 401(k), stocks, bonds and mutual funds.

— Penny Burt
Anchorage

Knowles nailed it

Wow, former Gov. Tony Knowles' recent opinion piece (ADN, Aug. 12) nailed it. Present wildlife management in Alaska couldn't be summed up more succinctly. It's time the tide of wildlife management in this state changes to protect wildlife, our "permanent fund" as Tony so perfectly coined it, not just for the harvest but to be watched, photographed and enjoyed by the thousands of tourists who sustain our economy and the local residents who call Alaska home for the very same reasons.

The Denali wolf buffer zone is a needed and perfect place to start after decades of ill-justified predator control programs and an assault on wolves in particular by a one-sided, single-minded Alaska Board of Game comprised solely of hunters and trappers. It's time for balance on the Game Board and time to fight for the protection of wildlife for a change. If you have any doubts, or haven't read Knowles' opinion piece over the weekend in ADN, I urge you to do so to get the facts and figures and see why protecting Denali's wolves and bears and all of Alaska's wildlife should matter to all of us.

— Juliette Boselli
Denali Park

Fractured view of justice

Who would begin to think someone who allegedly picks up a woman, takes her to a secluded area, strangles her unconscious as he threatens to kill her, "does things sexually to himself" over her unconscious body, because the only way he can fulfill himself is to do so over what appears to be a dying/dead woman, gets in his car, drives to work (as an air traffic controller), and gets arrested — would be given only $30,000 bail with conditions of his bail in the hands of his wife and an ankle bracelet?

Good Lord, what in the heck is the matter with this picture? What about the victim? Does anyone not think perhaps this is a behavior that has been or would be repeated? Is he remorseful? Does he have the capacity to feel any remorse?

He gets a $30,000 bail, his wife and an ankle bracelet. What does the victim get? Night terrors and emotional scars for the rest of her life.
This is disgusting and appalling.

— Jacqueline Fries
Anchorage

Cruel attack on teen whaler

This is in response to the ADN, Aug. 12 story by Julia O'Malley regarding Chris Apassingok. The story implied that Paul Watson, the man who went on a rampage over the killing of a bowhead whale, is an environmentalist. I am an environmentalist who has lived in Alaska for nearly 40 years, and I can assure you that Paul Watson is not. He's an animal rights activist, and in my mind there's a big difference between the two. I've met people like Paul Watson and his ilk, and I've discovered that they don't care about protecting the environment. Many of them don't even understand how natural ecosystems function or how people are an integral part of them, and they don't seem interested in learning. They care more about what they perceive are the rights of animals than they do about human rights.

I thought Watson's obscenity-filled attack on 16-year-old Apassingok was repugnant and cruel. His zealous outrage says more about the size of his ego and the level of his bigotry than it does about his commitment to his cause.

— Ann Rothe
Eagle River

Trump is abject moral failure

The events in Charlottesville, Virginia, underscore what many of us already knew. Trump supporters, carrying swastika flags, flashing Nazi salutes and voicing all the usual talking points of white supremacy, bigotry and hatred, gathered in defense of a Confederate statue and launched a deadly terrorist attack against peaceful counterdemonstrators. Trump went so far as to try to deflect blame from his minions and, overnight, has become an even more abject moral failure than he already was.

It is now up to liberals and progressives to refuse to accept this kind of behavior as the new "terms of engagement" and remain the only "adults in the room," as we have been for decades. If the left responds in kind, the civil war is on, and it's the same old civil war we fought last time around but with no borders and nothing but front lines. This would evidently suit the Nazis and their Confederates just fine. Meanwhile, by putting the world's most powerful nuclear arsenal in the hands of a creature who is a racist and Nazi in every way that matters, Trump voters may have finally lost not only the Civil War, but WWII and the Cold War for us as well.

— Lars Opland
Wasilla

The views expressed here are the writers' own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a letter under 200 words for consideration, email letters@alaskadispatch.com, or click here to submit via any web browser. Submitting a letter to the editor constitutes granting permission for it to be edited for clarity, accuracy and brevity. Send longer works of opinion to commentary@alaskadispatch.com.