Mayor Wilson and Chief Barnes: ‘City Council is our hope’
Re: “Seattle Mayor Wilson’s decisions around Chief Barnes need scrutiny immediately” (July 31, Opinion):
On Saturday morning, Pike Street looked like a nomad settlement full of trash and sleeping people. This is my beloved city, still in the grips of social inequality and souls lost in a fentanyl daze. Ditto my bus stop at Third Avenue and Pine Street.
And where is Mayor Katie Wilson? Busy evading responsibility for her doe-in-the-headlights incompetence — firing an effective police chief and continuing the failed policies of old.
Our City Council is our hope, with Councilmember Bob Kettle and others. Please speak up.
Donald Patrick, Seattle
Mayor Wilson and Chief Barnes: ‘A distraction’
Re: “Seattle Mayor Wilson’s decisions around Chief Barnes need scrutiny immediately” (July 31, Opinion):
I am not very pleased with the decision of Mayor Katie Wilson to fire the chief of police because of a slow response to the city about the shooting incident at Seattle Center.
She, being the mayor, could have stepped into the breach at any time in consultation with the deputy chief of police who was there.
Firing the chief of police appears to be a distraction of her own failure to take charge.
Ronald Simon, Seattle
Health: ‘Defend science’
Re: “The anti-science movement is a quack with a bigger megaphone” (July 24, Opinion):
Congratulations on publishing the very fine op-ed by Hugh Straley. His clear explanation of quackery on digital steroids is a vital message to every reader and to the community at large. He even ends the essay with a call to his neighbors to quietly join the fight to defend science.
Larry Repeta, Seattle
Border control: Shift agencies
Re: “Sure, the U.S. could ‘abolish ICE.’ Then what?” (July 25, Opinion):
The U.S. needs border control. The culture of cruelty and lawlessness is so deeply embedded in Immigration and Customs Enforcement that reform is dubious.
Abolish the entire Department of Homeland Security. Move the Coast Guard back to the Department of the Treasury. And put the Transportation Security Administration into the U.S. Department of Transportation and the new immigration agency under the Department of State or Department of the Interior.
Tyler Folsom, Seattle
Climate crisis: ‘No end in sight’
Re: “Shame on TV networks, Democrats for ‘climate hushing’ ” (Aug. 2, Opinion):
With 8 billion plus people on this planet, continuing to consume resources at a breakneck pace, and with no plan in sight to change this onslaught, especially as corporations want to increase profits and governments want to increase GDP, we may just have to get used to worsening eventualities.
This is unfortunate, but there is apparently no end in sight, with or without newscasters’ reporting.
Richard Thomasy, Sammamish
Gun violence: ‘Seattle police chief is not the problem’
Re: “Seattle police chief resigns in aftermath of shootings” (July 31, A1):
Nationally, there are over 44,000 firearm deaths annually, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For ages 1-19, firearms are the leading cause of death.
The Seattle police chief is not the problem. As a nation, we must take action to change these distressing numbers. It’s a longterm problem that the current Congress and U.S. Supreme Court have made worse.
Vote like your life and your families’ lives depend on it.
Richard Hudson, Lake Forest Park
Gun violence: Stronger penalties
Re: “Treat youth gun violence with the urgency it demands” (July 31, Opinion):
The editorial about youth gun violence really made me question our laws on the subject. It seems insane that a person under the age of 18 must be convicted five times of unlawful possession of a firearm before they can be ordered to serve more than 30 days in juvenile rehabilitation.
The editorial’s view is reducing the five convictions to three. My suggestion: incarcerate after the first conviction. You would have a much better chance of rehab and, at the same time, send a message that gun violence won’t be tolerated.
John Gildow, Camano Island
Global health: Finally, good news
Re: “With a series of big donations, State Department restores some global health aid,” Aug. 2, Nation):
Finally, some good global health news following last year’s freezing of foreign aid, which resulted in the deaths of 762,000, including half a million children, so far this year, according to Boston University and Harvard researchers.
Releasing moneys already appropriated by Congress is a good start. The realization by those decision-makers that battling global disease protects us locally, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio remembering his days in the Senate supporting these programs, is promising.
But our voices can help: Asking those who represent us to support the End Tuberculosis Now Act, speaking to Secretary Rubio to do more and appropriate moneys in the budget to pay for our part of saving lives, can result in a healthier world.
What better time to do this than during election season, when our voices are backed up by our votes?
Willie Dickerson, Snohomish
Compulsory voting: ‘Reward system’
Re: “The case for compulsory voting in the U.S.” (Aug. 4, Opinion):
I suggest a reward system for voting. Each person who votes in an election can receive a thank you chit that they can apply to elimination of sales tax on one purchase, up to a fixed amount, like $25.
These chits could be used by the voter or donated to food banks, churches and other charitable organizations to help feed and clothe homeless or destitute people.
Frank Mitchell, Seattle
Blue Angels: ‘Standards must be upheld’
Re: “Don’t ground the Blue Angels, but do govern them” (Aug. 1, Opinion):
As a former naval aviator, I read with great interest the personal essay by Sgt. Maj. William R. McDonald. He is absolutely correct that standards must be upheld. Unfortunately, the problem is much higher up the chain of command, specifically the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. After having renamed the Department of Defense to Department of War, he is more interested in removing qualified candidates, mainly women and officers of color, from promotion lists, and testing for testosterone than promoting good order and discipline.
As McDonald mentioned in his essay, the secretary shrugged off the low flyby and other flagrant violations of standards. Consequently, and unfortunately, to be expected, everyone down the chain of command is doing the same. Instead of Hegseth’s “warrior ethos” he has created a culture of “boys will be boys.”
I am disappointed and frustrated that it is not the same Navy I retired from years ago.
Wallace Powelson, Seattle, Captain, United States Navy Reserve (retired)
Gun violence: Promote a new norm of accountability
Re: “Treat youth gun violence with the urgency it demands” (July 31, Opinion):
One minute sunshine-drenched, soccer-infused Seattle was singing “Country Roads.” New friends from around the globe were dancing in the streets. The next minute we were dodging bullets.
Shaken by a highly publicized shooting and ones less visible but equally devastating, things further devolved. While we are forced to witness ridiculous bickering and incompetence, we must zero in on gun violence and a critical truth: We as a nation are choosing this epidemic of gun violence. There will always be episodes, but we tolerate an epidemic.
Everyone, shift your conversations, whether around your kitchen table or in political chambers, to gun responsibility. Promote a new local and national norm of accountability. Am I doing all I can? Am I honestly a responsible gun owner? Will I support gun safety candidates this November?
We will crawl out of this dark back into the sun when we face up to our collective truth and act.
Margaret Heldring, Seattle, Grandmothers for Gun Responsibility
AI: A rude intrusion
Last weekend, I went to the Landmark Crest Cinema in Shoreline to see “The Odyssey.”
While I expected to see a number of coming movie attractions, I did not expect to see a high-production, glowing advertisement for the wonders of Claude AI.
To say I was disgusted at the intrusion of Big Money AI into my night out to see a film would be a vast understatement. Judging by the groans of my fellow audience members, this paean to Claude AI was not well received by any of the other people there either.
I do not pine for the wonders that Claude AI can bring into my life. I do not want that level of manipulation in my internet use, nor do I find it worth the environmental and social degradation the data centers bring to many small, mostly rural communities across this country.
Foisting Claude AI and other AI services upon us without our consent for nonsensical uses that steal crucial resources should be considered a crime.
Marie Anne Casey-Burke, Seattle
Energy reliability: Reality of climate laws
Re: “Here’s the elephant in the room when it comes to energy reliability” (July 27, Opinion):
KC Golden calls for “an accurate sense of proportion” about energy risks but never applies that test to Washington’s own climate laws. Here is the honest question his op-ed avoids: If Washington fully implements the Climate Commitment Act and the Clean Energy Transformation Act, will the storms, heat domes and wildfire smoke he describes go away?
They will not.
Washington accounts for roughly 0.2% of global emissions. The electric grid and natural gas heating — what these laws actually regulate — are a smaller share still. Implying these laws can spare us such catastrophes is not proportion; it is misdirection.
This is not an argument against reducing grid emissions, but an argument for honestly comparing what these laws cost and what they can actually deliver.
The costs are concrete and local: rising electric rates and a grid stretched thinner. Golden also ignores the math Kelly Fukai and I laid out in these pages (“Data centers aren’t WA’s biggest electrical grid problem, it’s winter,” May 27, Opinion): electrifying home heating would eventually add nearly 30 gigawatts of winter peak demand to a grid already facing a nine-gigawatt shortfall by 2030.
Reliability is not the elephant in the room. It is the room. The Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s regional plan should treat it that way.
Kurt Miller, Vancouver, CEO and executive director, Northwest Public Power Association
America: From shining city to sand castle
President Ronald Reagan’s a shining city upon a hill, which was always good for the rich and not so good for the rest of us, has become a sand castle on a beach’s rising tides. The rich get richer and the rest have to deal with rising costs due to insane tariffs and the expanding brutality in the Middle East.
Add the up again and down again frenzy of AI over growth, plus Bitcoin, and we are on ever eroding sand. Include the treatment of immigrants who are essential to healthcare and construction and farming, plus a decline in our population. Add Ukraine and Russia and our love hate with their leaders.
Finally, our dependence on military spending and our support of genocide in Palestine and, to be blunt, we are slowly going out to sea economically and spiritually. As the water goes in and out, my feet are slowly but surely getting deeper in the sand. And most of us as well.
Frank Jose, Seattle
Gun violence: Disrupt firearms pathways
Re: “Seattle shooting charges: Bullets that killed 2 not from 15-year-old’s ghost gun” (July 29, Local News):
As we in Seattle continue to grapple with what happened, we must ask an all too common question: How did a teen gain access to illegal firearms?
This tragedy underscores the need to disrupt the flow of illegal guns before it’s too late. Crime guns move through predictable pathways — from thefts fueled by unsecured firearms, to straw purchases and illegal trafficking. If we are serious about reducing gun violence, we must disrupt those pathways before guns end up in the hands of children and teens.
Our leaders can’t undo what happened, but they can prevent the next tragedy by pursuing policies that keep guns out of the hands of those who should never have them.
Amanda Turner, Seattle
