Wyden is wonderful

Your recent article about Sen. Ron Wyden’s visit to Mountain View High School and meeting with students and his “Listening to the Future” series brought tears to my eyes. What if we had a person like Sen. Wyden as president of our United States? What would the present and future look like? Take a few seconds before answering and think that question over — regardless of your party affiliations.

We, Oregonians, have been so lucky to have this outstanding man represent us and our country. For many years he has served and listened to our questions and given thoughtful and helpful answers at town hall meetings. We are so lucky to have seen a caring and helpful politician like Ron Wyden in our lifetimes.

Conrad Weiler

Camp Sherman

Courtesy is gone

I’ve lived in Bend about 12 years; my first impression was how courteous Bend drivers were. Coming from Southern California that was amazing. Lately, however, the driving here is horrible, tailgating, speeding through parking lots; no one goes the speed limit anymore, and to complicate matters I see very little police presence anywhere. However, I was pulled over because the patrolwoman couldn’t see part of my license plate  …  what happened to common courtesy?

Donna Barrett

Bend

Stop the stereotypes

I read the article on the “Fired K-8 principal sues over ‘smear’ campaign” in the recent paper and took offense to the comment that Geoffrey Chackel made: “We need to make sure this information doesn’t end up in the hands of some meth-head in La Pine or a Russian hacker.” I live in La Pine and there are a majority of wonderful people who live here who aren’t “meth-heads.” How nice of him to stereotype the people who reside here.

Molly McCallum

La Pine

Poor coverage

More than a dozen bombs sent to former presidents and top government officials, Democratic leaders and other prominent party members over the past several days. Where does The Bulletin cover one of the most important stories of this election cycle? A small inset on Page 3. At least we know where you stand if anyone still has doubts.

Karen McCormick

Bend

No carbon tax

In the Oct. 28 Bulletin we had a guest column from Suzanne Butterfield about climate change. Here are my thoughts on the matter.

Climate change is occurring, no doubt.

Whether it is completely man-made is in doubt.

Implementing a carbon tax, and then rebating a fraction thereof back to taxpayers, will do little if anything to abate climate change; it will, however, create another worthless bureaucracy.

The generation of electricity — upon which society is completely dependent — by burning coal or natural gas dumps huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Nuclear power, wind power and hydro power, while they create no carbon-based pollution, create their own seemingly intractable problems. Solar power seems the best solution.

All forms of transportation except bicycles dump carbon into the atmosphere.

The biggest creators of pollution, obviously, are people.

So, we must ask ourselves: what are we willing to do without, and what economic, environmental, social and political consequences are we willing to accept to reduce air pollution? Decrease the use of electricity? Do away with personal automobiles? Restrict the right to have children? Adopt other population reduction measures? Kill off entire industries? Reduce the standard of living for everyone?

These are some of the underlying questions we must answer before embarking willy-nilly on some poorly conceived course of action. A carbon tax that simply moves money around and benefits only the movers is not a good course of action.

Mike Koonce

Bend

Wrong values

There is something horribly wrong with an administration that wants to protect the jobs of people that build bombs and make weapons to kill people. Yet, the administration lets the jobs of people that grow our crops and feed the world go down the drain. Are these our values? Is this Christianity?

Mayme Trumble

Redmond