Burlington roads were a mess

Regarding the Burlington Boulevard kidney shaker:

I’d like to thank the city of Burlington for the excellent job of clearing Burlington Boulevard during the snow and ice storms. I actually saw a Honda Civic stuck in a trench near Costco.

Maybe the money for snow removal was spent on more overpriced artwork.

Christopher Sternick
Burlington

Plaid Book is a giant waste

Just when I looked forward to not throwing out 7 pounds of advertising a week, the phone company gives me another book with more ads, which I quickly tossed into the recycling bin.

I hope when the dreaded Plaid Book of ads comes, I can still tape my address card to it and put return to sender to get rid of it.

All stores should run a 3-by-5-inch color, 15 percent or 20 percent or 25 percent off purchase coupon in color. The paper could print them 12-plus up on one page.

We do not need to see models in clothes to know what we want. Also, some local retailers run recurring monthly sales.

William Deamud
Mount Vernon

In-house economic terrorism

Eileen Sullivan’s report on Homeland Security’s five-year threat forecast (Skagit Valley Herald, Dec. 26) has a highly familiar ring to it. It should, for this is what Homeland Security — through Michael Chertoff, its director — has been saying for the past several years: Threats will continue to become more technologically sophisticated.

The report includes the potential that “Al-Qaida could direct or inspire cyber attacks that target the U.S. economy.” Alas for al-Qaida, our own financial industry and feckless regulatory agencies have beat them to the punch. One might well ask what al-Qaida would do that our own financiers have not done to themselves and the rest of us.

Chertoff’s report fails to address economic terrorism perpetrated by our own institutions and those charged with overseeing them. Will we see a sequel to his forecast?

Densley Palmer
Anacortes

Pointing fingers over education

It was interesting to read criticism of the National Education Association in the Dec. 28 letters to the editor and also the article about renewed hope for workers to unionize.

It was interesting that the letter writer argued that at some pre-1960s’ time, students showed up knowing everything. Remediation was unnecessary. However, it was in the ’60s and ’70s that we started trying to educate everyone because family farms and family-wage jobs without a high school degree disappeared.

Is it possible learners throughout history have had to fill-in-the gaps through personal incentive, and dedicated instructors/teachers have always energetically taught and guided them through the maize? Don’t we all want to blame someone when things get tough?

University teachers blame the high schools, and high schools blame the middle schools, and everyone blames the elementary teachers, and — oops — those parents who never read enough to their kids or didn’t pass on the supply of smarts needed to make the system look good. Now, apparently, learners are able to blame the “generation gap” for their outrage at not knowing basic English and math?

Blaming the NEA is an old argument, too. Of course it is a labor union. Unions are those organized groups that brought enough power to the table to negotiate for pension systems and health care and systems of evaluation that encourage workers to improve before being fired.

It is not a perfect organization. If all those things existed for workers or all people, unions might not even be needed. Unions are only as good as the people who lead them. We must encourage people to step up as union, political, religious or community leaders for the right reasons. We get what we are willing to do or make happen — and sometimes working together instead of blaming others is the way.

Kathy Reim
Sedro-Woolley