Opinion A7
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THE DAILY HERALD
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WWW.HERALDNET.COM
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Make taking land last resort regulations for adequate parking. Right off the bat, the idea of destroying homes for parking hardly seems a compelling argument. The school district says that buying (or condemning if people aren’t willing to sell) the homes will shorten the construction timeline from eight years to three. In other words, the project can be completed without paying for and tearing down the houses, but it will take longer. Can they really show that shaving time off the project will be less expensive than paying for all those homes? Or enough of a savings to warrant taking people’s private property? In such cases, homeowners are supposed to be compensated with “fair market value,” but in this real estate market, it’s difficult to believe a school district can afford fair market value. No one disputes the need for a new high school.
But naturally, the district’s plan isn’t sitting well with homeowners, as KOMO-TV, Channel 4 reported. But people who try to fight the proceedings, rarely win. Which is another reason it might be time to make the process more rigorous. We have our own case here in Snohomish County, of course. The Snohomish County Council condemned several private businesses for its last-minute change of plans to build a new courthouse across the street, rather than on the existing county campus. It required buying out six properties at a cost of roughly $3.6 million. Moving the building site added at least $30 million more to the project than the original plan to build on the plaza. A controversy over parking has delayed the project further, increasing costs by the day. The only part of the project
completed so far: The private businesses are gone from their buildings. The county’s request for eminent domain was readily approved, although it was just the council’s preference of where they wanted to build, not a necessity. Building the courthouse across the street wasn’t the only option, or even the best option. For that eminent domain is justified? Stricter requirements would help the homeowners in Snoqualmie. Can’t a court say, “Go back to the drawing board”? It seems especially egregious to take homes, the owners of which, of course, pay property taxes that support local schools. These two cases don’t support the idea that taking private property is the best or only solution to problem, or the best way to serve the public.
disrespect when rehashing over the facts to dead issues or that the government is out to get us, it’s really just hard to take you seriously any more … end of debate.
making it utterly useless. Along with this there is the unsettling fact that the government is experimenting with new drugs on people sentenced to death, resulting in possibly more pain and discomfort upon the criminal. The death penalty is also very inconsistent with its usage, caused by the ability for states to decide what crimes count as “death penalty worthy.” Therefore I believe that we must get this illegal aspect that is clouding our legal system — the death penalty — removed.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ■■UNITED STATES
Lincoln stated problem long ago On March 3, 1863, with his heart broken over a divided nation and the ravages of a civil war, Abraham Lincoln made the following proclamation: “Whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. … We have been recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.” Perhaps in our arrogance and foolishness that has led us away from the very foundations and freedoms that this great nation was founded upon, we would do well to remember these words of one of our greatest presidents. Mike Shouse Edmonds
■■UNITED STATES
Some debates have been settled The only two letters in the July 9 Everett Herald supported each other in a fashion neither author intended, one claiming that respectful debate is extinct and the other that history should not be altered. One suggests we will never resolve fundamental problems if we can’t deal with the facts, which many either simply ignore or don’t accept. Case in point comes in the second letter. It exhorts the Civil War was over states’ rights, but self-admitted
Have your say Include your name, address and daytime phone number. E-mail: letters@heraldnet.com Mail: Letters section The Daily Herald P.O. Box 930 Everett, WA 98206 Have a question about letters? Call Carol MacPherson at 425-339-3472.
by the writer, it was about the right to continue owning another human being, slavery. Sugarcoat as you will, but it only whitewashes over that truth, and attempts to alter history. Where’s the debate there? Concerning the debate topics listed; shouldn’t the only debate be why these are even issues at all? Most have already been debated and become the law of the land, laws supported by the majority of us? It’s like when your parents used to tell you after your insistent pleading; “because we said so … end of discussion.” Speaking of failing education, several decades ago the idea was proposed that government was the problem, a theme echoed by the letter writers. Since then our economic landscape has drastically shifted, resulting in fewer and fewer having the opportunity to go any further than high school. We afford huge tax subsidies for business yet can’t help with educational loan rates. Where’s our priorities debate? The Preamble of the Constitution is our government’s mission statement, but that aforementioned idea above has infiltrated a segment of our society that rebels with states’ rights issues and battles to minimize the role of government that’s in their way. Don’t think of it as
Dennis Doolittle Arlington
■■DEATH PENALTY
Clearly violates Constitution I am a student, along with being a resident of Washington state, continuing my education and my goal of becoming a lawyer. Recently I have studied the United States Constitution and have realized a pressing matter that must be attended to: the death penalty. Because of my interests in law, and wanting to ensure true justice is served in our nation’s courts, I feel passionate about abolishing the death penalty in America. The way I see it, the death penalty is a clear violation of the Eighth Amendment (which declares there can be no cruel nor unusual punishment) because the lethal injection death penalty has resulted in victims feeling extreme pain and discomfort, making it a complete violation of the Eighth Amendment and our Constitution. As I researched the death penalty, I have also found that it is very discriminatory, very expensive, simply useless and inconsistent. As of Jan. 1, 2015, there were 3,019 people on death row in America, a majority of whom are African-American or other minority races, thus proving that the death penalty is discriminatory. Additionally, because the current “civilized” death penalty uses very rare drugs it costs colossally more than sentencing criminals to life imprisonment, and so far it has had barely any effect on crime,
Josh O’Connor, Publisher Jon Bauer, Editorial Page Editor Neal Pattison, Executive Editor Carol MacPherson, Editorial Writer
MONDAY, 07.20.2015
IN OUR VIEW | Eminent domain
A new case of eminent domain in this state raises the question of whether stricter proof of need should be required before government agencies can jump in and employ the process. Eminent domain allows government entities to take private property — for “fair market value” — for public projects. (In other states, this even extends to private projects if they promote “economic development”; Washington’s Constitution does not allow for this.) The latest example: The Snoqualmie Valley School District is trying to buy seven homes near Mount Si High School, which it says is necessary to build a new school on the current grounds, the Snoqualmie Valley Record reported earlier this month. The school district says the seven parcels bordering the construction site are needed to comply with zoning
Editorial Board
Ramine Jarrahian Bothell
■■SILVERTIPS
Coach turned things around I was flabbergasted at the article by Nick Patterson in the Herald Sports section regarding the contract extension of Garry Davidson. Has anyone ever heard of Kevin Constantine, the best coach the Silvertips have ever had, who was not even mentioned in the article? Mr. Constantine came to the Silvertips as head coach in their first season and led a bunch of cast-offs to the playoffs immediately. After he left to coach at a higher level, the Tips sank to the depths of despair never imagined. When he returned two years ago the Tips immediately went to the playoffs under his guidance and coaching. It seems to me that Silvertips top management ought to be rewarding Kevin Constantine with a long contract extension and not Mr. Davidson, who in my opinion has traded away players and not replaced them with the quality hockey players that we Silvertips fans expect. Inde Indridson Stanwood
No justifying fetus ‘market’ for research
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n his satirical solution to Ireland’s prolific poor, especially among Catholics whose fish diet was thought to enhance fertility, Jonathan Swift suggested a new menu item: Succulent 1-year-olds for dinner. His essay “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burden to Their Parents KATHLEEN PARKER or Country“ was intended to shake up the English and remind them that the Irish were, in fact, human beings. This took quite a while to sink in. Obviously, the Irish survived to write newspaper columns. And civilized people don’t eat babies. But there are other ways to make use of the unborn, as revealed in the recent undercover video in which Planned Parenthood’s medical director, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, explains how abortions can be performed so that body parts remain intact for medical research. Nucatola thought she was talking to two buyers from a human biologics company that would serve as middlemen in procuring fetal organs for biotech companies. But the two were actually actors hired by the Irvine, California-based Center for Medical Progress, reported to be an antiabortion group. In the video, Nucatola is seen eating a salad, sipping wine, and talking matter-offactly about the procedures she uses. One gathers from her comments that she is a skilled abortionist. To ensure the viability of the calivarium (incomplete skull), for instance, Nucatola prefers to move the fetus into a breech position so that the head comes out last. Otherwise, dilation is usually insufficient to avoid crushing the skull. She also avoids grasping the torso where valuable organs are located. “I’m basically going to crush below, I’m going to crush above, and I’m going to see if I can get it all intact.” Her comments were shocking enough, but they were magnified by the banality of the circumstances. A fetal liver here, a bite of Romaine there, a sip of wine. Nucatola’s strictly clinical view was that such valuable live tissue (aka hearts and livers) shouldn’t go to waste. By providing terminated products for research, she was facilitating an “extra bit of good.” Apparently, this is also the view of women who sign the consent forms. At least donating one’s issue to research is a way of casting abortion in a somewhat positive light, sort of like donating the organs of a deceased child. Except for all the obvious differences. I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad, but I do aim to avoid euphemism for the sake of clarity. Basically, the volume of older fetuses at some of PP’s franchises is so great that they have a disposal problem. What do you do with all these bodies? Environmental laws prevent throwing fetuses in the trash, and even if they could, some garbage collection companies refuse to pick them up. The middleman who, through sanitized packaging and clinical language, can clean up such a mess and, for a price, contribute to science is Godsent. Or is it from the other fellow? Some of the research using these “products of conception” is, ironically, for ailments common to the elderly — such as Alzheimer’s and dementia. We seem to have traded “Soylent Green” wafers — food made from the remains of old folks forced into premature termination in the 1973 film — for gestational organs. There is a certain hideous symmetry to this dispensation of human products — those too young or too old to be useful except when un-alive — but I’m not sure this is how the cycle of life was intended to unfold. Planned Parenthood’s response to the video has focused on clarifying that no parts are sold for profit. The organization’s franchises only seek to recoup the cost of doing business. President Cecile Richards also has apologized for Nucatola’s tone. But let’s clarify further. Eventually, profits will be made — perhaps with medications enabled by research on a 24-week-old fetus’ brain stem. Just think: No unwanted baby; no burden to society; plus treatment for someone’s dementia — a perfect trifecta, made in hell. And tone isn’t the issue. The issue is that we’re commodifying human fetuses and harvesting parts for distribution in the marketplace, using rationalizations that can justify anything. The dead may cost nothing, but the livers of terminated fetuses are selling like hotcakes. Kathleen Parker’s email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.