Decision 2008

McCain made a bad choice

Senator John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate raises grave concerns about his judgement.

Until last year, Sarah Palin never had a U.S. passport, never left the country. She is basically clueless about the world. Imagine Sarah Palin as our commander-in-chief, with access to America’s launch codes.

Worse, Sarah Palin’s reputation is that of a female Dick Cheney — targeting those who disagree with her. She is currently under an ethics investigation cloud for this alleged behavior.

With less than two years in public office, Sarah Palin is simply and profoundly unqualified to be vice president of the United States. We should now be very frightened of a potential John McCain presidency, given that his first major decision reflects erratic and extremely poor judgement.

Sarah Palin’s selection as John McCain’s running mate is truly shocking; it clearly disqualifies Senator McCain as a serious presidential contender.

Martin P. Hayes

Indianola

Campaign signs

are disappearing

There is a small, mean-spirited, anti-community and anti-democratic group of people in North Kitsap county who have stolen and defaced dozens of Steve Bauer campaign signs, harassed local residents in an organized manner, verbally attacked both county officials and other public speakers at public meetings; and they now profess to do all of this as volunteers in support of Steve Bauer’s political opponent.

These few individuals have made our neighbors less safe, and pitted neighborhood against neighborhood through misinformation and intimidation. The question for Ms. LaCelle is how she can continue to ignore or condone this behavior.

Many of these incidents have been reported to the county sheriff and the few individuals are well known. Quite frankly, these individuals are an appalling embarrassment to North Kitsap County.

Steve Minor

Kingston

More on signs

I wish to respond to the August 23rd letter to the editor signed by Nancy Zorrozua of Bremerton about the supposedly 150 campaign signs missing by the Republican candidate of the 23rd Legislative District senate seat.

As the campaign manager for Senator Phil Rockefeller, I am categorically opposed to such tactics. The Rockefeller campaign works with volunteers to help place campaign signs in lawful locations. We respect others’ right to do the same. It is not our campaign strategy to take the campaign signs of Phil’s opponent. Our strategy is to run on the senator’s track record and merits rather than relying on underhanded tactics. Voters should expect nothing less from us.

But there has however been a coordinated series of lowball attacks in the letter to the editor against Phil Rockefeller. These attacks consist of distortions of fact and outright lies. Intriguingly, an exact same letter (word-for-word) that appeared in the North Kitsap Herald on August 20 signed by Roberta Bidinger of Poulsbo also appeared in the Bremerton Patriot on August 9, except it was signed by Lucy Wells of Poulsbo. A review of the public record shows that Ms. Bidinger will celebrate her 100th birthday this year.

The people of the 23rd District deserve much better treatment. Phil’s opponent can show respect to the people whom she seeks to represent by publicly denouncing these orchestrated letters and apologize for the behavior of her supporters.

For the record, our campaign also has had to deal with losing campaign signs on a regular basis. Recently, there have been several large campaign signs of Phil Rockefeller mysteriously torn down and destroyed. We, too, would like to get to the bottom of the story

Tammy Deets

Campaign Manager

Committee to Re-elect Phil Rockefeller

NKSD

Bus schedules

are inconvenient

This week as school was gearing up to start, we looked up bus schedules on the NKSD Web site and discovered that our Highland Road bus stop has been discontinued for secondary students. The nearest bus stop will require a ¾ mile walk down an unlit road with hills and turns that allow no sight distance for approaching car traffic.

Bus service for secondary students on Highland Road was established in 1986 due to safety considerations based on “speeding drivers, lack of shoulders for walking, rolling contour and narrowness of the road, and the close proximity of dense foliage to the roadway.” These conditions have not changed.

I don’t know how many other stops were discontinued; the Web site had no information available about any changes in policy regarding school bus service for secondary students.

I realize that the current budget situation means that the school district needed to cut costs where ever possible and transportation has been a large portion of the NKSD budget. Families will need to make accommodations to the changes in bus service.

The solution for my family is that my KMS student and my KHS student will be dropped off at school early as my husband goes to work. They will remain at school until they can be picked up by one of us after work. Discontinuation of the activity bus means that several days a week my son will remain at school after sports until 6 p.m. or later so I can pick him up after I get off the ferry.

I wonder how many other families will be making similar decisions.

How will schools accommodate students who need to just “hang out” before and after school?

Sharon Wendt

Kingston