No mandate delivered
Aaron Ament did the citizens of Moscow a really important service by running for city council. He ran a positive and upbeat campaign focusing on ensuring a good future for Moscow while maintaining our quality of life, programs for youth, sustainability, financial responsibility and public involvement. Sadly his opponents, through the Greater Moscow Alliance, distributed ads and flyers that were extremely negative and unfairly painted Ament as "anti-business" and "anti-everything."
After the election, Wayne Krauss was quoted in Nov. 9 Daily News as saying "this vote shows that the people of Moscow have a tremendous amount of confidence for the way this council is going ... apparently the community is agreeing with me." If that is true, Wayne, why was it that Tom Lamar, who votes against you on almost all issues, was the top vote-getter in the election?
The election demonstrated that a sizeable number of citizens, including the 1,800 who voted for Ament, seriously question the extreme pro-development direction the council has been taking. The election did not produce a mandate for ignoring the desire of citizens to maintain Moscow's uniqueness and livability. How much better it would be if the Moscow City Council worked with the mayor and led from the center rather than the far right. Let's hope future council discussions take this into account.
Joann Muneta
Moscow
Reforming the system
A more fair and understandable tax code of only a few pages must be enacted, but a House and Senate as dysfunctional as ours cannot do this. How, then, can this be remedied? We must return to letting the people elect our representatives in government, as opposed to having corporate and industry lobbyists elect them. Lobbying is a necessary part of good government, but it must be directed toward philanthropic, charitable, disasters, natural or other, and pork.
Pork is a necessary entity to spread government more evenly across the land. Without it, for instance, infrastructure would be limited to dense population areas only. Our dysfunctional Congress cannot address these issues. Some organizational movement, such as perhaps Occupy Wall Street, must coerce Congress to give us a taxpayer-paid election process.
Occupy Wall Street is becoming a more formidable organization with which to reckon. It has so far remained politically neutral, as opposed to the Tea Party. They are losing some of the national spotlight but they are receiving much support nationally both by people input and especially financially. If their momentum continues, they will have to be dealt with as a top player in the game of politics. They may bring the above issues into the limelight to be resolved.
Ben Seubert
Lewiston
