Letters to the editor

Behind the time

Nonviolent offenders are a good risk for escaping more prisons

Editor, The Times:

Thanks to editorial columnist Lance Dickie for "Constructing an alternative to our lock-'em-up mentality" (Times editorial column, Feb. 11), supporting the legislative direction in this area of Rep. Ruth Kagi, D-Lake Forest Park.

I believe that Kagi's assessment is right on target: a more effective use of funds for a substantial number of prisoners is intervention and counseling, not prison, from both a conservative fiscal as well as a "human resources" analysis.

With continuing tight state budgets, it makes sense to support Kagi's approach as a "cost saving" approach of both operating and capital funds.

From my time as a board member of a nonprofit counseling agency, I believe assertive counseling is a much more viable alternative for many nonviolent offenders who have committed crimes such as drug offenses. Let's reform them, get them back into the world as working, self-sustaining, taxpaying folks in our communities, instead of paying extraordinary amounts to build prisons and house them.

Counseling and job training create critical "human infrastructure" that adds value-return on the state's investment, as it were; instead of warehousing people who have had what in many instances are just a few cases of demonstrating bad judgment that can be corrected effectively through nonprison intervention.
— Kevin Grossman, Seattle

Tempers fugit

How exactly does a judge "force" someone into drug "treatment" instead of incarceration?

At the end of the day, the convicted will always retain the de facto right to make the decision as to treatment or incarceration, simply by refusing to cooperate with the treatment option.

Suppose they are noncooperative and/or disruptive in the treatment context? The only coercive option remaining to the government is then incarceration, so into prison they go, just as if they had gone to prison right off the bat.

This supposed "forcing" into treatment also smacks of thought control. There are those who believe drug use just by itself (assuming no other crimes are involved) is a political, not criminal, act.

Doesn't "successful" treatment require some acceptance of a change in thought in order to be "successful"?

Suppose the person in question refuses to ever admit a "problem"? They will eventually have to be "released" from treatment sometime, regardless of its "success."

Burglars are released from prison after they do their time, regardless of their personal philosophy regarding burglary, the assumption being that imprisonment of the body, not the mind, is the proper mechanism society uses to punish (or deter) unapproved acts.
— Norman Mainer, Redmond

Punishment fits the crime

I have a really good suggestion as to how to build these prisons for less than $l88 million.

If we could drag the prisoners away from weight-lifting, TV and the phone, we could teach them a profession: building prisons.

If we utilized their abilities and had them do the labor, we would probably save almost half or three-quarters of the cost.
— Ann Bunton, Edmonds

Lights out

Sunset at Campobello

In reference to "Plan could fuel rise in BPA electricity rates" (page one, Feb. 8), about the Bush administration's plan to raise Bonneville Power Administration rates to market rates rather than cost-based rates:

This is just another aspect of the right wing's efforts to take this country back to 1932 and to repeal all traces of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the social programs created by FDR. Social Security is first on the firing line. Medicare and Medicaid are next.

Undermining or eliminating the principle of "power at cost," federal encouragement of the public power movement and the idea that electricity is too important in the daily lives of every American to be left entirely to the vagaries of the market (à la Enron) may be a minor issue compared to Social Security, but it also is part of the right-wing agenda.

Someone said electricity is not just another commodity, any more than oxygen is just another gas.

Support for the public power movement and the principle of "power at cost" to make that commodity readily available to the public was a key program that originated under FDR.

The federal government does not subsidize BPA. The full cost of BPA is borne by Northwest ratepayers. Under the Bush plan, the reverse will be true. The ratepayers will be subsidizing the federal government.
— Joel Merkel, Bainbridge Island

Earth, wind and fair-market

Several recent stories have reported the federal government is proposing to increase the now-subsidized price from public hydroelectric producers by about $32 per megawatt to $45 per megawatt, the current open-market price. This increase, phased over three years, would affect the Northwest because much local power comes from Bonneville Power Administration.

I think this increase is a good development and warranted for several reasons.

Publicly subsidized electricity now inhibits other renewable sources, such as wind power, from entering the market. During drought years, when hydro would be less reliable, wind could be an excellent part of the electric grid.

We need to remove subsidies now, so that wind farms, which produce power at about $45 per megawatt, can attract financial backing and go through appropriate environmental review and construction, a process taking several years.

Currently subsidized electric rates discourage conservation. Free-market pricing gives businesses and homeowners impetus to modernize lighting, heating, cooling and other systems. A free market encourages people to act rationally, ergo less wastefully.

Along with fair-market electricity pricing, I would like to see the Bush administration phase out tax subsidies for the oil industry, such as the depletion allowance, that provide a hidden subsidy for gasoline prices and discourage conservation of a critical, but finite, resource.
— Dave Morrow, Seattle

Power to conduct war

I think it should come as no great surprise that, in an effort to reduce the federal budget deficit, the Bush administration is proposing to increase prices for electricity generated by the federal Bonneville Power Administration which serves the citizens of the Pacific Northwest.

In November, Washingtonians voted 53 percent for John Kerry vs. 49 percent for George Bush. Oregonians voted against Bush 51 percent to 48 percent. Washington's Democratic senatorial candidate won election with 55 percent of the vote. Oregon's Democratic senatorial candidate won with 64 percent of the vote. Also contrary to the trend in most of the nation, Washington state has a newly elected Democratic governor, and two Democratic senators.

Spoils of presidential war?
— Hal Seligson, Langley

Blue flames burned

"Old lies about Bonneville" (editorial, Feb. 10) covers a range of good and valid points about why it would be wrong to raise our collective energy fees by over $3 billion in the next four years and then permanently keep them at the higher rates.

However, they all miss what our president is really imposing here: It's called a "blue-state tax."
— Ken Boyer, Redmond