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About The Hood River news. (Hood River, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 21, 2015)
A4 V IEWPOINT Hood River News, Saturday, February 21, 2015 O ur readers write JOE PETSHOW Publisher/President, Eagle Newspapers, Inc. TOM LANCTOT Past President, Eagle Newspapers, Inc. CHELSEA MARR General Manager Obamacare reality KIRBY NEUMANN-REA Editor JODY THOMPSON Advertising Manager TONY METHVIN Columbia Gorge Press Manager DICK NAFSINGER Publisher, Emeritus (1933-2011) DAVID MARVIN Production Manager Subscription $42 per year in Hood River trade area. $68 outside trade area. NATIONAL NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OREGON NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION Printed on recycled paper. Official Newspaper, City of Hood River and Hood River County Published Every Wednesday & Saturday by Hood River News, P.O. Box 390, Hood River, Oregon 97031 • (541) 386-1234 • FAX 386-6796 Member of the Associated Press Spring Election Ballot filing deadline approaches J ohn Kitzhaber has cleared out his desk and Gov. Kate Brown faces the tough challenge of picking up the pieces, rebuilding faith and fostering legis- lation. She’s as able as any public servant in the state and all Oregonians should wish her the best in a time when the state needs steady leadership. It’s a good time, also, to ask the question: with Gov. Brown in Salem and Jerry Brown in Sacramento, has there ever been another case of two chief executives of neighboring states sharing the same last name? While the state’s highest-profile elected office gets the bulk of the attention recently, the focus in Hood River should turn to local offices that are also important. Numerous positions will be on the May 19 Special District ballot, and the deadline to file is less than a month away, on March 19. Potential candidates can find the filing form on the Hood River County Elections website, hoodriver.co.us/elections. All applications must be in the Elections office no later than 5 p.m. on March 19. For details contact the Hood River County Elections office at 541-386-1442. Here is the complete list of open positions scheduled to be on the May 19 ballot: ■ HRC Transportation District Director 1 — unexpired 2- year term Directors — three 4-year terms HRC School District Position 1 — 4 year term Position 3 — 4 year term Position 5 — 4 year term Parkdale RFD Directors — three 4 year terms Westside RFD Directors — three 4 year terms Wy’East RFD Directors — two 4 year terms Crystal Springs Water District Commissioners — three 4 year terms Ice Fountain Water District Commissioners — two 4 year terms HRC Library District Board Members — two 4 year terms HRV Parks and Recreation Board Members — three 4 year terms Port of Cascade Locks Commissioners — three 4 year terms Port of Hood River Commissioners — two 4 year terms Odell Sanitary District Director — one 4 year term Parkdale Sanitary District Director — one 4 year term Directors — two 2 year unexpired terms Reality (for me and others — how do I know others? — two weeks of busy lines and no replies!) versus the rose-colored glasses. Pre-Obamacare: Family was cov- ered by health insurance, affordable and if I had a question, I could actu- ally talk to someone when I called. Obamacare year 1: Your insur- ance is canceled Dec. 31. Your col- lege age daughter cannot be on your policy, she has to get her own. There is a problem with your application — “please call back.” Need to fax this document. Faxed, no response, calls no response. Frustrated, wrote letter to our Senator, about 10 days later got a call and got coverage, will never know if it was coincidental or not. However, did not have coverage for two months — glad we stayed healthy! Coverage was still afford- able with the tax credits (who pays for those?). Obamacare year 2: Mid to end of November, got a letter stating cover- age was continuing for 2015, but my wife’s was changing. Good so far! College age daughter did not get re- newal or notice. Refilling a prescrip- tion in January — “Your coverage was terminated Dec. 31.” My wife somehow retained her coverage, but mine and my daughter’s were out. Online website — “There is a prob- lem …” After numerous attempts, I actually talked to someone but, “I cannot fix this error code, please call this 800 number.” Well, this number is so busy that you cannot even wait on hold! Experiencing high call vol- ume, please call back. Glad I didn’t have a heart attack because I don’t have health insurance! Two weeks later, on a random attempt I got through. They fixed the error code. I can pick coverage, but effective March 1. Again, two months without coverage. Guess that’s the affordable part — 12 month plan with coverage for 10 months. What a piece of junk! It should be like home/auto. I can accept man- dating coverage, but evaluate your Founded in 1905 419 State Street Hood River, OR 97031 P.O. Box 390 Phone: (541) 386-1234 Fax: (541) 386-6796 Operations: Joe Petshow Publisher President, Eagle Newspapers (541) 386-1234 JPetshow@hoodrivernews.com Front Office/ Classified Advertising: Stacey Methvin Classifieds/Receptionist HRNClass@hoodrivernews.com SMethvin@hoodrivernews.com Circulation: Esther K. Smith Circulation Manager (541) 386-1234 Ext. 205 ESmith@hoodrivernews.com The Warm Springs Library is a nice little place that serves a lot of people with a $0 budget for buying books. If it is time to clean out your old books, especially kids’ books, I will be glad to pick them up and de- liver them to the library. Just send me an email at ronghr@aol.com. You’ll make a lot of people very happy! Marg Guth Hood River Profits rule I don’t trust corporations. Espe- cially international “Big Food” cor- porations like Nestle which is one of the largest. Whatever corporations say and do, whatever bones they may throw to local governments, whatever they promise in the way of jobs and tax revenues are for the sole purpose of gaining local and inter- national control of the food and water supply and maximizing corpo- rate profits. It’s not for the public good. Do the research. Jerry Giarraputo Hood River ‘Our song’? Hood River Valley is so extraordi- nary. Who else has two snowcapped mountains to see every day? We have two rivers, Hood and Columbia. An- nually covered in bloom in the spring. This valley needs its own song. Someone in this valley is talented enough to compose a song telling folks of our wonderful valley. Maybe the radio station could play a few lines of the tune prior to a commer- cial every day to familiarize folks of our song. Don’t privatize water The letter submitted by Mr. Dave Palais (Feb. 18), while eloquent, is simply untrue. Make no mistake, Nestle is taking a public resource and will profit handsomely to our detriment. He claims no rights transfer to Nestle but imagine how the language the Nestle lawyers wrote reads. Do you really think Nestle will walk away from its investment before three generations of time passes? The current attempt to use their megacorporation influence and by- pass the existing laws is not what one would expect from a good corpo- rate citizen. Google “Nestle law- suit” if you want to see the “strong positive track record” of the compa- ny. Lists of lawsuits for deceptive, fraudulent and predatory behavior, unfair competition, antitrust, exces- sive withdrawals causing damage to the aquifer, etc. abound. Nestle is extracting a public re- source. In other extraction indus- tries, such as oil, the public is paid a significant percentage of the profits as royalties (25 percent or more). Have you seen what Nestle has nego- tiated to pay verses their profit? Nes- tle is not even a US company. This is not about the money, it is about pri- vatizing the public’s water. And what do we get out of this deal? More trucks on I-84 and mil- lions more plastic bottles littering our environment. Do not allow Nes- tle to take our water. David Michalek Hood River Parent and teacher despairs over ‘out of control’ standardized tests President — Barack Obama, White House, 1600 Pennsylva- nia Ave., Washington D.C., 20500 E-mail: president@whitehouse.gov U.S. Senators — Jeff Merkley, SDB-40B, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington D.C., 20510. Phone: 202-224-3753; E-mail: oregon@merkley.senate.gov; Ron Wyden, 717 Hart Office Build- ing, Washington D.C., 20510. Phone: 202-224-5244. Web address: www.senate.gov/member/or/wyden/general/ 2nd Congressional District Representative — Greg Walden, 14 N. Central Ave., Suite 112, Medford, OR 97504. Phone: 541-776-4646; E-mail: www.walden.house.gov/contactgreg Governor — John Kitzhaber, 254 State Capitol, Salem, OR 97310. Phone: 503-378-3111; E-mail: www.governor.state.or.us/email.htm District 26 State Senator — Chuck Thomsen, 900 Court St. N.E., S-307, State Capitol, Salem, OR 97301. Phone: 503-986- 1726; E-mail sen.chuckthomsen@state.or.us District 52 State Representative — Mark Johnson, 900 Court St. N.E., Bldg. H-385, State Capitol, Salem, OR 97301. Phone: 503-986-1452; E-mail: rep.markjohnson@state.or.us Hood River County Board of Commissioners — Chair Ron Rivers, Vice Chair Maui Meyer, members Les Perkins, Bob Ben- ton and Karen Joplin, Hood River County Courthouse, Hood River, OR, 97031. Phone: 541-386-3970. Chris Stenberg Bookkeeper CStenberg@hoodrivernews.com Got books? Put your thinking caps on friends and neighbors. I’m sure a couple of you could come up with a song to go along with our pears, apples and wineries, and after the public was fa- miliar with “our” song, they could whistle a tune as they walk along our streets. Get busy folks. We have all the rest, let’s have a song too. Peggy Swyers Hood River ANOTHER VOICE W HERE TO WRITE Chelsea Marr General Manager CMarr@hoodrivernews.com own risk, pick the coverage you need/want. It stays in continuous coverage, can buy it anywhere and is portable. Is that too much to ask? Steve Nybroten Hood River By ERIC COHN M andated standardized state testing is now offi- cially out of control. It will take seven in- structional days to run each grade level through the battery of computerized tests that we must now administer at our local Middle School. To what end? What is the pur- pose? The most important test most kids will take prior to graduation is the SAT. That test is a total of 3.75 hours. That’s less than one half of one in- structional day. That test has real life implications for each student who takes it. What are the benefits to each student that outweigh the seven in- structional days it will take my eighth graders to take their battery of tests? What will they gain? More im- portant, what will they lose? As an illustration, I have recorded the primary topics taught in my vari- News: Kirby Neumann-Rea Editor HRNews@hoodrivernews.com ous math classrooms over the last seven instructional days. They in- clude: transformations of quadratic, exponential, radical and absolute value functions, the quotient and power rules of differentiation, the importance of trigonometric identi- ties sin^2(x) + cos^2(x) =1, tan(x) =sin(x)/cos(x), translation of sine, co- sine and tangent waves along with their amplitudes and periods, the unit circle in radian measure, do- main and range of functions along with asymptotes thereof, exponent operations with fractional exponents, simplification of complex rational expressions, 5 point data summaries, Q-point regression lines, positive and negative correlation of data, writing the equation of a line of best fit using the appropriate Q-points, func- tion notation and operations. It sickens me to think of the empty list of instructional topics I will have over this 7 day testing period. I have Trisha Walker News/Features TWalker@hoodrivernews.com an undergraduate degree from U.C. Berkeley, a Master’s degree from the University of Portland, and yet I will spend 7 days basically watching kids take test, after test, after test. School administrators must spend countless ours trying to figure out how to get 450 plus kids to take all of these exams on a very limited number of computers. What a waste. What an inexcusable, colossal waste of time, money and educational opportunities for our students. I’ve been teaching for 26 years and I’m profoundly upset as a teacher, and very, very puzzled as a parent. It’s not testing that hurts kids. It’s what they don’t get while they are testing that does the real damage. Who started this? What was their intent? More important, who will stop it? ■ Eric Cohn of Hood River is a math teacher at Hood River Middle School. Production: David Marvin Production Manager Adam Lapierre Ailene Hibbard Archivist DMarvin@hoodrivernews.com News/Features Advertising: Jim Drake ALapierre@hoodrivernews.com Jody Thompson Advertising Manager JThompson@hoodrivernews.com Production/Commercial Printing Liana Stegall Advertising Sales LStegall@hoodrivernews.com Production/Commercial Printing Ben Mitchell News/Features BenMitchell@hoodrivernews.com Jim Drake Entertainment JDrake@hoodrivernews.com Kirsten Lane Advertising Sales KLane@hoodrivernews.com JDrake@hoodrivernews.com Andy Taylor ATaylor@columbiagorgepress.com Allen Diers Commercial Printing ADiers@hoodrivernews.com 419 State Street Hood River, OR 97031 P.O. Box 390 Phone: (541) 386-1234 Fax: (541) 386-6796 Tony Methvin Plant Manager (541) 386-1234 TMethvin@columbiagorgepress.com Andy Taylor Commercial Printing/Production ATaylor@columbiagorgepress.com David Marvin Commercial Printing/Production DMarvin@hoodrivernews.com
