LETTERS: Thursday

Sirota thinks he knows better

In David Sirota’s column in Saturday’s Gazette, he employed the all-too-typical attack speech used by liberals when debating conservatives (“How rural obstructionists cause health care ‘tyranny’”). These arrogant tactics say that if you disagree with the liberal point of view, you are either ignorant (i.e., stupid or duped) or evil (i.e., you’ve been bought off by special interests).

In this case, when it comes to health care, he seems to think he knows better what the people of rural districts need.

It does not occur to him that the representatives of rural districts from Montana, North Dakota, New Mexico, Wyoming, Iowa and Maine who are fighting against a nationwide health care system are actually listening to their constituents. Many of us who live in the heartland would rather have the self respect and freedom that comes from self-reliance. We are not interested in a government that will take care of all of our needs because a government with that much power can also take away all of our rights.

Michael Hanratty

Colorado Springs

Small states need Constitution

Poor David Sirota, born in the wrong era and in the wrong country, he would have been much happier writing his propagandistic pieces in Stalinist Russia or under the tutelage of that master of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.

What his ranting boils down to is this: he is mad because the Constitution works. Sirota wants complete majority rule but that is not how the Founding Fathers crafted the Constitution. They built in a system of checks and balances to block exactly what Sirota wants — a rubber-stamp majority. The Constitution was written to purposefully keep the majority from cramming its programs down the throat of the minority. The Constitution protects small states from the large states in that each state has two senators. While Montana and Wyoming outnumber California in the Senate four to two, California outnumbers them 53 to two in the House of Representatives. If small states did not have some power in the Senate they would be relegated to insignificance.

Sirota seems to have nothing but utter contempt for people from rural areas. Reading between the lines of his article you would think they are nothing but ignorant peasants incapable of having any abilities to govern themselves.

Michael Larsen

Colorado Springs

Informed voters key to elections

Based on The Gazette’s July 30 Our View, “politicians reject the will of voters,” and on e-mails and blogs I have received, I did not do a good job of explaining my concern in my opinion piece, “When voters decide, special interests and newspaper win,” in the July 29 Gazette.

Most of the responses, including The Gazette’s, centered on the April election and assumed I was complaining about the defeat of 1A and that I was challenging the decisions made by the voters who represented only one-third of those eligible. While I can understand how that was interpreted, I was talking about future elections and future decisions the council will have to make on service reductions. I want more citizens involved in giving direction since we will be making service reductions and eliminations that will impact all citizens in one way or another.

Several letters and the editorial writer said that the services being cut should not be provided by government anyway, so it is no big deal. My concern is that we will be impacting many people in a life-changing way.

The point I did not do a good job of making is that although one can argue these are services the local government should not provide, the fact is they are provided, have been provided and many people expect them to continue to be provided. If someone other than local government provides them, it will take time and money to replace the government’s role. What do the people do in the meantime?

Now to the crux of my original intent — I am concerned that since these cuts are quality-of-life issues, I want to have as many citizens involved in the decision process as possible, not just the one-third of us who vote. I did not mean that I do not respect the voters’ wishes from the last election. Obviously I was elected by that group of voters even though I was in favor of 1A, a strong supporter of the Olympics staying here, smart growth, the stormwater enterprise and the Southern Delivery System, issues that were the main topics during the campaign.

What I would like to see is extensive involvement with citizens as these cuts are discussed in public and those that will be voted on in November. I would like to see The Gazette, other publications and the media in general take the lead in informing the public on the issues with facts and balanced presentations. Then, however the people vote and even if only one-third or even fewer vote, we would have made our best effort to educate and inform the public.

I agree that we all should take our right to vote seriously and I know some do not care or have given up on government and will not vote. I think the government and the media have a responsibility to present the issues and the consequences in ways never before attempted and, then be satisfied that the people will have heard the message.

Jerry Heimlicher

City Council member, District 3

Colorado Springs

People have right to not vote

City Councilman Jerry Heimlicher’s arrogance takes my breath away (“When voters decide, special interests and newspaper win”). In one sentence he conceded that “relatively few folks have been inconvenienced or heavily impacted” by the city/county cuts. Conversely, he claims we are currently experiencing a “nightmare” from the cuts. Which is it? He can’t have it both ways.

Heimlicher also claimed that “elected folks being residents and taxpayers themselves” have only pure motives in raising taxes. Are you kidding me? Is it possible that the councilman has been struck with Potomac Fever?

With a disdain for those of us who do actually go vote, Heimlicher fails to realize that people have a right to not vote in elections; however, they (and those who represent them) do lose their voice to whine about the results.

Big-headed politicians such as Heimlicher is one of the reasons why I believe in limited government. As Ronald Reagan once said, “The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.”

Linda Carroll

Colorado Springs

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