Income tax would expand

Sen. Lisa Brown has been attempting to get a state income tax for years. She has worked with tax proponents, and they came up with a backdoor proposal to spread state income tax to everyone. They think and hope that voters making less than $200,000 will vote Initiative 1098 in, as lower wage earners are the bulk of the voters. They feel we voters are so ignorant of congressional tactics we won’t see through their ploy and will be selfish enough to feel high wage earners should, as Obama says, “spread the wealth.”

Citizen voters, if you are foolish enough to believe it will stop with the high wage earners and vote the state income tax in, here will be the result. Once the tax is law, it is here to stay, and then our tax-and-spend senators and representatives will just lower the wage eligible for taxing and there is nothing we can do about it. They won’t have to ask you next year if it is OK to lower the wage eligible to stick everyone but welfare earners on the new state income tax. Don’t prove your individual greed by voting 1098 in. You will lose in the end.

Bert A. Overland

Spokane

In spite of my distaste for lowest-common-denominator vernacular, Dr. Paul Mencke’s guest column (Sept. 18) and my own teaching experience put me on the side of the embattled Shadle Park High School teacher. Then, I learned Brad Read was the one on the hot seat.

Read has been a gift to this community as a leader and a teacher, while most teachers cower at the fringe of cultural progress and quiver at the prospect of engaging students, much less a reactionary public. That he is under fire (again) is a sad commentary upon the educational priorities of the system. Media have dragged out file excerpts casting him as a radical agitator, when, in fact, he has been carefully thoughtful in speaking and acting on behalf of human rights and enlightenment. In a just world, school boards and universities would be outbidding each other to have him in their classrooms.

Nancy Nelson

Rockford