Let's have that sales tax but please let's make it a fair one

Mr. Mayor, a sales tax please. But one that's fair, pretty please.

First, consider designating revenues for School District use only.

Second, don't tax basic foodstuffs, medicines, fuel, the first $50 per clothing item or the first $3,000 for any form of transportation (car, boat, snowmachine, four-wheeler, airplane, etc.).

Third, don't tax medical services, home repair services or personal transportation repair services.

Fourth, don't tax health, safety or educational services.

There are probably a few more fundamental "don't's," but not many. The "do" tax is pretty much everything else including home sales, all prepared foods including bake-and-serve pizza and every beverage that's bottled except milk and 100 percent juice.

I know: "What about water?" Hey, if you can afford to spend $30 a gallon for Atlanta tap water, you can afford to pay something toward ASD expenses.

Anyway, a significant dent would be made in ASD's funding requests with a sales tax of about 7 percent without placing additional burden on those who can afford it least.

-- Jim Turley

Anchorage

Lower gas prices in Canada and Lower 48 were a surprise

My husband and I left Anchorage July 15, traveling by car across Canada to the East Coast. Before leaving we had some trepidation about gas prices, since in Anchorage they had been inching ever closer to $3 a gallon.

Imagine our surprise to find gas selling for an average of $2.49 a gallon across northern Canada and the U.S., and continuing at that price from New York down to here in Erie, Mich.

So what's the deal with those high prices for gas in Alaska?

I've been mad about the price of gas ever since we paid $4.69 a gallon last year and then watched the price creeeeeep down 10 times slower than it shot up. I have watched the multiplier effect these prices have had on the Alaska economy. We don't go out to eat as often because the restaurants increased their menu prices; we don't go to Seward for dinner anymore -- too high a price for the meal plus gas; we spend less on everything from food to clothing to movies.

When are we going to start holding gas producers and gas stations accountable for the damage they have done to us? In your paper, I read about studies showing the reason they charge these prices is "because they can" -- i.e., we the consumers have not been able to organize a way to show our disgust. I think it's high time we do.

-- Vernita Herdman

Anchorage

Parallels with Ross Perot?

Remember Ross Perot, the self-made multi-millionaire who offered his resources as an independent candidate for president in 1992?

Recall how, despite achieving the support of 39 percent of the nation's voters, he made a sudden withdrawal from the race? He said the main reason was the Bush campaign's threat to sabotage his daughter's wedding.

Sound familiar?

Make you think about Palin?

-- Mary Wasche

Eagle River

Where is the concern for all living children in the world?

I applaud Cathy Gedicks' letter to the editor ("Handling life skillfully means dealing with the consequences," July 24) but would go a bit further. She pointed out that the need for state-run Child Protective Services offices shows that not all children are wanted or well protected. I'd ask where are the anti-abortionists and their concern for the millions of children injured and killed in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Also, what about the more subtle methods of despotic dictators in Latin American and African countries, who raid the state treasury of foreign aid monies for children to increase the wealth of the strongmen and their friends while the children starve and die in poverty?

The anti-abortionists' narrow focus only on the unwanted and unborn fetus totally ignores the often dark fate of living children from Hiroshima to the Sudan and to the streets of the USA. The plight of all living children and the unborn should concern us all and not just a minuscule segment of presumed life.

-- Marilyn B. Williams

Anchorage

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