Nonprofit appreciation

To the editor:

As community members engage in year-end charitable giving decisions, I want to highlight the work of some of our key community safety-net organizations: Arms Around Bainbridge, Helpline House, Island Volunteer Caregivers, Kathleen Sutton Fund and Virginia Mason Foundation. Each of those organizations provides support to individuals in our community struggling to make ends meet.

I was able to observe the complementary roles of these organizations as a former AAB board member. AAB’s mission is to provide support to community members faced with financial crisis due to a major illness. AAB often refers recipients to the social and food bank services of Helpline House. AAB refers female cancer patients to the Kathleen Sutton Fund for help covering travel costs to medical appointments. IVC helps patients get to appointments through its volunteer driver program, and they deliver spirit-lifting bouquets in summer. Finally, many AAB recipients have benefited from Virginia Mason’s charitable relief program.

I often heard how people are inspired by the simple fact that an organization like AAB exists on Bainbridge. That inspiration grew when I mentioned the web of support also offered by the others. Most people believe in neighbors helping neighbors, and that value is underscored by our community’s support of these important nonprofits.

Cestjon McFarland

Bainbridge Island

EV filmsy

To the editor:

If something is indeed a “good thing” aren’t ordinary people able to see it as such without it being “mandated” upon them?

Apparently not. That’s what a recent article advancing “Inslee’s mandate” banning gas-powered cars by 2035 says. Its faulty reasoning begins by touting the number of electric vehicles in King and Snohomish counties as indicative of how “doable” Inslee’s mandate is.

That notion, however, is rendered vacuous when the article later confirms that there are but 109,000 EV’s (3.9%) out of 2.8 million registered cars in Washington. Simply put, the public’s not buying it and would find any mandate unacceptable based on such flimsy numbers.

More broadly, though, the article conveys the underlying thought that mandates in general are acceptable to a freedom-loving society. They are not. The vaccine mandate no longer is, now that CDC data has confirmed that since April more “vaccinated” (60%) than “unvaccinated” (40%) are dying from COVID.

Or take the RCW 43.185C.005 mandate to “end homelessness in Washington by July 1, 2015.” Didn’t happen. More likely, it made things worse. The jury is still out on all things “climate change,” so even more so, a suspect theory is no basis for any sort of mandate.

Are those we elect to represent us “made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind” (Frederic Bastiat, “The Law,” 1849) that they can dictate mandates to us once in office? No, and “No.”

Pete Brady

Bainbridge Island