Letters to editor - Nov. 25

, Nov 25, 2009, Updated Nov 25, 2009

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Attempted murder hogwash

This letter is in defense of Mark Gift Sr. He is one of the best men I have ever known. He has worked hard his entire life in the trucking and logging business. Mark has always been a giver, not a taker. He has unselfishly helped a lot of people along his way, including myself.

Now, our elected District Attorney Steve Atchison and our elected Columbia County Sheriff Jeff Dickerson and his thugs are trying to take what he has left – his dignity, his health and his life. How did he end up with an indictment for attempted murder? The police show up in force, all pumped up, sirens, lights and adrenaline running wide open. They tasered him, slammed him to the ground and kicked him into submission (never mind he is 71 years old), then charged him with attempted murder. In my book, what those thugs did was attempted murder. But Mark has no witnesses – they do, and they’ll all swear to his guilt in front of the Grand Jury. This is part one.

Now part two. He has the mental stress (he’s already had two strokes, not to mention the financial burden of hiring an attorney) of going through weeks of trial defending himself against professional liars in uniforms. Then there will be Columbia County D.A. Steve Atchison, doing his best to get a conviction on the attempted murder charge. Never mind that Steve Atchison in December 2008 whitewashed the investigation of an off duty police officer at the Scappoose Dairy Queen parking lot, who pulled an automatic pistol on a local couple eating ice cream in their car and threatened to kill them. This did happen – the whitewash was reported in the morning edition of The Oregonian on Dec. 8, 2008. Why Atchison would spend thousands of Columbia County taxpayers dollars on a trumped up attempted murder charge on a well respected local resident and refuse to charge an off duty cop for attempted murder is beyond me. We can only hope that the jurors will hear enough of the truth to be able to make the correct decision on how Mark Gift Sr. is able to spend his remaining life.

I want to thank The South County Spotlight and News Editor Stover Harger for bringing this story to the public’s attention in the Nov. 18 issue.

— Dave Molony

Scappoose

Stop spending our money

Here’s a joke for you: How many experts does it take to convince the Columbia Health District Board of Directors that a hopsital is not only not needed in Columbia County, but is especially non-finacially viable.

Answer: Doesn’t matter. They never listen anyway.

The CHD needs to stop spending the taxpayers’ money in efforts that are not in the best interest of those taxpayers.

The CHD board needs to proceed with the following actions:

1. Stop wasting time, effort and money to make this undoable project work ( get over it);

2. Cancel appeal, and save $75,000;

3. Stop all construction on hospital site;

4. Write a new initiative that, after paying all bills, refunds any leftover, already-collected dollars to taxpayers (or even give to to health clinic) and recinds the tax levy for a critical -access hospital.

5. Write whatever new initiative for financial support needed to maintain other health district business, not related to a hospital.

Sounds like reasonable health district business to me.

Aside to Thelma Bonar — you go girl!

— Linda Pollard

Scappoose

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