NO PREFERENCE

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

I have to question the math and management of the Steamship Authority’s Islander Preferred reservations system. I write this Sunday morning after telephonically punching my way through to the phone reservation center and being told that all of tomorrow (Monday) is sold out — six minutes after they began answering phones at 8 a.m.

I wonder what the meaning of “preferred” is in the Steamship Authority’s calculus for Island residents like myself. I asked the woman that answered the phone how it could be possible that all of Monday was sold out in so little time, and she said the Steamship Authority only holds a few spots on each boat as preferred space.

I would like to know a number of things:

• Who decides what’s an acceptable number of preferred slots in one day’s inventory? I’d like a name, please, not the dodge of a faceless bureaucracy.

• Exactly how many preferred slots are there per ship and per day?

• How is the need for such space measured and satisfied?

• Are the preferred numbers seasonally adjusted?

• What does the Steamship Authority do on an ongoing basis to monitor preferred demand by Island residents? How does it read and react to Islander demand, vital demand for residents who need convenient access to the mainland?

When was the last time the Steamship Authority changed the percentage of space it designates as preferred? Day and date, please.

I grasp the fact that the Steamship Authority’s interest is best served by running boats that are sold out. A healthy SSA is also good for the Island. But the present system is quite obviously incorrectly weighted to satisfy the general population of people traveling to and from the Vineyard. “Preferred” is pretty meaningless when the system consigns Island residents to the hordes of vacationers who, rabbit-like, begin calling at 7:59:59 a.m. for a next-day reservation.

I tried it this morning at 7:59:59 with a cell phone in one hand and a house phone in the other — two-fisted dialing. I would rather be water-boarded than relive what happens next. Busy signals . . . multiple recordings that your call didn’t go through, and, my favorite, the phone finally rings through to the Steamship Authority (confirmed on the cell screen) — but the phone rings long enough to trigger that knife-in-the heart recorded message: “Your party is not answering . . . please try your call again later.”

Island resident access to ferry space should be an operating priority of the Steamship Authority. If a separate phone line reserved for Island residents is cost-prohibitive or logistically impossible, the SSA should do something with its Web site reservation system that makes it easier for Island residents to book next-day reservations (and with greater inventory available). Or perhaps the standby reservations system that operates well all year should be deployed for Islanders during the summer months.

Elders of the Steamship Authority, kindly answer my questions and in detail. At the moment, you are failing Island residents.

Charles Furlong

Chilmark

MAIN STREET BLUES

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

To President Obama: As a business owner on Main street, I was extremely disappointed that your visit to Vineyard Haven consisted of cutting off all traffic only to run into Bunch Of Grapes and then make a quick escape via Centre Street — a repeat scenario from last year. Though I am happy for Dawn, who does a wonderful job running the bookstore, there are many other businesses that could have benefited from the “Obama bump.”

These are difficult economic times for many Islanders, but in particular to lose any business during a precious August day is distressing. So, Mr. President, if you do come back to our Island for your summer vacation, perhaps you might take a stroll down Main street and greet the other merchants who hopefully will still be in business next year.

Oh, by the way, this won’t affect my vote. I voted for you last time and I will be voting for you next time!

Ronni Simon

Chilmark

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LEGAL HEMP

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

This is an open letter to President Barack Obama. I’m writing because I’m greatly concerned about certain issues involving fossil fuels. Projects like offshore oil drilling off the mid-Atlantic states and Alaska, pipelines from the tar sands of Canada, and oil and gas development in the wilds of Utah are the wrong direction for our country. Legalizing industrial hemp production will offer a greener and cleaner way for our country to grow. At least try it first before the other projects.

Erik Albert

Oak Bluffs

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FALSE NARRATIVE

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Vacationing on the Vineyard is like entering a special world. The letters to President Obama last week seemed to come from another planet. The writers present a narrative that goes like this: Wicked Republicans cynically obstruct valiant young President as he seeks to transform America fundamentally. This seems to me a false narrative.

I suggest an alternative: Valiant young representatives, elected specifically to restrain reckless government spending, keep their promises to constituents despite enormous pressure from the establishment.

Consider the following:

• In December 2010, with large Democratic majorities in a lame-duck Congress, Senator Reid postponed the decision to increase the national debt ceiling because he wanted the new GOP House to “share the heat.”

• At the same time, the President’s own debt commission (the Simpson-Bowles Commission) presented its plan to reduce the deficit. President Obama ignored it.

• In January 2011, Speaker Boehner laid down two GOP conditions for a deal on the debt ceiling: spending cuts to match the increase in the ceiling and no increase in tax rates (not the same as no increase in revenues). This is just what they got in the end, so President Obama could have had that deal at any time.

• The GOP-controlled House passed two measures this year that might have resolved the situation. First, the so-called Ryan budget proposed Medicare reforms and balanced the budget over 10 years. In late August, Cut, Cap, and Balance passed, which also would have led to a balanced budget.

• In contrast, the Senate has not passed a budget in over two years (although required by law). In April, they rejected President Obama’s budget 97-0. Later, they also rejected the House budget, while offering none of their own. Finally, they tabled Cut, Cap and Balance.

• In August, Vice President Biden negotiated a deal with Speaker Boehner (including $800 billion in increased revenues). President Obama nixed the deal, insisting on the same tax hikes he could not get through a Democratic Congress in December 2010. This was when Mr. Boehner withdrew.

• The GOP did hold to their principle of no tax rate hikes (the basis for their election in 2010). Critics accused them of “blackmail” and “holding hostages.” But Democrats had their own hostages. Speakers Reid and Pelosi insisted entitlements were off the table. President Obama threatened to veto any deal that did not go past November 2012.The difference is that the Republicans, Congressional Democrats, and even Mr. Biden respected the conditions of the other side, whereas President Obama did not.

• As a result, Congressional leaders worked out a deal without much help from the President.

Conclusions:

• The system worked as it was designed: The legislature reined in an over-reaching executive. It may be messy, but that’s democracy.

• This is a story of repeated Republican attempts to address the problem in the face of Democratic intransigence, rather than the other way around.

• If either GOP initiative had become law, the S& P downgrade would likely not have occurred. This was a well-deserved rebuke to President Obama. Poetic justice, I’d say.

• President Obama missed an opportunity when he ignored the Simpson-Bowles Commission. Had he adopted their report, the Republicans would have had to go along.

• To negotiate a compromise one must at least recognize the point of view of the opposing side. And one cannot deal productively with political opponents while accusing them of acting in bad faith.

• One thing the President’s supporters do not seem to get: He is the Man. It is the leader’s job to bring the parties together. Reagan did so, Clinton did so, both Bushes did so. President Obama has not.

Mike Lion

Oak Bluffs

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SINGLE DIP

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Dear Mr. President: I lost my job six months after you were sworn into office as our President. You have continually stated that you have been working on the job problem, but no one except you can find any suitable results that your solutions have worked. In fact, there are more unemployed people now as compared to the time when you were sworn in two and a half years ago.

My wife and I fight every day over where to spend our retirement funds that are just about depleted. As we have little funds, we are losing our home by way of foreclosure. You state that you now have a solution, but advise us that your explanation of this solution is being delayed as you are on vacation in your $50,000-a-week waterfront estate. Last week, we learned that you purchased two luxurious buses for $2.2 million. We learned that the buses were made in Canada. I am pretty sure that we have facilities to produce buses here in the United States. Your questionable leadership certainly sends mixed messages.

Instead of using one plane to bring you and your family to the Vineyard, you found it more convenient to use several planes to fly you and your family here. Gosh, the amount of extra fuel could have provided me and several of my unemployed fellow residents enough fuel to drive our cars for the rest of our lifetimes.

I do appreciate that you are planning to give few speeches while you on vacation, as it appears that the stock market drastically dropped 300 or 400 points after each of your more recent speeches. You state that you want more cooperation from the members of the Republican party, and then you and your staff refer to them as radicals or terrorists. It just appears that you do everything to agitate the relationships that you need to put forth your agenda which has repeatedly failed in the past.

So as my fellow 14.5 million unemployed citizens continue to suffer their status of having no jobs, all you can do is to wave to bystanders as you continue to block traffic as you move around on our beautiful Island. Isn’t that wonderful! In the last six months, you have taken your family on vacations to Brazil and Africa — all at the expense of taxpayers. Did you realize that employment and the economy have drastically slowed during your administration. You state that you do not feel that we will have a double dip recession. I agree with you as we are still in the same recession and nothing has changed since you became President.

Peter Elliot

Oak Bluffs

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NO MERCY

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

What do Mitt Romney and Deval Patrick have in common? Both have served an entire term as governor of Massachusetts without granting a single pardon, commutation or grant of clemency.

The Massachusetts Constitution, as well as those of most states and the federal Constitution, confers the power to pardon, commute sentence or grant clemency on the executive — the Governor or the President. It is an important and time-honored power. Especially in the present climate, it should be used.

Over the last 40 years, the United States, the land of the free, has become the land of the incarcerated. With five per cent of the world population we have 25 per cent of the inmates, the largest prison population in the world. We have over two million people in jail. Since 1970, when we had about 400,000 prisoners, 38,000 on drug offenses, the prison population has exploded. Today, we have over 500,000 people in jail on nonviolent drug charges alone. The incarceration rate is between two and 10 times the per capita rate of incarceration in other “civilized” countries like Japan, Canada and the countries in the European Union.

Four decades of excessive sentencing, at a cost of $40,000 per year per inmate and the lag in building new prisons to keep pace have resulted in a fiscal and public safety crisis. The recent Supreme Court ruling ordering California to reduce the 140,000 state prison population by 35,000 because the conditions caused by overcrowding constitute cruel and unusual punishment is the tip of the iceberg.

The overuse of imprisonment is undeniably biased. Poor people and minority groups are targeted.

Simply put, we are sending way too many people to jail for way too long. It is morally wrong. It is unjustifiable, unnecessary and counterproductive from a public safety standpoint. It is fiscally irresponsible and unsustainable. The solution is obvious; reverse this horrid trend and substantially reduce the prison population.

In this context, the abdication of pardon power by the last two state executives is unconscionable. Are there no deserving candidates? Are the executives, including the President, so intimidated by the potential political costs that they have lost all conception of justice and mercy?

Being the world leader in imprisoning people is immoral, embarrassing, unAmerican and fiscally absurd. Do we have the courage and common sense to do something about it?

John Amabile

Vineyard Haven

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FORGET BILL

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Possible compromise: “Hoo-Rah for the Que-Tal.”

Christopher Gray

New York city

and Chappaquonsett

STORM SURGE

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Massachusetts has learned nothing since the Hurricane of 1938 , Hurricane Carol in 1953 and Hurricane Bob 20 years ago.

In New Bedford a hurricane barrier was built in the 1960s by the Army Corps of Engineers with two 440-ton gates. The gates are old now and stayed in the stuck open position for several months in 2009 to make repair of reduction gear.

The Cannon Street power plant on New Bedford harbor was flooded in 1953 and finally closed in 1998. The toxic plant remains there today.

In 2003 the Coast Guard relocated the Tahoma and the Campbell, both 270-foot cutters from New Bedford, to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Me.

After the 1938 hurricane, during World War II shipbuilding moved inland to the Quonset Point Army-Navy base in Rhode Island and the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy.

We have got to question the decision by Governor Patrick and the leaders on Beacon Hill to propose building a $36 million ocean wind turbine port (New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal) behind the hurricane barrier. The tidal surge from Hurricane Bob was 28 feet at the hurricane barrier with wind speeds of 106 mph.

Frank Haggerty

Mattapoisett

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WEDDING NOTES

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

As some of your readers are aware, this past Saturday our daughter, Laura, was married at Wasque Point on Chappaquiddick with a reception following at our home. This event necessitated many trucks to cross on the Chappy ferry during the past week and continuing again this week. We would like to use this opportunity to apologize to our neighbors for the inconveniences created, as well as the decibel level of the celebration, and to express appreciation for their understanding. We would like to thank the staffs of The Trustees of Reservations, the Edgartown police and fire departments, the EMTs, and the captains of the Chappy Ferry, all of whom ensured that the events of the weekend would be pulled off without a hitch. We’d also like to thank the chefs and staffs at l’étoile, Atria,Détente and (especially) Alchemy for great service and food provided at various wedding events, and the Chappy Community Center for the use of their facilities. The support of so many people in Edgartown and on Chappy contributed enormously to making our family celebration memorable , and we are grateful to be part of this community.

Rick and Jenni Schifter

Chappaquiddick

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LOST AND FOUND

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Thank you for placing an ad for my husband’s lost wedding ring in your paper. It was found! The Edgartown police department uses a metal detector at South Beach and had found the ring. We are thrilled to have it back, and my husband is out of “hot water.” Thanks again!

Michele Dominick

Santa Monica, Calif.