I take issue with Mr. Cramer’s whine that “King County voters feel jobs should only go to those with vehicles.” Grab those violins. Such declarations are presumptuous, childish, and exhibit an entitlement mentality.

To own a vehicle, one must purchase it, license it and the driver, insure, fuel and maintain it, not to mention fork over taxes on the car and the fuel. Voters who are coughing up the cash to support their own choice of transportation, often with great sacrifice of other purchases in their lives, are tired of our pockets being continually ransacked to support the transportation choices of others.

Yes, choices. I can practically hear the response of “but it’s not my choice to not be able to afford a car.” I can tell you right now that most of the driving populace at one point or another also couldn’t afford a car. But we shifted our priorities, made choices and did whatever was legally necessary to make a living without blaming our particular predicaments on those people who rightly thought we should support our own economic choices just as they supported theirs.

My husband and I have been married 30 years through stages of poverty, unemployment and comfortable living. We drive nice cars that we’ve worked darn hard for. However, at different points in our financial picture we have walked to work, ridden buses, biked, shared expenses with a co-worker, driven dirt cheap hunks of junk and used Ride Share programs, either to keep expenses down or because we simply couldn’t afford a vehicle at that time. There were circumstances that weren’t pleasant and/or caused hardship, but we made do and had internal motivation to move up in the world, despite challenges.

Life is full of twists and turns and bumps in the road. We will not progress further than the last bump if we sulk and blame others for the bump instead of getting up, dusting ourselves off, reassessing our goals and changing what it will take to meet our goals.

No, Mr. Cramer, we don’t “feel” you (or anyone) should lose your job or that jobs should only go to those with vehicles. As users and daily supporters of our own private transportation, we “think, reason, consider and utilize common sense” that if Metro rider fares are insufficient to support the cost of public transportation, then the users of said transportation need to be the ones reaching deeper into their own wallets to offset the expenses instead of reaching for our wallets.

Harriet Cook, Federal Way