One of the problems with free speech is that it tends to cheapen thought.  In the current anti-intellectual climate, opinion, in a duel with fact and truth, generally wins.

As a participant in many, many sessions about the shopping mall called Redmond Town Center, I can assure anyone whose bias has not completely succumbed to prejudice that former Mayor Rosemarie Ives did not chase Nordstrom out of the mall, since it was never there, but she had nothing to do with the store not coming there in the first place. (Redmond Reporter, Letters, Feb. 24).

When the mind’s agility begins to atrophy, one seeks refuge in the mindless mantras of the day.  It can hardly be defended that there was a job-killing assault on Redmond during Ives’s tenure.

For at least the last two decades, the city has had a job-housing imbalance.  There have been more jobs in the city than there have been places to put those who were filling them.  Furthermore, an administration may influence yet is bound to carry out policies set by the City Council.  But the current, politically popular phrase is job-killing, so it is no surprise that it is embraced by those who would look facts in the face and then turn away.

Richard L. Grubb, Redmond