Editor:

I want to express my agreement with and thanks to Paul Mann for his "Bomb Throwers and Bridge Builders" column in the Feb. 5 North Coast Journal. He hit it right. The days he mentioned that included checks and balances and compromise are long gone. He mentioned when Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took control of the House the phrase they used emphatically was "no compromise."

I was a witness to the White House and the Congress on opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue when hard battles were waged in Congress by members who also talked with one another after the floor tussles. I was there between 1968 and 1999 and was amazed at how decorum left, working together left, compromise left.

Lyndon Johnson went to the White House from Congress. He knew how to pull the two sides together. Now our legislators are elected and immediately begin to work for their re-election. Elections are being bought. We now know the Koch brothers plan to spend nearly $1 billion to buy the legislators they want and we will not know where that money is going. This all must change. Now.

Dave Rosso, Eureka