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Wednesday, May 13, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
O
P
I N I O
N
Rachel
Marsden
American Voices
Letters to the Editor…
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ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor.
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To the Editor:
As the newest member of the Cloverdale
Fire District board of directors and a 20-year
veteran of the department, I must respond to
the misinformation being published by the
campaign to unseat the incumbent board mem-
bers. I take personal affront to comments made
pertaining to the ability of the current board.
First, the constituents, who the board rep-
resents, approved our 20-year plan by vot-
ing overwhelmingly to provide the funding
to make it happen. The specifications for the
buildings as well as the engines have been for-
mulated over a five-year period (not 20 min-
utes) and have been discussed at almost every
board meeting during that time. The 20-year
plan was unanimously approved by all board
members. The funding provided by the bond is
allocated for specific capital expenditures and
cannot be subverted for other projects, there-
fore financial oversight does not require the
expertise that candidate Rob Malone claims the
board does not have.
Second, at the request of board member
Keith Cyrus and a cost of $4,000, an indepen-
dent survey of our 20-year plan was conducted
by a reputable firm and the results confirmed
our plan met the needed response and fire-
fighter safety goals as required by law and set
by the department. The survey’s top priority
was engine replacement.
Third, each station will have one each of
the three primary-response vehicles and the
station covering the vast majority of calls will
have the additional equipment utilizing the
additional bay described. The board’s job is
to provide policy and fiscal management, not
to micro-manage the operations of the district.
District operations is the job of the fire chief,
Thad Olsen, whose management has reduced
response times overall and provided for greater
firefighter safety and response effectiveness.
It appears that Mr. Cyrus, who has not
voiced a negative vote against any issue in five
years, has somehow distorted the proceedings
of the district board and is supporting an Aspen
Lakes employee for reasons other than public
safety and firefighter safety.
As this election draws to a close, the incum-
bents would like to thank all the community
See LeTTeRS on page 14
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PARIS — Stupidity and
obesity are now matters of
U.S. national security. And
it’s only the tip of a more sig-
nificant iceberg that threat-
ens America from within.
An organization called
Mission: Readiness com-
prised of more than 500
retired generals and military
leaders routinely publishes
reports — including one
just last month — detailing
how a significant number of
American kids these days are
either too fat to be effective
fighters or too low-scoring in
math, literacy, and problem-
solving to pass the basic mil-
itary enlistment exam.
Granted, the way mod-
ern warfare is heading,
future recruits might spend
their days sitting at a desk
and operating a joystick,
directing missile fire from
drones. Lockheed Martin
and Teledyne Scientific &
Imaging have developed
a rifle system for the U.S.
Department of Defense
called “EXACTO” that
allows amateurs to hit tar-
gets at extreme ranges, effec-
tively democratizing sniper
credentials.
Sounds like the U.S. mili-
tary has a good jump on the
potentially depressing future
of warfare, using innovative
technology to compensate
for a generation of recruits
too fat to fight.
Meanwhile, many com-
mentators missed the point
when Russian President
Vladimir Putin recently
called for the reinstitution
of mandatory minimum fit-
ness standards for Russian
schoolkids by 2016. Britain’s
Telegraph newspaper called
it “the revival of the Soviet-
era physical evaluation pro-
gramme.” Apparently physi-
cal fitness standards promote
communism. Maybe we can
just declare all standards
“communist” and do away
with them completely.
I recall the similar
“ParticipACTION” program
while growing up in Canada.
Intended to promote physi-
cal fitness and healthy living,
the program taught me the
importance of goal-setting,
the value of uncompromis-
ing standards, and the rela-
tionship between effort and
reward. Last I checked, those
tenets represented the very
foundation of excellence in a
free society.
Conventional thinking in
America these days dictates
that if enough people aren’t
going to step up to attain
high standards, then the stan-
dards will just have to get
over themselves.
Excuses are rampant in
modern society, and any
excuse will do: the bad econ-
omy, the lack of government
intervention (or too much of
it), the outsourcing of jobs
or the depression of wages
through globalization. Not to
say that some of these factors
aren’t legitimate, but none
should be accepted as valid
excuses for complacency.
The “American dream”
has gone from something
that’s earned to an assumed
right. Any adverse conse-
quences for bad choices are
externalized. Someone or
something else is always
scapegoated. And when that
transfer of accountability
fails to satisfy, the end result
is demoralization. When
a citizenry experiences
demoralization en masse, it
becomes highly vulnerable.
Take the recent rioting in
Baltimore. Rioting isn’t an
activity favored by rational
people. It’s a political tactic
favored by the frustrated,
impatient, and hopeless.
Riots appeal to the demoral-
ized for whom the material
destruction of one’s com-
munity is little more than
a means to an end. There’s
no point in arguing over
whether rioters have a right
to feel that way. They simply
do.
Last weekend, two appar-
ent converts to radical Islam
showed up with guns outside
a Prophet Muhammad car-
toon exhibition in Garland,
Texas, fired at a security
guard and were subsequently
shot to death by police.
Regardless of how the two
gunmen felt about the art or
Islam, how disposable to do
you have to consider your
life in order to do something
like this?
Experts are struggling
to figure out ways to inter-
rupt the self-radicalization
process that some young
Americans choose to
undergo. It’s the individual
and the culture that need
hardening.
© 2015 Tribune Content
Agency, LLC.
Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.