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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 7, 2015)
2 Wednesday, January 7, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Rachel Marsden American Voices Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Letters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not neces- sarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday. To the Editor: In mid-November we launched our annual donation campaign for the Sisters Park & Recreation District. The campaign is going great so far with donations this year ahead of this time last year, so thank you to all those who have donated. We can’t do this without you. This year’s donor campaign is focused on our Community Schools Program, and our Scholarship Program. Both of these pro- grams are almost entirely funded by grants and donations. The Community Schools Program provides after-school programming for kids in Sisters, and is largely funded by a grant from the Oregon Community Foundation and the Ford Family Foundation. As part of this grant, there is a matching component. OCF will match any donations we raise up to $10,000. Due to generous dona- tions we have currently raised around $6,000; once the match is applied this will have a $12,000 impact on the families we serve in the community. We are really hoping to raise the full $10,000 so we can take full advantage of the match. The scholarship program provides financial assistance to kids from low-income families, so that they can take part in any SPRD pro- gram. Because the Sisters Park & Recreation District operates on a very low percentage of tax subsidy, program fees are set at a level that covers the full cost of operating the program. Any reduction in fees would result in pro- grams not being able to operate, therefore we must rely on donations to pay the fees for the children who cannot afford to. On average this requires about $30,000 to $40,000 to provide financial assistance for children participating in our programs. SPRD strives to maintain a philosophy that no child will be turned away because of an inability to pay. The only way we are able See letters on page 16 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday thursday friday saturday sunday Monday Patchy fog Fog Patchy fog Mostly cloudy Mostly cloudy Cloudy 50/32 46/30 46/33 45/30 43/31 42/na The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Publisher - Editor: Kiki Dolson News Editor: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Williver Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken Advertising: Lisa Buckley Graphic Design: Jess Draper Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Accounting: Erin Bordonaro The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $40; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. “Subversion intro- duced from the outside.” That’s part of Encyclopedia Britannica’s definition for a Trojan horse, the hollow structure that allowed Greek soldiers to penetrate the city of Troy and win the Trojan War. What if the drop in oil prices currently making everyone cheer at the pumps is exactly that — a Trojan horse? Subversion theory dic- tates that in order for an offensive move to be effec- tive, it has to be welcomed. And who in America isn’t psyched about cheap gas right now? Meanwhile, the U.S. government likely feels differently. It was set to reap profits from its shale boom — that is, before Saudi-led OPEC decided to flood the market with massive supply. To whose ultimate ben- efit is the price drop? On the face of it, the only real benefactors appear to be global consumers. So then why bother flooding the market? Despite the Saudi oil minister suggesting that his country wouldn’t mind watching oil prices take an even greater plunge, Saudi Arabia is still taking an income cut on its primary source of revenue at a time when it’s projecting a $39 billion deficit for 2015. Why are the Saudis pretend- ing that a kick in the rear is a gluteal massage? One theory is that Saudi Arabia and the U.S. are conspiring to weaken the economies of Russia and Iran. The motives would make enough sense. With respect to Iran, Saudi Sunni and Iranian Shiite regimes have long hated each other, while America is perpetu- ally concerned about Iranian nuclear unpredictability. On the Russian front, Saudis and Russians have been at each other’s throats over Saudi funding of Islamic terrorism in Russia’s North Caucasus region and over Russia’s defense of Assad in the interests of maintain- ing Russian oil interests and of curtailing Islamic t erro ri s m . Mean wh i l e, the U.S. currently seems intent on squeezing Russia economically. But as much sense as a U.S.-Saudi Arabia conspiracy theory might make, there are some sig- nificant problems with it. The U.S. chose Russia as a partner over Saudi Arabia and Qatar when faced with that choice in Syria last year. Moreover, Russian and Saudi ministers met in Moscow in November to discuss cooperating on oil to better manage their respec- tive economic interests. That last fact alone flies in the face of any Saudi-U.S oil price conspiracy theory. An arguably more plau- sible theory is that if any nation is colluding with Saudi Arabia, it’s China, the top global net importer of petroleum products and the country that’s most ben- efiting from the bargain prices at the pump these days. China is also the only player that couldn’t care less about oil revenues. Sitting in 49th place in the world for crude exports, China relies on manufacturing for its revenues. Unlike every- one else in this game, when China lays an oil pipeline in a foreign country, it’s not for profit — it’s just a mas- sive straw delivering the milkshake to the insatiable masses back home. Saudi Arabia is already China’s top oil supplier, and China doesn’t care about its partners’ ideological prefer- ences. It’s a match made in heaven. If the Saudis and Chinese are wheeling and dealing on oil prices for rewards to be specified later, then Russia, North America and Europe will eventually all end up sobbing into their alcoholic beverages of preference as their liquid gold drops in value. And while we consumers may enjoy the price break now, government and indus- try oil-revenue loss will come back to bite us in the form of job losses and fiscal cutbacks—requiring even more U.S. debt to be bought up by its primary holder: China. Enjoy the cheap gas, but let’s just hope that it doesn’t end up costing us far more than we could ever have imagined. © 2014 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.