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Wednesday, February 15, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
O
P
I
N I
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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. Let-
ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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:
I am writing to say thank you to the Oregon
DOT and to the City of Sisters councilors who
had the lives of the residents of Sisters in mind
when they approved the roundabout at Barclay
and Highway 20.
If you will just “Google” “US DOT round-
abouts” it will take you to the website “https://
safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/innovative/
roundabouts/” where you will see the facts
that have been presented at public meet-
ings concerning the Sisters roundabout. You
will find there “The FHWA Office of Safety
identified roundabouts as a Proven Safety
Countermeasure because of their ability to
substantially reduce the types of crashes that
result in injury or loss of life.” Also that “Most
significantly, roundabouts REDUCE the types
of crashes where people are seriously hurt
or killed by 78-82 percent when compared
to conventional stop-controlled and signal-
ized intersections, per the AASHTO Highway
Safety Manual.”
This fact was also cited when ODOT repre-
sentatives related that when traffic lights were
placed in several high accident intersections
in the Bend area the number of accidents DID
NOT go down.
The roundabout at Barclay and Highway
20 has the main benefit of reducing the speed
of vehicles coming into Sisters. Many driv-
ers do not make the transition from highway
speeds coming into town. The roundabout
will slow traffic to 15-25 mph and prevent
the high-speed “T-bone” type accidents that
have plagued that intersection. A traffic light
doesn’t do that. A roundabout forces you to
slow (curbs) and prevents “T-bone” impacts
See LETTERS on page 22
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PARIS — In the run-up to
the recent U.S. presidential
election, a lot of conserva-
tives began using the term
“cuck” to describe “cuck-
olded” males beholden to
leftist policies. Lately, some
conservatives have been
applying that rather unflatter-
ing term to Canadian Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau, one
of the few Western leaders
staying the globalist course
while other countries opt for
a greater degree of national
security.
When U.S. President
Donald Trump imposed a
90-day immigration ban
on refugees and visa hold-
ers from certain Muslim-
majority nations, Trudeau
responded on Twitter:
“To those fleeing per-
secution, terror & war,
Canadians will welcome
you, regardless of your faith.
Diversity is our strength
#WelcomeToCanada.”
The tweet was celebrated
by open-borders activists
worldwide.
What was much less
reported than Trudeau’s wel-
come to refugees was the
fact that Canada has actually
capped private sponsorship
of Syrian and Iraqi refugees
for this year at 1,000.
So that’s good news for
Canadians worried about
national security, right?
Don’t worry about Trudeau’s
tweet, because the govern-
ment is putting a tight cap on
refugee sponsorship.
Except that it’s the much
greater number of govern-
ment-sponsored Syrian refu-
gees that isn’t being capped
so strictly.
Canada has taken in
39,671 Syrian refugees since
November 2015. According
to the government’s own
data, most of them are
unskilled, lack higher educa-
tion and don’t speak either
English or French. A recent
survey by the Immigrant
Services Society of British
Columbia noted that only
about 17 percent of B.C.’s
government-sponsored refu-
gees are actually working.
Most of those who have
found jobs are working in
retail, hospitality, manufac-
turing and construction —
relatively unskilled sectors
that pit them against locals
for employment. Many of
those among the first wave
of refugees are now com-
plaining about their one-
year resettlement assistance
money running out.
Trudeau consistently
leverages discrepancies
between image and reality
— illusions that can be used
to appease both the left and
right sides of the political
spectrum.
Take Trudeau’s repeated
declarations about the impor-
tance of climate change,
which have helped him win
over environmental activ-
ists. Trudeau nonetheless
applauded Trump’s recent
revival of the Keystone XL
pipeline despite the project
being at the top of environ-
mentalists’ hit list in both
Canada and the U.S.
It’s not a foolish strategy
that Trudeau is employing.
It’s difficult to convince peo-
ple to rebel against a leader
who appeases potential
opponents by saying all the
things they want to hear.
The manner in which a
country’s citizens react to
the adverse effects of global-
ization can be significantly
attributed to that country’s
history. Canada doesn’t have
the revolutionary history of
the United States or France,
and Canadians tend to pride
themselves on diplomatic
thoughtfulness over brute
force in response to chal-
lenges. Canadians usually
just “vote the buggers out”
long before protests spill into
the streets.
Trudeau benefits from the
fact that Canada never fully
bought into globalism. The
country has had the good
sense to avoid donning the
economic straightjacket that
Europe got itself into, favor-
ing the sort of balanced trade
agreements that the United
Kingdom is now seeking in
the wake of the Brexit vote.
Canada also benefits from
having a lot of space and an
ocean separating it from the
cultural tsunami that Europe
is currently experiencing.
Canada doesn’t have
the same sense of urgency
that other Western nations
have in this era of anti-glo-
balist backlash. The two-
faced approach currently
being taken by Trudeau and
the Canadian government
mostly has citizens blissfully
ignorant or confused. Fog of
war isn’t a bad strategy as
long as people don’t notice a
negative change in their daily
lives — and the Canadian
government has yet to see
what happens when people
do.
Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.