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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (June 13, 2018)
2 Wednesday, June 13, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Where is the love for Oregon and Country? Steve Nugent Guest Columnist 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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 noticed that many of the prescribed burns on National Forest Land have a lot of fresh stumps and large piles of left-behind branches, presumably from the logged trees. Though I understand that fire is a natural part of the cycle, I feel confused over the idea that intentionally setting fires outside of the natural fire season, potentially setting/con- trolling those fires with chemicals, cutting down trees, hauling the cut trees away, pil- ing remaining branches up, and creating new roads to manage these prescribed areas is any- where close to what would happen in a natural fire event. My understanding of a natural fire is that the trees and down wood burn during the time of year when nature deems it to happen. How is the current strategy actually mimicking nature by intentionally causing fires without leaving all of the trees and down wood in place? Isn’t fire ecology about allowing the down wood and remaining trees to burn in place so that the resulting ashes can feed the current and future flora and fauna? Where is all the wood going? Leslie Hawes s s s To the Editor: I would like to respond to the guest column (“Open the gate,” The Nugget, June 6, page 2) by Glenn Brown. First of all, he is wrong when he stated that ODOT plows the road twice. ODOT plows the road only once and it isn’t to make a bike See LETTERS on page 24 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Sunny Mostly Sunny Partly Cloudy Light Rain Showers Showers 70/40 73/43 71/44 73/50 73/50 80/53 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC 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. Editor in Chief: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken Graphic Design: Jess Draper Community Marketing Partners: Patti Jo Beal & Vicki Curlett Accounting: Erin Bordonaro Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Owner: J. Louis Mullen The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2018 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC. 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. Jeff Mackey’s letter last week supported Greg Walden for trying to repeal Obamacare and replace it with Walden’s bare-bones plan that would have resulted in 1/3 of Central Oregonians losing their health insur- ance. This plan was unani- mously rejected by all heath- care organizations. Even Republicans realized that it was garbage and voted it down. You cannot convince me that Walden is looking after Central Oregonians’ best interests. I participated in protests to get Walden to hold a Town Hall in Bend on his health plan. He never showed his face to defend it. Health insurance is a bur- den for everyone, until you need it. I have heard many stories from those who hated Obamacare until they were really sick and realized how great it is. Rather than modi- fying Obamacare to address its weaknesses, Walden’s plan would have replaced it with low-quality, cheap insurance with payout limits, no included preventive care, eliminating the Individual Mandate and Medicaid expansion. Totally worth- less and likely to cause many people to go into bankruptcy or die when catastrophic health issues occur, with nothing to keep insurance companies in check. W h a t c o n s e r v a t i v e s need to realize is that Obamacare was based on a GOP plan already imple- mented and working well in Massachusetts. This plan used market-forces and pri- vate insurance marketplace rather than government-con- trolled healthcare like most other developed countries have. ACA enabled mil- lions of consumers to have healthcare for the first time. It cost more for a few, but the insurance was much better. Obama backed this because he wanted buy-in from Republicans in Congress. If left to his own preferences, I suspect that Obama would go for a Bernie Sanders-style single-payer system con- trolled by the government instead. Obama was trying to get compromise on this rather than something that the other party would object to. For this compromise, Obama got years of obstruc- tion in return. It became a political football for Republicans to discredit Obama. It’s still a good plan and the ONLY way to get to a market-driven insurance system that actually works. Then Mackey asks “What did I miss?” listing lower taxes, rule of law, creating jobs and greater security that he believes we have now, as if Walden or Trump had any- thing to do with these. Trump has created the illusion of greater security rather than actually improv- ing it. How is it possible that we are more secure when: • He has done everything that Putin wants in order to break up the world order that has benefited the U.S. since WWII and degrade our posi- tion as world leaders, includ- ing: Non-support of NATO, siding with Russia on Assad, starting trade-wars with our allies and backing out of the Iran nuclear deal. • He trades insults pub- licly with North Korea, almost escalating to nuclear war • Allies are now reluctant to share intelligence because it might get disclosed pub- licly by Trump • FBI informants are now reluctant to cooper- ate because they might be compromised • Allies don’t trust our word anymore because we are backing out of so many agreements • Russians can interfere with our politics and spread propaganda with impunity and the Whitehouse says nothing • Immigrant parents are being separated from their children, against interna- tional law • True felons are being pardoned for political purposes • Nothing significant is being done to address the opioid crisis • Rhetoric from Trump has made some of the popu- lation untrusting of legiti- mate news sources and trust- ing of political propaganda from dubious sources • Trump himself uses unsecured phones for official communication. If Hillary did this, she would be in jail. Rule of law? You must be kidding. Laws only apply to the little people in the U.S. now. Laws don’t apply to Trump. Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.
