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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 14, 2003)
te,,ers TO THE EQITOR NOT SO CLUELESS I must take issue with your recent -article "Defazio & Wyden: Clueless Lobbyists?" (8/7), which suggested that Congressman Peter Defazio and Senator Ron Wyden were misguided in thinking that the Bush adminis- tration's efforts to impose a tariff on Hynix may undermine its Eugene plant, where 1,000 people currently work . While it is possible that tariffs on Hynix imports could encourage them to increase production at their Eugene facility, the fact is that this site is already one of the company's most productive and best-equipped. We don't need artificial tariffs to encourage them to produce here. What we need is to make sure the company as a whole has the resources to continue to invest in upgrading their products and facilities so that they can stay ahead of the competition. The proposed tariffs are largely in response to lobbying by Sen. Larry Craig ofldaho, who is trying to obtain a competitive advantage for the Micron facility in his state. It is only appro- priate that Sen. Wyden and U.S. Rep. Defazio, along with Sen. Gordon Smith, have weighed in on behalf of a besieged company with a strong Oregon presence. I personally want to thank Wyden and Defazio for taking the time to testify before the International Trade Commission on this matter. I also want to thankEW for finally ac- knowledging the major economic contribu- tion Hynix is making to our community. Jack Roberts Lane Metro Partnership SHABBY TREATMENT Oregon citizens: Please ask Gov. Kulongoski to direct his attention to the dete- riorating labor dispute in the Oregon University System (OUS). • Higher Education state employees are being treated shabbily compared to other state workers in the Department of Administration Services (DAS). The Kulongoski administration dealt with DAS workers in a mutually respectful and con- structive process, and a tentative agreement will soon be approved. Sadly, university employees are assaulted with unacceptable contract proposals that weaken our rights. Chancellor Richard Jarvis would slash seniority and layoff protections in the current contract. Please ask the gover- nor why OUS is attacking the workers who keep the seven university campuses operat- ing smoothly. Union (SEIU) negotiators have agreed to economic parity with the proposed DAS agreement. Yet the chancellor rejected our proposal and refuses lQ delete insulting take- away language. In the DAS agreement, part- time workers get fully covered health insur- ance, but university part-timers will pay out- rageous premiums. Yet part-time university managers enjoy fully paid health coverage! Higher education workers are now in strike preparation mode! If we are pushed to strike the first day of classes in September due to hostile OUS proposals, the blame for the shutdown of campuses will rest squarely on Chancellor Jarvis! Join me in urging Kulongoski to become personally involved in the OUS labor discus- sions before the situation worsens. Please call, fax or email the governor! Phone: (503) 378-4582; fax : 378-6827; or e-mail via www.governor.state.or.us/contact.htm James Jacobson Former UO bargaining table rep. WJIW.QU!LBDQW8BKLV .COm Final Perfomance: Friday, Aug 15th! Tix: 682-5000 FEED HUNGRY TABLES I say kudos to UO President frohnmayer for his bully promotion of a new basketball arena to replace Mac Court. His continued, aggressive promotion of the athletic program · should convince all true believers that UO is in good hands. The benefits of promoting these athletic programs are many: They give students an ap- preciation firsthand of our dynamic free mar- ket system, they instill a deep respect for cut- throat competition so important to our capital- istic system, and they provide an antidote to and relief from the liberal claptrap students are assaulted with daily in the classroom. Dave's deft hand at managing the liberal bias at the university has been remarkable. Just a few years ago he appeared to-kowtow to a small group of complainers who had camped out in front of Johnson Hall to protest Nike's so called sweatshops. But instead of confronta- tion, he did an end run around them and in the process brought a righteously outraged Phil Knight back into the fold. And unlike our other president, Dave doesn't need handlers! Clearly, this proposed facility is a winner. For one it gives the university an opportunity, as Dave put it, to put "some bread on a whole lot of tables in Eugene-Springfield that have been pretty hungry." It also means that those generous contributors now being organized by Phil will get the most bang for the buck by the UO Foundation's plan to create a non- profit to build the arena. This strategy will re- lieve all those sub-contractors of having to offer union wages to their workers. And to those snivelers who might com- plain that the $130 million of private money raised could better serve other university pro- grams during tight budgets, I say let's get with the agenda! Educating our university students will only get in the way of preparing them for their future role managing the un- derclass in this country, just as Phil has so ably done overseas. 6u~ -4 Musi ca l .=able of 13r-oa dw a~ ~ LibertyBank Peter Ferris Eugene THE SONS ARE DEAD? I just went out on the Internet to see for myself what our government is passing off as evidence that Saddam Hussein's two sons Odai and Qusai are, ind~ed, dead. After care- ful examination, between the published be- fore and after pictures, there was no way that I could visually conclude that the allegations of our government are true. I must say, that a IO-Year-old with an Instamatic camera could have taken better quality photographs. It would have helped if a professional photographer were to have taken full frontal and side views, and then have them com- pared, side-by-side, to similar views when the two men were alive. Unfortunately, the angles and quality of these morbid pictures are such that no definitive conclusion can be made, particularly, if I were an Iraqi citizen fearing for my life from retributions from these two henchmen. · I am gravely disappointed , and equally concerned, that our government is acting so irresponsibly and pitifully, as to think that such a poor quality effort would suffice to prove to the Iraqi people that these two pur- ported thugs are dead. I cannot help but think that our government is once again trying to deceive us, and the rest of the world, to possi- bly enhance the public opinion polls of our own homegrown illegally elected regime . John IL Haines, MD Kent A. Karren, MD Robert IL Davis, MD . The Eye Center William A. Fleenor Mapleton eugene we~KlV AUGUST 14, 2003 5
