letters
TO THE EDITOR
GROWNUPS HAVE SPOKEN
On May 17, the voters of this community
sent a clear message that they couldn’t
care less about your future. This was not
done by crackpot politicians elected from
other states to the federal government,
or even by people from a different part
of Oregon. It was the so-called grownup
population of Eugene, people you see in
your neighborhood every day, who had the
opportunity to save something vital about
our schools, and who enthusiastically
kicked it down. That had to hurt.
During your many coming “furlough
days,” you might want to go have a look at
some of the fancy houses in the Cal Young
area and on the edge of town. The decision
was made to make your schools suck so that
the people who live there could continue to
live in luxury without paying taxes. You’re
not allowed in those houses. And now, so
that they can stay in the lifestyle to which
they’re accustomed, you won’t be allowed
in your schools as much either.
The job outlook for our community
just took a big hit too. There aren’t many
employers who will go out of their way
to set up in a community with a poorly
educated workforce, and we already have
as many Wal-Marts as we need.
However, our community has not
forgotten you entirely. When you’re given
a diploma and set loose with no education,
viewpoint
no marketable skills, and no job outlook,
the people who voted your school measure
down will spare no expense to see that
your prison cell is ready for you.
Andrew Ross
Eugene
ORI BAD TASTE
I am a former masters student at the
UO, and I continue to make my home in
Eugene after leaving the university. I plan
to be here for the rest of my life, and I use
and love the riverfront bike trail dearly.
The originally proposed site for the new
ORI parking lot (and building) is not in the
best interest of the people planning this
development. In light of the huge outpouring
of pubic disapproval, if they continue to push
the original plan through, they are going to
leave a bad taste in the mouth of Eugene and
the UO community for years to come. This
taste is not easy to get out.
I would encourage the people plan-
ning the proposed ORI building to choose
a different, more suitable site that isn’t so
controversial. It seems that 1700 Millrace
Drive — a huge open lot within an already
existing offi ce park — would be an ideal
location.
I came previously from Cornell
University, where a strikingly similar
affair took place over a proposed parking
lot to be built over a small patch of historic
WOOD WASTE
I built houses for nearly 20 years.
Houses are big, so instead of making
them in a factory, they are made on site
using factory mass production techniques.
Contractors are paid by the building,
meaning you make more money the
faster you are. An essential element to all
this is dimensional lumber, because like
McDonald’s, uniformity means speed. So
8-foot sheets of plywood and 8-foot sheets
of drywall land perfectly on studs and
BY GORDON LAFER
It’s Not a
Deficit; It’s
Robbery
I
f I hear one more rich person complain about how
we can’t afford healthcare or education for the
little people, I’m going to shoot someone.
“We’re tapped out,” cries millionaire heiress
Jennifer Solomon. Schools have to “live within their
budgets, just like we have to.” Sure — if only those
whiny kids and their loser parents would follow
Solomon’s example, and go out and inherit their own
timber companies!
The truth is that we’re not “broke” — neither Oregon
nor the country as a whole. There’s plenty of money
in the country. The problem is that it’s being hoarded
by the people at the top — who buy off politicians to
make sure that they keep getting richer while the rest
of us live in growing fear for ourselves and our kids.
Almost every state is now facing huge budget
crises, with devastating cuts being forced on
communities around the country. In Arizona, the
Governor has proposed cutting off health insurance
for nearly 300,000 people — including some in the
middle of chemotherapy or dialysis treatments. The
city of Camden, NJ has laid off half its police force,
and in Cleveland fi ve fi rehouses are being shut down.
Texas is contemplating closing 850 of the state’s
1,000 nursing homes, forcing the frail low-income
elderly out into the streets. There’s no question that
people will die as a result of these cuts.
Here in Oregon, thousands of people who are
struggling to make it through the recession are
being cut off from healthcare, food stamps and
nursery school for their kids. Training and treatment
programs for developmentally disabled people will
be eliminated. And employees at the UO are being
4 MAY 26, 2011
woodland. The administration there
refused to listen to public outcry, and
sued and sued until they got their way.
The affair became national news, the
university was very publicly embarrassed,
and still its memory lives on.
I would ask the UO president, the
head of ORI, and the developers to please
consider whether or not they want to
repeat this sad story in our town.
Ethan Rainwater
Eugene
EUGENE WEEKLY
asked to take a 20 percent cut — a setback that will
doubtless force some into bankruptcy and others to
lose their homes.
But none of this is necessary.
The entire budget shortfall — for every state in
the country — could be made up by doing two simple
things.
First, end the tax cuts created by President
Bush for people who make more
than $250,000 a year. We’re now
giving up $50 billion a year to
help these people who need it the
least. Second, make the rich play
by the same rules as everyone
else. Ninety percent of the money
earned by buying and selling stocks
on Wall Street goes to the richest
10 percent of the country — most of
it to people who make more than a
million dollars a year. But incredibly,
these people pay a lower income
tax rate than do regular working
Americans. The price of letting the Wall Streeters off
easy is almost $90 billion a year. Those two things
together add up to more than the total budget defi cit
in all the states in the country.
That’s it. The rich pay their fair share and the
defi cit is gone. Teachers are back in the classroom,
the elderly infi rm are back in nursing homes, cancer
patients are back in chemo, cops and fi refi ghters are
back on the street, and hard-working UO employees
can continue to earn a modest but decent living.
But the Republicans have pledged their undying
opposition to both these proposals — raising taxes
on the rich is “unacceptable,” insists House Speaker
John Boehner — and the Democrats are too spineless
to force the issue.
As a political scientist, I’m sometimes asked how
it’s possible in a democracy that laws get passed
that run against the interests of the majority. But
you don’t need to be a professor to know the answer:
Politicians are in hock to the rich.
If you thought you had a voice in the political
process because you gave someone $20 over the
internet — sorry, but you’ve been played. In last year’s
Congressional elections, more than two-thirds of all
campaign contributions came from the top 1 percent
of the population. There’s no place for the little
people in this process. Even the labor movement —
the only serious voice on behalf of normal working
Americans — was outspent 20-to-1 by
corporations.
It’s no wonder that a majority of
Americans are so disillusioned with
both Democrats and Republicans
that they believe the country needs
a third party. I think that part of what
people on both the left and the right
long for is a sense of honor in politics,
rather the clever manipulations
or weasely evasiveness that have
become the hallmark of elected
offi cials.
I’ve long since accepted that we
live in an Orwellian era, where people who want to
destroy schools and undercut job standards get to
call themselves “Citizens for Jobs and Schools.”
But once in a while I still fantasize about what it
would be like if politicians actually told the truth.
If John Boehner had the guts to man up and be
honest, here’s what he’d have to say: “I believe it’s
so important to give more money to the richest
people in the country that I’m willing to have kids
kicked out of daycare, old people made homeless,
and cancer patients denied treatment in order to pay
for it.” Because that’s the truth, and anything else is
political spin designed to keep us all clueless sheep.
As the old saying goes, don’t piss down my back
and tell me it’s raining. The money’s there; the only
question is whether we use it on teachers for our kids
and nursing homes for our parents, or to help out
poor Jennifer Solomon in her moment of need.
In 2009-10, UO professor Gordon Lafer served as a senior policy advisor to
the U.S. House of Representatives.
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