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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (July 21, 2016)
LET TERS Lane County commissioners to subvert the initiative process. This is a transparent move to derail citizens’ rights in favor of timber and extraction industries. Serious health concerns with aerial spraying and clear cutting of private lands that impact riparian as well as creating a monoculture forest are swept under the carpet. Now the commissioners and timber industries want to insure that they can continue their destructive and unhealthy practices unimpeded by being able to eliminate any initiative that might run counter to their vested interests. On the coast we see major evidence of the damage that is being done by the clear cutting and the negative health aspects of spraying. The timber industry is an embarrassment to Oregon with clear cutting rather than selective harvesting and its refusal to end aerial spraying and replace it with land-based application with less toxic herbicides. Now they want to sue the state to be able to clear cut more of Oregon’s forests with the same archaic harvesting methods. Who are they serving? Not you, unless you’re in the timber industry. We are poorly represented on the coast (not having a commissioner from west side of the Coast Range) and the one we do have seems to be firmly in the timber industry’s pocket. We need a board of commissioners that represents every Lane County taxpayer and a board that protects forests and humans, not a board of commissioners that wants to take away the initiative process in the event it doesn’t agree with the timber industry. I am against clear cutting and aerial spraying and I am definitely against 6 July 21, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com a board of commissioners that is turning a blind eye to the health of Oregon’s forests and citizens! We need a change. Vote the commissioners out that are supporting this subversion of the initiative process! Jon Tipple Dunes City SCREAMING OF TREES My insane heart screams at the ripping out of yet more of the trees of our lungs in order to pave the way for even more Happy Hilton Hotel suites for yet even more happy Duck enthusiasts. Such developments perpetuate the ongoing rape of our nature within and without to foster the foisting of voluntary wage-enslavement (i.e., jobs) on yet more status-hungry families of poor middle-class slobs, so that they too can wallow in the material enjoyments of strip- bar-fast-food-furious American culture to their overfed undernourished but saddened hearts’ delight. All set in motion by the money waves rippling from the “Corporate Sports Merchandising Emporium” masquerading as a university, which is basically a trough to ethically launder the sweat shop fortunes of another corporate sport merchandise outlet. We live in a political and economic system centered on selling a bill of goods of inflated dreams of equality and opportunity that has never been delivered over centuries of blatant lies that people continue to believe and blather; a bill of goods that people continue to buy and invest in with their lives and their hopes, and the lives and hopes of their children, as the generations are variously conditioned to perpetuate the values of this collective cancer dependent on perpetual growth fatally feeding on the host of all life. In 1811 it was observed, “In a democracy people get the government they deserve.” The American populace (and its programmed filth being broadcast as dumbocracy to the rest of the world through the sewage of its public media and upheld by its military industrial complex) is more interested and invested in personal entertainment than in being involved in the responsibilities of self-government. The only relevant question is: What can you/we do about it? If there is hope for this experiment in evolution called “humanity,” it is in dissolving the current social structures and mechanisms in favor of reassembling new ones that have more sense of life and the living of it. I suppose it depends on who you ask — and maybe where they are when you ask them: Which would you rather have in downtown Eugene, another Duck-happy Hilton Hotel or a grove of trees? Steve Steele Eugene OPEN LETTER TO BERNIE I listened to you for years on Thom Hartman’s program. I sent you money almost every week during the primary season. I really thought you could make a difference. But now that you have lost because the system is rigged with superdelegates and vote fixing, you throw in the towel and endorse Hillary? It’s almost unbelievable to me. I know many young people through my business. You started a political revolution with them, and it’s the first time I’ve even seen them care about politics. You changed things. If you would have just held your position, you would have an incredible legacy and would be remembered as a hero. But instead, you’ve betrayed a whole generation. You’ve shown them that there is no integrity, and the game is just rigged politics, and the guy they believed in didn’t really care about what he was saying. People learned about the Clintons and the whole elite, top-down power game because of you. Hillary is against everything you stand for. You’d have been better off endorsing The Donald. At least he is against the trade deals, and the wars. You shouldn’t have endorsed anyone, though. Just stood high on your ethical beliefs. You would have been a politician of high moral standing in the history books. Now you won’t even be mentioned. Just another politician. I have even heard on the internet that you have given as much as $2.8 million of your campaign funds to Hillary. That’s despicable. Jim Showker Eugene WHAT REALITY? In his July 14 Viewpoint, Michael Rooke-Ley bemoans his (and his liberal upper-class chums) being out of touch with the lower ranks of society and calls for a need to “reconnect to reality.” He complains that despite their best efforts at delivering “moderation and justice”
