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”