LET TERS
TINY, PITIFUL GESTURES
TOXIC DOUBLE STANDARDS
There seems to be a perception among
local politicians that the homeless and
their advocates don’t appreciate the tiny
pitiful efforts of local governments to pro-
vide emergency homeless shelter.
That’s not true. We do appreciate their
tiny pitiful efforts; we just know that
they’re tiny and pitiful.
The Eugene City Council and the Lane
County Board of Commissioners favor
what they call “pilot projects” — car
camps, rest stops, etc. — kept as small as
possible and never significantly expanded,
even though they work.
They’re responding not to the desper-
ate need for emergency shelter but the de-
sire of middle-class single-family home
suburbanites to keep poor people out of
“their” neighborhoods.
At the Dec. 11 City Council work ses-
sion, Emily Semple, to her credit, asked
the rest of the council how many more
will die on the streets before the city pro-
vides enough shelter. The tiny pitiful re-
sponse was to use a city email list to try to
get more volunteers for the overwhelmed
Egan Warming Centers.
Lynn Porter
Homeless Action
Eugene
Can the Lane Regional Air Protection
Agency (LRAPA) fulfill its mission of
protecting public health by implementing
current proposals to “streamline” emis-
sion regulations, grant exemptions and
reduce pollution standards in Oakridge?
Doesn’t LRAPA’s mission to protect
public health overrule enabling large in-
dustry to increase pollution to the people’s
air? For 10 years I have been perplexed
how LRAPA allows Lane County’s larg-
est polluters like International Paper’s bio-
mass incinerator (EWEB’s “Green Pow-
er”) and Kingsford Briquet operations to
spew more than 3,000 tons of particulates,
2,000 tons of nitrous oxide and 1,500 tons
of sulfur dioxide per year without requir-
ing these huge polluters to reduce emis-
sions.
LRAPA has quantifiable annual esti-
mates of the deaths and respiratory dis-
eases these toxins cause. Restricting the
use of firewood to heat homes on “red” air
days is understandable, but allowing huge
polluters to foul the people’s air during
“red” days is a double standard.
With the proposed relaxing of
Oakridge’s air emission standards, it
seems LRAPA, LRAPA board member
Jay Bozievich and the mayor of Oakridge
HOT AIR SOCIETY
have teamed up to accommodate Mr.
King’s (King Estate Winery) plans to open
up a hard-rock gravel mine about a mile
east of city limits.
LRAPA staff report states, “Without
the new area designations, it will be nearly
impossible for businesses to obtain a per-
mit to construct new sources of air pollu-
tion in these areas.”
Citizens should demand a delay of pro-
posed changes by Dec. 29 and at the Jan.
11 LRAPA board meeting. LRAPA’s
board minutes for October, November and
December are not posted.
Shannon Wilson
Eugene
UNSAFE FOR BIKES
Another near-life-threatening crash as
an SUV turned right across the bike lane
on 18th while my daughter and I returned
home from school. That is the way most
cyclists are killed in an urban environment.
It’s similar to a car swerving from the
passing lane to an exit off the highway,
except I’ve seldom seen that happen.
The bike lane, I guess, isn’t really seen
as a lane for traffic. The people on it are
not really worthy of a place on the road.
They are an inconvenience and relegated
to the side.
Our vulnerability, even the loss of our
lives, is of little consequence. We’d barely
register as we fall under the wheels of an
SUV that might never see rougher roads.
Every cyclist I know has experienced
this sensation — that his or her life has
been imperiled. It happens to us weekly.
Bi-monthly. Often, we are actually killed.
Bicyclists are killed or seriously in-
jured proportionally more than any other
road user. As more people cycle, this sta-
tistic will continue to rise.
I hope when I’m run over, or my daugh-
ter is, that the driver is made an example
and goes to jail for a long time. I hope
there is a lawsuit against the city. There is
a precedent for such lawsuits.
We must raise the consequence for kill-
ing and imperiling cyclists. The time for
treating bicyclists as a nuisance must end.
We need safe and equal infrastructure. We
are equal human beings with equal rights
to the road.
Otis Haschemeyer
Eugene
THE PRIVILEGED ARE
COMPLACENT
Why does the city of Eugene allow pro-
motion of Christianity in a large banner
that stretches over the public right-of-way
BY TONY CORCOR AN
Expel Greg Walden from Congress!
HIS REPUBLICAN HOUSE TAX GIVEAWAY WILL KILL OREGONIANS
I
s it just me? Or are others asking the same exis-
tential questions? RYFKM? Tax breaks for the
rich? Tax increases for Oregon’s workers, edu-
cators, firefighters, cops? Who benefits? Uncle
Phil? What programs get cut with a trillion dol-
lars less in taxes? Let me guess.
Expulsion sounds kinda radical, right? But there are
others who’ve been expelled or who have quit while
facing expulsion. I remember my first year in office
(1995) when U.S. Senator Bob Packwood resigned
after a senate ethics committee recommended his ex-
pulsion due to his gross sexual misconduct and his at-
tempts to enrich himself through his official position.
It’s hard enough to re-elect good members of
Congress, like our local hero Congressman DeFazio.
But bad members of Congress are really hard to get rid
of once they get elected!
Turns out you can can’t impeach them or recall
them. The House can expel a member but that requires
two-thirds of the members present and voting. Granted,
it’s a pipedream to think that Republican speaker Paul
Ryan will throw sidekick Greg “Repeal and Replace”
Walden under the bus. That doesn’t mean we Orego-
nians shouldn’t demand expulsion based on Walden’s
outright attack on us and his failure to explain why he
sided with rich donors and not his constituents.
There are no specific grounds for an expulsion in
the U.S. Constitution; expulsions in both the House
and the Senate have generally concerned cases of per-
ceived disloyalty to the United States, or the convic-
tion of a criminal statutory offense which involved
4
December 21, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
abuse of one’s official position.
Greg Walden’s one-two tax punch hitting Orego-
nians harder than most other states is treasonous and
an abuse of his political position. He just granted a Re-
publican donor class tax giveaway financed by screwing
most Oregonians, whether they’re Republican, Demo-
crat, Libertarian, non-affiliated or whatever. He and
Paul Ryan decided that excluding our state and local tax
exemptions and creating a 10-year trillion-dollar defi-
cit that will eliminate affordable health care, Medicare,
Medicaid and Social Security is good public policy. All
for the rich. Walden and Ryan have blood on their hands.
The best current evidence that Greg realized that he
really screwed the pooch (literally, not figuratively —
he committed a terrible mistake) is his current avoid-
ance of the tax topic and his leadership role nation-
ally in attacking Oregonians as a member of Speaker
Ryan’s leadership team.
The Oregonian reported that Walden was totally
silent on the effect of his proposed tax breaks on Ore-
gonians, even after Gov. Kate Brown and her challeng-
er Knute “Maybe I’m a Republican” Buehler both con-
fronted Walden with the need to preserve the federal
deduction for state and local taxes. Otherwise, the Or-
egonian reported: “[Walden’s] proposals could sub-
stantially increase taxes for thousands of Oregonians.”
Also, in Walden’s last newsletter, sent a week after the
Republicans passed their deformed tax “reform,” there
was nary a word about it. Expulsion is too kind!
While we’re at it, let’s expel Cedric Hayden, state
representative, House District 7. He’s one of the three
morons causing us grief here in Oregon by causing a
special election on Jan. 23 on Ballot Measure 101. I
hate it when politicians can’t even be honest, even if
they don’t admit they’re wrong.
Despite the crises at the federal level — whether it’s
Jerusalem, Judge Moore or the looting of our federal
lands — we have a huge special election coming up here
in Oregon that we gotta pay attention to: Ballot Measure
101 on Jan. 23, 2018. Hayden and two other ultra-con-
servatives put this measure on the ballot at the bequest
of their rich donors to attack healthcare in Oregon.
Voter turnout is critical. We can only hope that the
anger and despair over the national picture doesn’t dis-
courage turnout among progressives. We need to turn
the anger into “yes” votes on Measure 101. We need to
do what voters recently did in Virginia and New Jersey.
Angry Democrats turned out and won.
There’s so much at stake. Measure 101 protects
healthcare coverage for one in four Oregonians, in-
cluding 400,000 kids. Voting yes means also protecting
Oregon seniors and people with disabilities. The voter
registration deadline for the Jan. 23 measure is Jan. 2,
2018.
Speaking of 2018: The Oregon Legislature con-
venes on Feb. 5, Oregon election primaries happen on
May 15, and the general election is Nov. 6. And, hope-
fully Art Robinson wins his primary and is defeated
for the fifth consecutive time by Peter DeFazio. Maybe
there is a god. ■
Former state Sen. Tony Corcoran of Cottage Grove is a retired state
employee.