OPINION
Wallowa.com
Wednesday, June 23, 2021
A5
OTHER VIEWS
Carl Kiss
On today’s
Republican
Party
H
i there. Today’s Republican Party
here to thank you all for your con-
tinuing loyalty and support.
It’s been a rough past 7 months. We lost
the presidential election by over 7 million
votes. Then lost the Senate. Then witnessed
an insurrection intended to block Congress
from accepting the Electoral College vote
that same day. So the loser could remain
president. During which some loyal Repub-
licans damaged national treasures, smeared
human feces throughout our Capitol, and
yelled “Hang Mike Pence, Hang Mike
Pence” after constructing gallows on Capi-
tol grounds.
But all these insurrectionists wanted was
for Congress to reject valid election results
and violate our highest law, the U.S. Con-
stitution. To keep Donald in power. As he
asked them to. Nothing worth investigat-
ing there, right? No reason to try to pre-
vent such atrocities in the future, right? (If
Obama had done exactly what Donald did,
and Democrats had therefore attacked our
Capitol, we know you would have been
good with that, too. We know you aren’t
hypocrites.)
Besides, we all know that the insurrec-
tionists were really liberals just dressed as
Donald supporters. We know this despite
the posted angry denials by those we saw
participate in the insurrection, and despite
zero proof. (Thank you, Oregon Republican
Party, for jumping in to help spread this lie.)
Thank you, Newsmax, OAN, and Fox,
for endlessly inflaming you with the lies
and deception you need to remain outraged,
angry, and motivated Republican voters.
After all, you (like most people) make your
best decisions when angry, outraged and
poorly informed.
Thank you for managing to ignore that
we lost over 60 court cases seeking to
reverse the election’s result (even losing
with Donald-appointed judges), given our
zero proof of significant voter fraud. But
that’s the problem with courts. Judges actu-
ally demand proof of something before
believing it. How outrageously stupid and
limiting!
And don’t think we’re ignoring your
completely baseless, but angry and heart-
felt, belief in rampant voter fraud. We’re
passing state laws making it much more dif-
ficult to vote in disproportionately Black,
Brown and young communities. We’re
making voting lines there even longer, by
further cutting staff, reducing or eliminat-
ing drop boxes, banning or severely cutting
back mail-in voting, and closing the polls
when many Black and Brown church-mem-
bers have traditionally voted.
We’re even outlawing giving food and
water to those in need while in a voting
line. Every Black or Brown citizen who has
to leave these longer voting lines for water
or food is potentially one less vote for Dem-
ocrats. Because democracy, contrary to
common perception, does not really mean
that every citizen of age gets to freely vote.
Not when White Republicans control the
state government.
We know many Republicans aren’t rac-
ist, of course. But since a fair number of
our party’s supporters are racist, and our
margins for victory are so slim, we under-
standably fear saying anything that might
offend racist Republicans. So, many thanks
to those of you who aren’t racist but sup-
port our party’s ongoing racist policies with
your vote. We’d be forced to abandon our
racist pursuits if enough of you demanded
we stop them.
Finally, a special thanks to those of you
who treasure your religious beliefs enough
to change God’s commandments. As you
know, the Bible tells us that God’s two most
important commandments include loving
your neighbor. But some of you have per-
sonally revised that commandment, because
you somehow know that God did not mean
for us to love our Black neighbors, our
Brown neighbors, our Asian neighbors,
our immigrant neighbors, our gay or les-
bian neighbors, our trans neighbors, and
our Democratic neighbors. Instead, some
of you believe God meant for us to love
only our straight White Republican neigh-
bors. Granted, this biblical revision is espe-
cially difficult to accept while knowing
Jesus’ skin was brown. But since He’s pic-
tured White almost everywhere He’s por-
trayed, Jesus’ brown skin is just another
truth easily ignored or denied by these loyal
Republicans.
Some may think it the epitome of arro-
gance for these individuals to believe they
know what God wants from them better
than what God told them He wants from
them. But they do. Know this better. Better
than God.
Right?
———
Carl Kiss is an Enterprise lawyer, and
definitely does not speak for today’s Repub-
lican Party.
We need to do better in our approach to fires
OTHER VIEWS
Rob Klavins
resh off the Labor Day fires, and in
the midst of a drought, I imagine
many of us shared a feeling of dread
when we heard of early June wildfires.
Thanks to breathless reporting, west sid-
ers were fearful of coming to a “disaster
area.” With very real impacts to our local
economy, some began cancelling planned
visits. After taking a few deep breaths of
cool, clean, mountain air, I began to pro-
cess things a little more calmly.
The Joseph and Dry Creek fires burned
in a fire-dependent landscape miles from
the nearest paved road. It’s part of a land-
scape that we are spending millions of
dollars to “restore.” There is consensus
that a primary cause of that restoration
need is previous logging and a fire defi-
cit. That is to say — most serious experts
agree we need more fire and less fire
suppression.
Fire addresses the root causes — rather
than just the symptoms — of decades of
mismanagement. With rain on the way,
these fires could have done even more
restoration work. For free.
They could have improved more wild-
life habitat, created more snags, renewed
more systems, and left more money for
real emergencies. Where these fires were
allowed to burn, they increased the het-
F
erogeneity of the landscape and will affect
how future fires burn. This is the anti-
dote to a century of fire suppressions and
makes forests more resilient to future fire
and drought.
Like most wildfires, much of the fire
footprint was in fire-evolved grasslands.
Not surprisingly though, it led to reflexive
calls for more “management” (aka log-
ging) of our forests. It may not be what
some want to hear, but in an age of unde-
niable climate change, we need more fire,
not more logging.
Scientists around the world, and here
at Oregon State University, have demon-
strated that logged forests emit ten times
more carbon than wildfire, beetles, and
other natural disturbances that we futilely
try to suppress with chainsaw resto-
ration. Only about 3% of a tree’s carbon
is burned in a fire. Meanwhile, logging is
Oregon’s number one emitter of carbon.
Ecological and economic concerns
aside, we likely shared another immediate
thought — “I hope everyone stays safe.”
In a press release, our own Oregon
Department of Forestry administrator
Matt Howard told the media “this is prob-
ably one of the most difficult places to
fight fire in Oregon.” In addition to spend-
ing huge amounts of money, the deci-
sion to fight fire risks lives. The best way
to keep those brave folks safe is to keep
them out of harm’s way. I know many
wildland firefighters who resent being
sent out to these sorts of fires.
In the end — and as is usually the case
— weather ultimately stopped the fire.
Make no mistake, some fires are dan-
gerous, destructive and should be fought.
Drought, a fire deficit and manmade cli-
mate change are all realities. But fighting
fire is a choice, and we need to start mak-
ing better ones.
Uncommon bedfellows celebrated the
Forest Service’s decision to let the Gran-
ite Gulch Fire burn in 2019. That break-
through won’t mean much if it’s just a
one-off.
So, other than throwing out piles of
money and risking lives to put out fires,
what other choices do we have?
For starters, we can reduce the risk of
inevitable wildfires by better managing
new development and improving the fire
resistance of existing homes and struc-
tures. We should thin small trees starting
in the structure-ignition zone and work
our way out from there. We should retain
large and old trees across the landscape.
And we must let some fires burn.
The last part of that requires fire-use
planning — something that many are still
reluctant to contemplate, even as they
are eager to encourage spending millions
of taxpayer dollars to create expensive,
destructive, and counterproductive plans
that only double down on past mistakes.
A fire deficit coupled with past log-
ging of large trees, manmade climate
change, overgrazing and increasing devel-
opment means we do have a problem.
But it’s not one we can solve with more
logging, grazing, climate denial and fire
suppression.
We really do know better. Now we just
need to start doing better.
———
Rob Klavins is the Northeast Oregon
field coordinator for Oregon Wild. He lives
near Enterprise and helps run the family
farm and business.
Urge state Legislature to support Senate Bill 582A
REDUCE,
REUSE,
RECYCLE
Peter Ferré
T
he Friends of Wallowa County
Recycling would like to thank all
of you who have left donations at
the Recycling Center. Those donations are
being used for educational materials, tools
and equipment to help volunteers sort the
recyclables, remove unwanted materials
and are being accumulated to use for larger
investments to help expand our recycling
capacity. Thank you for your support and
continued generosity.
We each have the ability to make a
change through our individual actions,
(thank you for reducing, reusing and recy-
cling everything you can), coupled with the
influence we can have on our elected offi-
cials to support legislation that will have a
positive impact on the world we live in and
the communities we call home.
This week, the Oregon Senate is voting
on Senate Bill 582A: Plastic Pollution and
Recycling Modernization Act.
SB 582A offers a visionary restructuring
and modernization of the recycling indus-
try in Oregon that will bring many benefits
to Wallowa County residents and to the res-
idents of Oregon.
SB 582A would result in shared respon-
sibility for the recycling of materials
between consumers and the producers of
materials, while providing incentives to
reduce waste and facilitate the recycling
process. Importantly, the utterly confus-
ing categories of various plastics labeled
as “recyclable,” but for which there are no
practical markets, would be rationalized,
thereby helping to prevent further plas-
tics pollution that has become a crisis for
our oceans. People in rural areas like ours
would be able to more easily participate in
recycling programs. Rural areas like Wal-
lowa County could receive assistance to
help defray the higher cost of transporta-
tion to processing facilities, which threat-
ens the financial viability of rural recycling
programs. Everyone would know what is
and isn’t recyclable, which would greatly
increase the efficiency of recycling oper-
ations across the state. Producers of pack-
aging materials would have real financial
incentives to create better and more easily
recycled materials. The state Department of
Environmental Quality would help ensure
accountability for all the participants in
Oregon’s recycling system and identify
opportunities for further improvements.
With the passage of SB 582A, Oregon
would become a national leader in mod-
ernizing the recycling industry by demon-
strating how creative thinking and innova-
tive structures and systems can effectively
address our continuing waste challenges
and fix our currently broken recycling
system.
Limiting the amount of paper, card-
board, metal and aluminum cans, No. 1 and
No. 2 plastics we use, and bringing the rest
to the Enterprise Recycling Center is mak-
ing a big difference. Thank you.
In addition, we each can have a mean-
ingful impact on the waste management/
recycling world we live in by sending an
email to Sen. Bill Hansell strongly ask-
ing him to support SB 582A. The senate
votes on the bill this week, so it is urgent
that each of us sends an email to Sen.Bill-
Hansell@oregonlegislature.gov before Fri-
day, June 25. A short and sweet — or more
detailed — email asking him to vote for SB
582A is all it takes.
We are all working hard to lessen the
waste we each generate, and make sure we
are recycling everything we currently can.
Emailing Sen. Hansell in support of SB
582A is one more way of encouraging our
elected officials to do the same.
———
Peter Ferré is a member of the Wallowa
County Recycling Task Force.