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The INDEPENDENT, November 1, 2000
INDEPENDENT
Serving the upper Nehalem River valley. Published twice
monthly, on the first and third Wednesdays of each
month, by Public Opinion Laboratory Ltd., 725 Bridge
Street, Vernonia, OR 97064, as a free newspaper. Edi
tors and Publishers, Dirk & Noni Andersen. Phone/Fax:
503-429-9410, e-mail: noni@vernonia.com
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Opinion_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ I
Presidential candidates
are not all the same
Ralph Nader has had some good ideas and many of them have
been put into practice over the years. But aside from the focus of
his campaign, environmentalism, he is little different from Gore or
Bush. He is also a millionaire, something that is regularly glossed
over, and he has used more negative campaigning, with less
public notice, than all of the other candidates including Pat
Buchanan.
George Bush and his running mate are both oil millionaires and
they aren’t concerned about ruining the Alaskan wilderness for
more oil, but they had a hissy fit when President Clinton recently
tapped the national reserves to bring oil prices down. Bush and
Cheney both managed to avoid Vietnam, as did President Clin
ton; Bush went to the National Guard and Cheney had a college
deferment. They shouldn’t be treated like traitors because of that,
but that’s exactly how the Republican party treated Clinton when
he was a candidate just eight years ago. My, how time flies.
Bush never saw an environmental control he liked and, under
his leadership, Houston now leads the nation in air pollution.
Should we let him do the same for the rest of the country? And
those vaunted education improvements, taking the state from bad
to mediocre, all started before Bush was elected.
Bush and Cheney both want to return poor women to back al
ley butchers for abortions; the well-to-do would simply fly to an
other country. Cheney opposes abortion even in cases of rape or
incest! Abortion shouldn’t be needed, but it is, and that option
must remain both legal and safe.
Bush’s, “I’m a little fuzzy on that concept” doesn’t include tax
cuts for the wealthy, he just doesn’t mention that we would return
to deficit spending in about three years of his program.
Gore is no saint; he has fund raising violations to account for
and, though he “mis-speaks” less often than Bush, he’s held more
accountable because he should know better. That approach
seems to imply that Bush is incapable of knowing better. Gore
used to support tobacco subsidies, but he quit, as did many of us.
Gore enlisted in the U.S. Army during Vietnam; though he was
not in a combat unit, he didn’t use family status to avoid what he
felt was duty. He does not have Clinton’s zipper problem; he nev
er had Bush’s former drinking problem; he’s still happily married
to the same woman he wed right out of college. How’s that for
“bringing morality back to the White House!”?
Gore’s proposed tax cut, even in combination with tax credits,
won't cut as deeply as Bush’s proposal and is far more likely to
actually help lower to middle income families. He has experience
in foreign policy, he does not believe in inserting government be
tween a woman and her conscience, and he has one thing that
Bush can’t begin to match:
Gore has been an active partner in the strategies of the past
eight years that are responsible for the longest sustained period
of economic growth in the U.S. since 1947. Under this adminis
tration, inflation is down, unemployment is down, welfare is down,
wages are up, job growth is up, profits are up.
Unless you really want to go back to deficit spending, unless
you really miss increased interest rates for everyone, reduced
profits, increased unemployment and increased welfare, it makes
no sense at all to vote for anyone except Al Gore for president.
Think about your future, but don’t think “fuzzy.”
Ballots don’t need to be mailed,
can be dropped off at City library
If you haven’t yet mailed your ballot back to the
county courthouse, you have the option of leaving it in
a ballot box at the Vernonia Library.
The ballot box will be accessible November 2 and 3
from Noon to 5:00 p.m.; Nov. 6 from Noon to 5:00 p.m.
and Nov. 7 from Noon to 8:00 p.m.
If you are unaware of the change in mail handling,
please note that mail is no longer routed from Vernon
ia to St. Helens in one day. It now goes from Vernonia
to Portland, then back to St. Helems, in three or more
days.
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Ika Says.
By Dale Webb, member,
Izaak Walton League, Nehalem Valley Chapter
This year’s run of Summer Chinook
salmon appears quite good. We will know just
how good once the spawning counts for this
year are complete. You may have noticed
government vehicles prowling the river with
what looks like a small TV antenna sticking
out the window. No, these are not govern
ment agents spying on the public, they’re spy
ing on salmon.
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
has a big study underway in the Nehalem
River that is designed, hopefully, to get a firm
handle on the population, timing of the run
and distribution of the Chinook salmon that
use our river as home. What appears to be a
TV antenna is actually a directional radio re
ceiver that is used to track radio-tagged fish.
The study works like this: The fish are
caught in entanglement nets in tidewater
above the town of Nehalem. Every fish
caught is marked with a spaghetti tag and
every tenth fish gets a radio tag inserted into
its stomach. Then the researchers start track
ing the radio-tagged salmon while they mi
grate up the river and its tributaries. Once the
salmon start their spawning process, the re
searchers start conducting spawning surveys
in randomly selected areas of the river. By
noting the ratio of marked fish, a population
can be estimated. The more fish that are
marked, the more accurate the population es
timate will be. This study should answer many
questions about the Chinook salmon that call
the Nehalem River home.
Rumor control! No, the timber companies
are not going to close all the gates before elk
season. I talked with representatives of both
Longview Fibre and Olympic Resource Man
agement and both companies stated that
their gates would be open through the end of
rifle bull season. Longview Fibre’s Vernonia
tree farm manager, Tom Budge, did say that
Clear Creek would remain locked up due to
the extensive work that is ongoing in that area
for next year’s World Logging Congress,
which is expected to draw close to 20,000
people. Tom indicated that the area would re
turn to open access for vehicles next year af
ter the show. Clear Creek is open to all non-
motorized traffic this year.
Budge also indicated that, since the com
pany’s withdrawal from the travel manage
ment program sponsored by ODF&W, they
actually have more roads open this year than
last year. Two exceptions, other than Clear
Creek, are Beaver Ridge and the Peterson
tract, both due to active logging operations.
Hunters should regard all active logging oper
ations as closed areas. Longview Fibre’s Co
lumbia River mainline is off limits during the
week (24 hours a day), but is open on the
weekends. Budge also said that, so far this
year, vandalism and hunter-related problems
have been few; this is good news for hunters.
ODF&W is still up to their usual tricks. I
read in the paper the other day that they fi
nally snuck in the new rule where hunters
may now buy two elk tags. As I read the arti
cle, this would apply only to left-over con
trolled hunt tags. For the life of me, I just can
not figure out why we would want to start
something as greedy as this. First, most elk
hunters are not getting to hunt where they
want to hunt each year and, second, they are
not getting to hunt what they want to hunt
each year (spike only hunts). Success rates
are usually under 20 percent - four out of five
hunters go home empty handed - so why
would we want to start giving some people
extra advantages and causing direct compe
tition with hunters who are already having
trouble finding a bull. Oh, I almost forgot,
could it be the $29.50 for each tag?
There was one surprising element in this,
though. The legislature (prom pted by?)
passed a law allowing a person to receive
more than one elk tag at up to four times the
going price. In spite of this, the ODF&W com
missioners set the additional tag price at the
current rate. I guess they didn’t want to be too
greedy.
Actions like this give me pause and make
me wonder if hunting for the average Joe is
going to have a future. We are repeating his
tory as people of money and power slowly
erode public ownership of wildlife and, once
again, are making it a sport of Kings.