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About The independent. (Vernonia, Or.) 1986-current | View Entire Issue (April 1, 2010)
The INDEPENDENT, April 1, 2010 Page 21 Letters From page 3 Higher vehicle fees hurt the unemployed To the Editor: I feel duty bound to speak out for the retired, unemployed and poorer citizens of the state of Oregon, especially Columbia County residents, where I re- side. Last November our Gover- nor decided to hit us again by cramming through a number of tax issues that have to be ab- sorbed by us without a vote of the people. I am alluding to the increase in vehicle registration fees that became effective Oc- tober 1, 2009, to mention one. Our legislators, with the ex- ception of a few, approved this measure right in the middle of a severe recession and in an ex- tremely high unemployment pe- riod. I think most people know that increased revenue is a necessary evil but to continue to increase taxes on citizens who can least afford to pay, es- pecially during this recession and high unemployment period, is a travesty. I am a retired union repre- sentative and can personally attest to situations where peo- ple have been permanently dis- placed by plant closures and down-sizing in the wood prod- ucts industry that resulted in losses of jobs with little, if any, chance of finding new employ- ment. In one case that I am very familiar with the only job a person was able to find was in the Portland area at minimum wage and after transportation costs barely netted him a profit. Many others have exhausted their unemployment benefits and are without any health care or any appreciable income. I truly believe that there were other solutions to raise revenue other than what was mandated by the last legislative session. It is time that someone gets cre- ative down at Salem without further taxes on citizens that simply cannot afford it. Before the vote on HB 2001 I emailed my district legislators and pleaded with them to VOTE NO but of course they voted yes and didn’t even have the courtesy to respond to my email. It is time that we the voters stand up and be counted and remember in future elections to get better informed on legisla- tive candidates as well as other elected officials that will be rep- resenting us. We simply cannot afford to pay higher taxes when our earnings do not increase and in many cases have de- creased during the past years. J.L. (Jay) Perrizo, retired St. Helens Predators now use college yearbooks To the Editor: When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being Miss Ameri- ca. She was so elegant, parad- ing in her beautiful flowing gown, with a crown upon her head. She exuded such high morality. I wanted to emulate her in my life. It was a real shock for me to see a candidate for Miss Amer- ica on the front page of my lo- cal newspaper, in more skin than clothes, and standing in a very suggestive pose. Would I want to emulate that? No WAY! Another newspaper came at a later date, advertising for a young woman, a lucrative busi- ness of selling nude ‘various occasion cards’ via the internet. A half a page of the newspaper was dedicated to the advertise- ment of this local girl. It almost made a person feel that we should be proud of her new venture! All I could feel for either one of these two young ladies, is sadness, sympathy and re- morse. They both have been ‘duped’ by a shady business, and are not aware of the reper- cussions; and there will be repercussions further down the road! They may have under- gone some of them already. I first saw a picture a few years ago in the newspaper, of the very young and beautiful lo- cal girl, fresh out of college, and about to make the biggest mis- take of her life! I placed her pic- ture on my refrigerator, and prayed for her ever since. After all, she was following the same scenario that is being repeated over and over in this country. They have been seduced and then they seduce others. The scenario is: Predator Playboys keep an ‘Evil eye’ on the year books of the girls freshly graduating from college, usually in their twenties. (The predators are not looking for bright minds, believe me!) Their focus is on Beautiful Bodies! These Predators search the year books as if they were the Montgomery Ward Catalog. The enticement they use to get these girls to their Mansion is a brand new Cherry Red Car, $10,000, and a ‘Movie Star’ role! Sounds exciting! After they get to the mansion, they are given the candy of Cocaine, on which, girls lose all their nat- ural inhibitions. The next step in this frequent scenario is disrob- ing oneself, the loss of their in- nocence, and Porno Movies. Cocaine may be the reason no- body blushes anymore! There is a tag on movies that say, ‘Strong Parental Guidance Advised!’ Now it should be at- tached to every college. What does a PREDATOR look like and where are they found? You’d be surprised! STRONG PARENTAL GUIDANCE AD- VISED! STRONG PARENTAL GUIDANCE ADVISED! STRONG PARENTAL GUID- ANCE ADVISED! Marie Hatcher Scappoose Nation is on brink of identity crisis To the Editor: Recent events have brought this nation to the brink of its greatest identity crisis since the Civil War. In the last year, the federal government has intruded into the private sector to a degree not previously imaginable. They took over management of General Motors (and fired the CEO, a decision usually re- served for the Board of Direc- tors), then managed the re- structuring of both General Mo- tors and Chrysler under terms which left the government and labor unions owning substantial portions of both companies. Af- ter working to lower lending standards to homeowners, thereby destabilizing the mort- gage market and financial mar- kets more generally, they used the TARP bailout to increase their influence over the banking industry. Most recently, they have dramatically expanded their control over the one-sixth of the economy that represents health care. The question before us is clear: Will we remain a free- market capitalist nation and the strongest engine of economic growth in the history of the world, or will we instead be- come a socialist society, far more dependent on govern- ment for every facet of our lives? While our national identity crisis has not yet reached the point of violence, the rhetoric is becoming increasingly heated, and the hostility is palpable. While cooler heads still prevail, I would urge us all to take the following steps: To our representatives in Congress, I urge you to recall that you were elected to repre- sent us, your constituents, and that you took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Please take these duties as seriously as we do. And please, if you ever think of casting a vote that you would find difficult to defend in a Town Hall meeting with your constituents, think again. To my fellow citizens, I would urge that we apprise ourselves of the issues and give our elect- ed representatives constant feedback. Let’s tell them what we think, and then hold them accountable for serving our in- terests. We, the people, are the seat of power in this country. That can only change if we al- low it. Yours with respect, Robert Speirs Columbia City Ike Says… From Page 2 lyst that spurred many sports- people to question what ODF&W has been doing to the state’s elk herds, and the ethics of killing cow elk with calves. Many of the cow hunts that were already on the books are for agricultural areas, many of them on the east side of the state that are used to help re- duce farmers’ crop damage. While these hunts are under- Please see page 22 An Oregon Perspective From page 19 It’s understandable that Wall Street doesn’t want a strong, in- dependent CFPA that will clean up the tricks and traps in finan- cial products because they’ve certainly made a lot of money with those practices. The ques- tion is: Who will stand with Wall Street, and who will stand with the millions of families and small business owners who deserve financial products they can trust? Meyers ‘ Auto Body,Inc 503-429-0248 493 Bridge St, Vernonia, OR
