Posted: Friday, December 28, 2007 12:00 am
Do we need guns or bullet-proof vests?
The rebuttal to Gordon Shadle's idea of arming citizens to protect us all came a couple of days after his letter ("Dropped handgun goes off at grocery," Dec. 25).
I waited, and no one seemed to notice the exquisite irony of the situation.
One of our "responsible citizens" dropped a gun at WinCo, which then went off, as guns will do - luckily, harming nothing more than a few soda cans.
My question is this: If we can't get more stringent laws about gun ownership passed, due to the powerful gun lobby, where will we get the guidelines necessary to decide who is responsible enough to own a gun?
We could very well be faced with something worse than one person dropping a gun in a crowded store: Fifty self-proclaimed "deputies" pulling their guns and firing willy-nilly.
I think the rest of us would do well to invest in some bullet-proof vests.
Rebecca Stillwell
Albany
Plan would decimate our ancient forests
The Bureau of Land Management is planning to clearcut much of the remaining ancient forest in a huge swath of public land it controls - 4,000 square miles - from western Oregon to the Cascades.
Unless it is stopped by Congress and the public, ancient and native forests will be decimated along with clean waters, fish, streamside protections, wildlife habitat, sensitive species and nondamaging recreation.
The Bush Administration would dump the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, substituting Western Oregon Plan Revisions that would nearly triple logging on BLM forests, including almost a million acres of remaining ancient and mature forests.
Six BLM districts will be affected, ranging from the Willamette Valley in the north to the Rogue Valley in the south and from the Cascades in the east to the Coast Range and Siskiyous in the west. Districts are Salem, Eugene, Coos Bay, Roseburg, Medford and the Klamath Falls Resource Area on the Lakeview District. Nearby recreation for about 50,000 Oregonians would be damaged or destroyed, but the BLM is planning to substitute 11 new off-highway vehicle areas on more than 100,000 additional acres - providing noise, erosion and habitat destruction.
Citizens have petitioned and are petitioning BLM to stop this desecration. Deadline for comments is Jan. 11. But a more likely response may come from our congressional and Senate representatives.
Jeanne Riha
Corvallis
Bush tax cuts should be made permanent
Stan Shivley ("$10 trillion deficit: How much is that?" Letters, Dec. 17) is a little confused or maybe he just wants to bash Bush a little.
The 2000 surplus Mr. Shivley talks about was a budget surplus and not the national debt or surplus. The national debt has been growing ever since 1969 and was probably $6 trillion to $8 trillion in 2000.
The budget surplus in 2000 was the result of actions taken by the Republicans in Congress starting in 1984. Later with majorities in both houses they ran up their own budget deficit.
The Bush Administration's "tax cuts for the rich" have actually raised taxes on the rich. The wealthiest 5 percent are now paying 60 percent of all income taxes (in 2000 it was 56 percent).
A family of four with income of $40,000 per year paid 5 percent less in taxes after the Bush tax cuts. These numbers are from the Congressional Budget Office and the IRS.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government's revenue from taxes is the highest ever and the budget deficit has been dropping ever since the tax cuts were made.
The tax cuts should be made permanent.
Mark Steele
Philomath
College of Forestry timber industry shill
First the OSU College of Forestry tried to suppress a sound scientific finding that salvage logging impedes the regeneration of burned-over forests.
Now, the college's own irresponsible clear-cut logging has resulted in a catastrophic landslide ("Five-acre slide slams highway," Dec. 12).
These actions by the College of Forestry are a travesty and an embarrassment to the people of Oregon. They make the College look like a timber industry shill and nothing more.
When will OSU President Dr. Edward Ray begin to exercise some real oversight of his chainsaw cowboys in the College of Forestry? He needs to act to ensure that the college adopts a more balanced view of forest management and forest health.
Matthew Sproul
Portland