Heading off an invalid observation about sports

Rex Bennett's excellent Dec. 10 letter on life's lessons was spot on, and as one old gent to another, I congratulate him on his observations. Except one: He professed that "soccer was not a sport"! Oh dear oh dear.

Now it is well-known that the Founding Fathers, after defeating the hated Brits, urged the population to develop three sports that the rest of the world would be unlikely to adopt, thereby leaving the newly minted USA as world champions. The rules were to be complicated, requiring about half the country to referee them to ease the unemployment situation, and being a forward thinking lot, they believed that leaving lots of interruptions in the course of play would somehow be good for business.

They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Meanwhile, the rest of the known world were busy polishing their skills at football, which they played of course with their feet. (It later came to America as soccer, to carefully differentiate it from football, which, as we know, isn't.)

From its early origins, when a freshly severed human head was kicked between two villages, the game of soccer progressed to using inflated pigs' bladders and thence to the fine leather ball used today and made in China like everything else. The rules have remained simple, the players spend most of the time actually on the field, and not whiffing oxygen and calling their agents on cell phones. The good thing is that it's all over in 90 minutes, and one can go home and get in a bit of gardening or whatever.

Maybe Mr. Bennett from Philomath would like to challenge Corvallis to a soccer game, ancient rules applied. Much more fun. I get to pick heads. I have some excellent candidates!

Mike Colling, Corvallis

Fully legalizing drugs as bad as banning them all

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition's efforts to arbitrarily legalize drugs is almost as misguided as the current policy of arbitrarily banning them. There might be really dangerous drugs whose use should be restricted. We will never know that because our country has never adopted actual measurable standards for harm and risk as a threshold for legal sale.

We do know that illegal drugs lack disclosure, quality control or production and sale by licensed, competent and trained personnel. Those products are sold by criminals at outrageously high prices that fuel other criminal activities. The versions of the drugs are so toxic and distilled that they would sell to less than 5 percent of users in a regulated market. The profits are untaxed and bankroll a well-armed system of criminal gangs who often direct criminal enterprises executed by addicts to bankroll their addiction.

One should expect far more drug-related problems from such a dysfunctional system. The fact that this is absent indicates an overstated need for government to protect drug users from their own stupidity. LEAP is merely an organization of police who do not share the pro-crime attitudes of police who get increased funding and greater latitude to pursue and harass "suspects." They often work in partnership with criminals to convict low-level dealers and addicts n who are incarcerated at taxpayer expense.

Establishing measurable standards to restrict drugs would limit police ability to target social classes and restore credibility to our justice system. Why is LEAP silent on this issue?

Jeff T. Barrie, Philomath

Easing formation of unions bad for economy

In his Dec. 19 letter (in support of making unionization easier), Rex Roberts both insults President Bush and supports the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

While it is unfortunate that opponents of Mr. Bush often seem to resort to personal insults rather than engage in mature discussion of policy disagreements, it is the policy portion of Mr. Roberts' letter that I find interesting.

Supporters of the EFCA often characterize it as simply giving the little guy a chance. Coincidentally, the Dec. 19 edition of the Wall Street Journal carried a piece by Richard Epstein, University of Chicago professor of law, and visiting professor at New York University, in which he also opined regarding the EFCA. His conclusion was that the act is unconstitutional.

In brief, in eliminating the secret ballot, the EFCA abridges First Amendment free-speech rights of employers, and by requiring binding arbitration, it abridges employers' rights under Fifth Amendment takings provisions.

According to Mr. Epstein, the EFCA allows the arbiter to intrude in business management - even to the extent of subcontracting work and promotion policy.

I would encourage all readers to avail themselves of as much information as possible regarding the EFCA. Then encourage your elected federal representatives to oppose it. I believe it is an insidious piece of legislation that, if enacted, will do great damage not only to the constitutional rights of employers but to the overall economy as well.

Vern McDonald, Corvallis

'Nutritional medicine' best for brain disorders

"Mental illness" is largely mythology. The idea that someone's mind has merely gone awry is inherited from ignorant history: misunderstanding, religiosity, vacant moralizing, Freudian guesswork and psychobabble - pitiful explanations for folks whose physical brains just got sick. The largely negative, stigmatic term "mental illness" derives from those successively less dark ages, culminating in the still-very-dark age of chemical suppression, the dominant "therapy."

Drug-based psychiatry is predominantly profit-motivated. Behind philosophical fog banks and oddball chemistry, psychiatrists seamlessly practice symptom management, pharmaceutical auto-suggestion, and required labeling. "Consumers" come in fourth.

Unfortunately, you can't pimp enough non-randomly drug-based, doubly-blind, dollar-controlled studies to hide the blindness of supplying toximolecular substances (medications) to treat natural breakdowns of brain function, while denying simple, straightforward, and effective nutritional solutions.

American health has degenerated rapidly under an onslaught of mass-produced, highly processed, structurally altered, and nutritionally depleted "food." Malnourishment is now common here.

Hopefully, people will find out that "nutritional medicine" using whole foods and quality supplements is phenomenally effective on a wide variety of classic illnesses of body, brain, and mental functioning.

Nutritional ("orthomolecular") psychiatrists regularly report 80 percent success in correcting common metabolic brain disorders (depression, bipolar, anxiety, Alzheimer's, autism).

Nutritional therapy, contrary to what some industry-educated nutritionists say, is extremely safe (thousands of times safer than drug therapy). Suggested therapeutic foods and relevant supplements would cost a fraction of medications without the inevitable side effects. Compare $75-$150 for a complementary nutritional program with $300-$1,200 plus per month, not uncommon for subsidized "psych meds."

Chris Foulke, Corvallis

Soon, lots more electricity will come from the sun

Robin Stepanek raises environmental issues in the Dec. 15 letter, "Why the use of electric cars is not such a good, green idea."

Robin assumes use of electricity from coal-fired plants. I am converting a light truck to electricity. Solar panels on our roof will provide most of its electricity. The rest will be from Consumer Power's minimally-polluting sources. We grow many trees on our property, so we sequester much more carbon dioxide than that which results from our use of electricity.

Pacific Power-supplied owners of electric cars will purchase wind-generated power. They understand the severe threat that is imposed by greenhouse-gas-caused, climate change. I wish that all Corvallis residents would learn about this threat by participating in the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition and acting on their new knowledge.

Use of electric vehicles also eliminates the health-damaging gases, emitted by fossil-fueled engines. These include lethal carbon monoxide, carcinogenic hydrocarbons, particulate matter and poisonous nitrogen oxides that damage lung tissue and react in sunlight to produce ozone. Ozone causes nose and eye irritation and heart and lung damage. Sulfur dioxide produces crop-damaging acid rain.

Lead and other battery materials are recycled. Contrast this with the highly toxic, non-recycled wastes from fossil-fueled vehicles such as anti-freeze.

The life-cycle economics of plug-in electric vehicles are superior. Conversion costs about $10,000, excluding labor. The electricity cost per mile is half that of even today's gasoline. Life cycle operating cost is very much less because electric motor life is about 10 times that of an engine.

Walt Eager, Corvallis