Letters to the Editor
Still time for Bush to become effective
From Wally Hardie
Selma
The American presidency. The leader of the free world and the bully pulpit.
This office has produced some of the greatest leaders the world has seen. The presidency can, and has guided America through the most turbulent of times and the most prosperous imaginable.
Our founders had not only the concept of the Constitution, but the leadership to bring it fruition, and to even conceive the idea of something called the Bill of Rights, an idea few countries have.
A government with three distinct bodies to balance the whole, all for the benefit of the American people. The dedication by the men who have occupied this office is well written. I cannot think of a single president who has not contributed to the betterment of America.
President Bush still has time to rectify his dismal record and bring it up-to-date. Still time for his contribution. We have millions of children without any medical insurance. We have millions of Americans who each and every day must choose between food and their meds to stay alive -- and this in the richest country in the world.
At this moment, President Bush’s legacy is one of dismal and abject failure. This can change, but he must somehow and some way find the desire and inclination to change. President Bush is in free fall to be remembered as the worst and most ineffective president in the history of the United States.
Money, money, money: Who’s got the money?
From Josephine Couron
Cave Junction
If you have been reading newspaper articles, you will have noted that our esteemed Commissioner Raffenburg and Commissioner Toler, and our new sheriff, have been spending time in Salem trying to get the state Legislature to set aside the vote of the people that protects our property from arbitrary taxation so that they can again tax our property without a vote.
The logic is simple: If you own land, you must have money, and if you have money they want to spend it.
This brings a number of questions including: Who do these elected people represent, themselves or us? If we don’t have any patrol deputies, why do we need a highly paid sheriff and undersheriff? When the people voted “No” on the levy, what part of “No” don’t they understand?
When I add the monies I pay on my tax bill each year, I get a figure far in excess of the 58-cents they claim I pay. Why is that? What did the county spend those millions of O&C dollars on? And why?
The bottom-line question is, Why are we paying these guys big-time salaries while they are spending their time in Salem trying to figure out some way to force us to give them more money?
Looks to her like SNF ‘cooked the books’
From Dorothea Hover-Kramer
Cave Junction
Scott Conroy’s piece on “Truth among the casualties of the Biscuit Fire,” circulated among many newspapers and printed in the “Illinois Valley News” May 16, opens old wounds and is a reminder that the forest service promoted unnecessary logging including 17 acres of “accidental logging” at the Babyfoot trailhead of rare old-growth Brewer spruce trees.
While Conroy, supervisor of the Rogue River/Siskiyou National Forest (SNF) claims that the agency made a profit, the Government Accountability Office reported in 2006 that the forest service actually lost $2 million and that many Biscuit sales went at rock-bottom prices to single bidders.
It appears that the agency cooked the books by mixing money-losing helicopter timber sales in remote areas with easily accessible roadside “hazard” sales -- with minimal environmental review.
Logging was promoted as necessary for “rehabilitating” burned forests yet studies (D.A. Dellasala, National Center for Conservation Science & Policy, Ashland; G. Nagle, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.) showed it harmed regeneration and raised future fire risks by leaving logging slash on the ground. Had the agency listened to reason and sound science, instead of promoting unrealistic logging levels, the public would have been less disturbed.
Unfortunately, public trust has eroded and we are faced with logged hillsides now scarred by heavy logging damage along botanical areas, roadless areas and old-growth reserves.
Clouser Drilling lauded for good works
From Glenn Woodbury
Medford
I grew up in O’Brien and graduated from Illinois Valley High School, but my roots are deep in Illinois Valley, as my grandfather in June 1910 settled the property that my dad lives on in O’Brien.
I have purchased from my dad another 15-acre piece that also was owned by my grandfather in 1910 directly behind O’Brien Country Store. I plan on retiring there in five to 10 years.
I am writing because my father (Bill Woodbury) is a volunteer at Kerbyville Museum. While I was having Clouser Drilling (the owner is Kevin Gill) drill a well on my property in O’Brien, dad asked me what a new well would cost the museum, as its well had run dry. Kevin said that he would donate it, but that the cost would be around $7,000 if they had to pay for it.
I then told my dad that my company, Power and Control Inc., would donate the submersible pump and all the accessories to link the well to the museum. My dad was ecstatic. He couldn’t believe they could have such good fortune, as the volunteers struggle just to keep the museum doors open.
Kevin proceeded to drill the well, and with the equipment supplied by Power and Control, connected the system in its entirety a couple of months ago. Kevin even supplied a composite landscape rock to cover, insulate and beautify the wellhead.
This is a beautiful system and a great well. The cost would have been more than $8,000 if the museum had to pay for it.
I believe a nice write-up with photos is in order. I am not in a retail business so it’s not so much for me. But as for Clouser Drilling, it really says a lot about the person and his company to donate such a great gift. It is actions like this that really make a community.
‘Stealth’ tax hike should be stopped
From Ed Feulner
The Heritage Foundation
Washington, D.C.
Whether you filed your taxes early, or whether you joined the last-minute crowd, I ask: Are your taxes too low?
Chances are, you said, “no.” But Congress must not agree. Because under the budget resolutions recently passed by the House and Senate, you can expect your taxes to rise -- and by quite a bit. Lawmakers approved bills that would repeal tax relief, increase spending and blithely ignore the biggest fiscal challenge facing our country.
There are the first budget documents produced by Democrats since they regained control of both chambers in November. The bills still need to go through a conference committee to settle on a single piece of legislation to be delivered to President Bush. Still, let’s take a closer look at what lawmakers have wrought so far.
Both bills project that tax revenues during the next five years will rise. Fair enough: Revenues have increased during the last five years, as a direct result of the supply-side cuts in tax rates that President Bush advocated -- rates set to start rising soon.
Look closer, though. The numbers used in these bills are almost identical to what the Congressional Budget Office estimates revenues will be if the tax rates are allowed to rise and if the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) isn’t fixed. (AMT is expected to take a bite out of the pocketbooks of some 19 million American households this year.)
This amounts to a massive tax increase. Under the Senate bill, the average household’s taxes would jump by $2,641 each year during the next decade.
If this budget passes, it might be smart to plan to hire a food taster in 2010. The death tax, gradually reduced during recent years, goes away completely for that one year. But if lawmakers don’t make its repeal permanent, the death tax is set to come back full force in 2011.
Die at the “wrong time,” and your family could get hit with a crippling tax bill.
The Senate budget also calls for $18 billion more in nonemergency discretionary spending than the president proposed in his budget. That’s almost a 9 percent increase in just one year. It’s safe to say that few Americans enjoyed a 9 percent raise last year. The House version aims to boost discretionary spending by an additional $69 billion during a five-year period.
And then there’s that elephant in the room ignored by the House and the Senate: entitlement programs.
Beginning next year, the first Baby Boomers will become eligible for early Social Security benefits. In the decades ahead, some 77 million people will retire to Social Security and Medicare. Yet no money has been set aside to pay for the benefits.
That means the cost of these programs is on pace to leap from 8.7 percent of GDP to 19 percent of GDP by 2050. But to manage that, we’d have to either raise taxes by $11,651 per household (adjusted for inflation and rising incomes) or eliminate every other government program.
A responsible federal budget would start preparing for this coming storm while there’s still time to tame it. But the bills our lawmakers passed are decidedly irresponsible.
President Bush should veto this budget. Then he and Congress can get serious about crafting one that holds down taxes and spending -- and prepares for the future.
