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WOPR called ‘beast of failed Interior Dept.’
From William Mondale Selma
The Bureau of Land Management’s “Western Oregon Plan Revision” (WOPR) is a beast of the obviously failed Bush administration’s Dept. of the Interior.
That federal corporate lapdog’s local mouthpiece is the Medford BLM office. Its staff cites their failure to accomplish timber-selling goals as the fault of the Northwest Forest Plan and what Josephine County Commissioner Jim Raffenburg likes to call an “environmentalist industry.”
Medford BLM chief Tim Reuwsaat said during a radio interview that without adoption of the WOPR, timber would run out in three years. What he is revealing is that BLM’s prior timber practices have depleted our forests.
Now he wants the WOPR to permit the timber corporations to continue the same ecological criminality with the old-growth. When that’s gone, nothing but fire-prone shrubs will be left with no hope for profitable tourism.
I want Raffenburg to know that there is no environmentalist industry. There are only voters collectively protecting the forest’s beauty, and people who believe that an intact forest is the best hope for keeping our valley prosperous. Consider that the courts only stop timber projects that break the law.
In WOPR, BLM proposes actions that guarantee an ecological and tourism deficit. But what else is new in the Bush administration and its BLM?
Measure 49: ‘Dark Politics of Public Deception’
From Rep. Dennis Richardson (R-District 4)
Central Point
The truth about Measure 49 has now been publicly exposed, and, regardless of how one feels about Measure 37, the story of the manipulation and abuse of power used to place Measure 49 on the November ballot is an embarrassment to Oregon and a blow to citizen confidence in our state government.
Private emails produced in a recent lawsuit have disclosed that Oregon state officials and 1000 Friends of Oregon representatives carefully crafted the language of Measure 49’s Ballot Title and Explanation. They then passed House Bill 2640, which circumvented all laws that ensure Oregon voters get fair and balanced Ballot Titles and Explanations to use when deciding how they should vote on a Referral from the Legislature.
And it is now revealed that Oregon’s AFL-CIO Union President Tim Nesbitt (whom Gov. Kulongoski made a “Deputy Chief of Staff” shortly after the union helped ensure the governor’s re-election in 2006), used the “Governor’s Opportunity PAC” money to conduct polls, hire consultants and determine what wording would encourage voters to vote for a ballot measure that would rewrite Measure 37 and effectively restore Oregon’s pre-Measure 37 land-use laws.
The results became Measure 49 by circumventing all protections voters usually have to ensure fairness and neutrality.
A Willamette Week article discloses how Nesbitt performed his subterfuge in collaboration with Bob Stacey, Director of 1000 Friends of Oregon, who “wanted to make sure any prospective ballot title would reflect proponents’ views,” rather than neutrality.
From the article it appears that Nesbitt and Stacy organized a team of pollsters, consultants and lawyers. They conducted polls and focus groups to determine the precise language needed to obtain a “Yes” vote from confused voters who would think they were voting to "fix" Measure 37, when, in essence, they would be removing its key provisions and retaining the very land-use problems that Measure 37 was intended to correct.
Measure 49 is sold as creating an “express lane” for approving three homes, and in other circumstances up to 10 homes, for those land owners who have been deprived of land-use rights and values by government land-use laws. In reality, complying with Measure 49 requirements are so burdensome, time-consuming and expensive that few land owners would ever be able to qualify it under the measure's provisions.
Measure 49 is a bill being sold as a solution, while delivering nothing but more expense, delay and broken promises to Oregon citizens.
Measure 49 violates the fundamental democratic principle of fairness. Every citizen who values honesty in government should vote against Measure 49. Regardless of how they might feel about Measure 37, Voting “No” on Measure 49 is a statement against dirty politics. Defeating Measure 49 would force those who have attempted to abuse their political power to go back to the Legislature and craft a Measure 37 compromise using the political system as it was designed to operate.
‘America, Have You Lost Your Soul?’ he wonders
From Raymond Ronald Karczewski© -- A Living Christ
Cave Junction
“Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.” That was once said of America. Does anybody still perceive that to be true?
I have been observing the public’s reaction to the Ed and Elaine Brown stance regarding the legal issue of a nongovernmental, private corporate position adopted by our courts and justice system of arresting and incarcerating elderly Sovereign Americans over nonexistent laws, laws they cannot produce, and jurisdictions they cannot prove.
What happens to America when any one of us can be handcuffed, tazered, and tortured in a torture cell over a law that does not exist?
What happens when the perpetrators are not legitimate peace officers, but privately armed corporate security forces serving the interests of their corporate masters?
Our courts are no longer Article III Constitutional Courts as defined by the U.S. Constitution.
Each and every one of the sleeping sheeple are just that -- cattle, chattel, human resources, property of the State, whose life, death and freedom lie in the hands of Satanic facilitators who sit in the highest offices in the land.
The sheeple have lost their freedom, courage, backbone, integrity. The sheeple are no longer Sovereign Sons and Daughters of God -- living, breathing, flesh-and-blood, sentient, natural men and women, sovereign masters over their own lives.
The call of the day must be Habeas Corpus for Ed and Elaine Brown. Let Americans restore order to our justice system when our corrupt courts cannot. We are the Sovereign People. We are the law.
If our servants will not serve us as per their oaths, get them the hell out of office and our courts peaceably through boycotting, accompanied by “Show us the law; show us your jurisdiction.”
Those two questions remain unanswered for a very good reason. Should they be answered, the whole house of cards of a corrupt court system and government would tumble down.
If I can stand up to those forces, then anyone can, and should, en masse. See The Patriot and the Pirate, Part III at www.arkenterprises.com/dialch222.htm1#Pirate and The Two Million Dollar Traffic Stop at arkenterprises.com/gptraff.html.
Shouldn’t churches pay taxes, he asks
From Wally Hardie
Selma
This is a small response to those who do not think religious institutions should pay their own taxes.
In May 1995 the New York State Board of Real Property Services issued “Exemptions from real property taxation in New York State.” New York is trying to make up a $230 million deficit that threatens the school systems, while in New York alone church-owned property in the amount of $5.8 billion is free of 93.60 percent of the real property tax.
In addition, residences for the clergy totaling $3.4 billion received a 47.14 percent exemption. New York State as a whole has a staggering $13.8 billion of church real estate that is 97 percent free of property tax.
It is conservatively estimated this would exceed $800 billion across the United States. A religious tax exemption violates the Establishment Clause and the First Amendment.
When schools must cut lunch programs, welfare and health programs for the elderly, and the religious organizations still have hundreds of millions to pay for the lawsuits of molestation, and the continuing lawsuits of child molestation, should they not pay their real estate tax bills?
When these statistics were first published in 1995, political pressure was applied; it has never been publicly printed since. I wonder what our county tax would be if churches were paying their share. Police and fire agencies, along with the rest of city services, also serve them at our expense.
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