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Asks Raffenburg to resign
From Harry E. Abrams
Cave Junction

I thought I would share that I phoned Josephine County Commissioner Jim Raffenburg on Monday, April 7, and asked him to resign.

Since we are being told that he is trying to save the county money, then we would not have to go through this recall expense.

He asked me if I had read the articles in the Illinois
Valley News and I told him I had. I also told him I had read the piece on the Web under the NewsWithViews banner. I said that I still wanted him to resign. I do not see that any of these articles support his claim that he refutes the piece in the Grants Pass Courier.

After something less than two minutes of him telling me how wrong I was in pursuing this recall, he hung up on me. I don’t think that is the way to end that type of a conversation with a constituent.

Corruption stains U.S. flag
From Catherine Austin
Cave Junction

This is an update to my March 12 letter, regarding an incident at Illinois Valley High School, during which my daughter’s lack of participation in the Pledge of Allegiance brought public criticism from Assistant Vice Principal Patty Dickens-Turk and Librarian Ed Faircloth.

After apparently consulting with the school district and legal counsel, IVHS Principal JoAnn Bethany informed the student body, during another assembly on April 3, that participation in the Pledge of Allegiance is completely voluntary, and that people may freely choose to not participate for a variety of reasons (religious, etc.), and that no one needs to perceive it as disrespectful.

Thankfully, there are still some constitutional protections that still function, even with regard to the Pledge of Allegiance and the U.S. flag.  At least we have not yet totally mandated participation by the state, like those countries that Americans are taught to hate.

Count how many times the flag is used in photos with politicians and corporate leaders.  How often is it used on TV? If President Bush speaks with a dozen flags around him, does it make him more truthful?

So as long as we see our country’s flag being flown on a pirate’s ship (of corporate thieves, lying politicians, and trans-national elitists) we will not follow the flag into battle, but instead do our civic duty by standing down to this corruption.

Honoring conscience
From Ellyn Coley
Cave Junction

I want to add a couple ideas to those expressed by Paul Grad (“Collectivist pledge,” Letters, April 9).

As long ago as the 1920s, the U.S. Supreme Court said that children could not be made to salute the flag if they had a religious objection to doing so.

Then (Vietnam area) it was said that one could be a conscientious objector without belonging to any organized religion. Miss Austin was obeying her conscience, which the trials at Nuremberg said everyone must do.

Catherine Austin has a brave and wise child.

From Debbie Wilson
Simply Debbie’s Nails
At Northwest Hairlines
Cave Junction

A few weeks ago I was invited to present my career as a Nail Technician to students at Lorna Byrne Middle School as part of their Career Day.

They did present it as a “Manicurist” rather than “Nail Technician,” as they were worried that the students would think it was something to do with pounding a nail. Actually a Nail Technician is trained to work with manicures and pedicures for health and appearance.  It is a very large and successful industry all over the world for men and women.

I had a wonderful time that day. We have some great kids growing up in Cave Junction who are intelligent, funny and inquisitive. I appreciate Lorna Byrne Middle School for giving them a chance to see choices in productive careers for their future, and for letting me be part of Career Day.

Earth Day doomsayers
From Sally C. Pipes
Pacific Research Institute
San Francisco

With all the reminders to recycle, shrink our carbon footprint, and reduce our consumption of goods, just about everyone feels guilty on Earth Day (Tuesday, April 22).

Indeed, if you listen to the three presidential candidates, you couldn’t be faulted for thinking that a cabal of greedy oil executives was bent on putting the future of our planet at risk. But planet Earth is doing just fine. And it’s the world’s richest countries -- led by the United States -- that are doing the most to preserve and protect the environment.

During the past 30 years, air pollution emissions from U.S. manufacturers have fallen by approximately 60 percent, even as real manufacturing output has increased by 70 percent, according to a recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Data from the Environmental Protection Agency show that there’s been a 60 percent reduction in levels of sulfur dioxide, the chemical that causes acid rain, in the eastern United States since 2000. And there’s been a 50 percent drop in emissions of nitrogen oxide, a prime contributor to respiratory illness.

In Los Angeles, air-quality regulators have noted a significant decline in health risk from air pollution. In the 1970s, L.A. residents went through nearly 200 high-risk pollution days each year. These days, the city has fewer than 25 annually.

There's good news on the ground, too. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service recently reported that the United States has been gaining wetlands at a rate of some 32,000 acres per year during the past decade. U.S. water resources have enjoyed a resurgence as well. Rare fish species have returned to the Detroit River for the first time in nearly a century.

But what about global warming? Isn’t the United States single-handedly turning Greenland into a tropical paradise?

Not really. Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth looks to have been little more than “convenient fiction.” U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions actually fell by 1.5 percent during 2006 -- a first for a nonrecessionary year.

Meanwhile, Europe’s finger-wagging on climate change hasn’t matched its actions. Between 1997 and 2004, the last year for which relevant data are available, GHG emissions from Kyoto Protocol signatories increased 21.1 percent. Emissions from nonKyoto nations, by contrast, rose only 10 percent.

And from the United States? Just a 6.6-percent increase.

Unfortunately, the public dialogue on this issue is dominated by environmental doomsayers who ignore these facts.  And they’re spearheading all sorts of dangerous regulatory efforts. All three presidential candidates have promised to push for restrictive anti-global-warming measures if elected.

Case in point: the increasingly popular goal of reducing worldwide GHG emissions by 80 percent by 2050. At least a dozen U.S. states -- including New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts -- have signed onto the program, either through an executive order or non-binding resolution.

Gore supports this proposal. And he may have the opportunity to implement it nationwide, as Barack Obama has expressed interest in adding Gore to his cabinet, if elected. But Obama and Gore fail to realize that mandating a drop in emissions of that magnitude by 2050 would wreak havoc on the economy.

The rush to rein in GHG emissions is all the more backward when you consider that America’s environment has improved precisely because of the nation’s economic growth.

Growing economies allocate resources more efficiently and produce new technologies that strengthen their abilities to control pollution. Hard-and-fast caps on emissions amount to hard-and-fast caps on growth, making everyone poorer and handicapping one of the best ways to improve the environment.

So as Earth Day is celebrated next week, remember that the sky isn’t falling. The reality is that the United States of America is making great strides in its quest to improve the environment.

Supports Barack Obama
From Polly Hart
Cave Junction

I often hear people say, when talking about Barack Obama, that they would never vote for a Muslim, but don’t worry, he isn’t and never has been one. He is a Christian and goes to church just like other Christians.

He was born in the United States (a requirement to be president). He is half white and half black. His mother was a white Irish woman and his father a black man with roots from Kenya, Africa.

A lot of people are getting excited about him becoming president. I would hope that before anyone believes a bunch of nonsense about him that they listen to him speak. He is being compared to John F. Kennedy. I think that after hearing what he has to say, people might begin to agree that he is a remarkable man who, in my opinion, is just what this country needs.

Large businesses do not want him to get elected because he favors the ordinary citizen (like us) over them. There is a lot of false and misleading information out there about him.