From our weekly issue dated July 30, 2008

(Editor's Note: Views and commentary, including statements made as fact, are strictly those of the letter-writers.)

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Yellow star thistle battle
From Susan Chapp
Forestry Action Committee
Cave Junction

We are a small group of valley people concerned with the invasive weed, yellow star thistle, which is spreading in our area.

This is a small annual plant with sharp thorns protecting its thistle. It is potentially lethal to livestock. We are seeing it in pastures.

Therefore we are volunteering to eradicate it from our lands. This plant is more dangerous than the knapweed choking our valley. It will cause agonizing death to our livestock, horses, cows, sheep and goats when it gets into the hayfields.

Those who have seen it are asked to contact us. If you have it on your land, volunteers would help pull it. We need to identify locations to know how far this has gotten. We are contacting groups affected by this, asking that they join our efforts.

We go out for a few hours in the mornings and pull weeds together. It is pleasant being with people to help each other and our valley. It is not terribly strenuous. Anyone can help, including just cheering us on.

There is so much we can do. Those who will volunteer to help pull, or want to notify us of a location, can phone the Forestry Action Committee at 592-4098 between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.; or Mrs. Peno at 592-2837 evenings.

A few people can accomplish much working together for a common cause.

Elected extremists
From Ginger Salkowski Nehalem

After I read the letter from my county commissioner, Chuck Hurliman, in your fine paper on July 16, encouraging rural Oregonians to identify and give “special blessings” to environmental extremists I grabbed the nearest pitchfork and torch and was ready to join the local mob.

He didn’t exactly tell us where to find these eco-extremos that are making a mess of our lives. Unlike most frothing, generalizing scapegoat letters written to incite hatred and fear, Hurliman left out the usual race and religion clues as to whom to target. If he wants “special blessings” conferred, he needs to be more specific.

I decided to look around my home base of Tillamook County to see who obviously is causing all the troubles Hurliman wrote about. I thought the farmers market might be a good place to spot some tree-hugging, economy-collapsing hippy freaks.  But after eating several crepes and talking with local farmers about how great their produce was selling, it didn’t seem likely this crowd was what Chuck was referring to. 

I then tried all the likely spots where eco-extremists might gather and plot world domination; drum circles, watershed councils, Nature hikes, health food stores, even a yoga class -- but everyone seemed to be having the same troubles as me paying the rent and making ends meet.

I couldn’t find any canceled logging operations due to enviros. In fact, logging around my parts seemed pretty much nonstop, with those lovely multistoried forests (the ones with three bedraggled hemlocks standing in a 15-acre slash pile) popping up everywhere I looked. I was puzzled. All these social problems must be coming from somewhere, but the eco-crowd didn’t seem to be holding up to Hurliman’s accusations.

Then it occurred to me that maybe Hurliman was just sending rural Oregonians on a big fat goose chase. Could it be that he wants us to ignore the real cause of higher gas prices, increased costs of living, roads and public safety in Oregon?

Because after much scapegoat searching it suddenly became clear to me that the group Hurliman is trying to protect, the very extremist group that is directly responsible for fixed-income folks suffering now and into the future is a group Hurliman is an active leader of: elected officials. That's right, elected extremists. 

They are paid fat salaries (at least the eco-extremists volunteer) to create and pass laws that screw us over.  All the way from Downtown Tillamook to Washington, D.C. these extremist elects (sic) have taken it upon themselves to use their public offices as a vehicle to destroy the USA.

Higher gas prices? Elected officials give the big thumbs up to a bazillion dollar war in the Middle East that makes gas way more expensive. Food costs? Elected officials decided to use our country’s stored grain to make a quick buck on biofuels and then had no food to spare when a huge flood hit the heartland.  Costs of local roads, property taxes, schools going up and up; blame local elected officials.

Their extremist agenda is breaking the bank, ruining our fishing seasons, making our landscape ugly, and they are getting away with it. We should take away their elected status so they’ll go back to being ordinary schmucks like the rest of us.