Letters to the Editor
From our weekly issue dated September 30, 2009
(Editor’s Note: Views and commentary, including statements made as fact, are strictly those of the letter-writers.)
Typed, double-spaced letters are considered for publication. Hand-written letters that are double-spaced and legible also can be considered. “Thank you” submissions are not accepted as letters.
On septic fee increases
From David D. Anderson
Anderson Excavating
Selma
I would like to comment on the proposed DEQ fee increase for septic systems. As an installer in Josephine County, I have found through the years that residents often attempt to bypass the current fee system because of money issues, and with an increase it will only get worse.
Contractors and installers are required by law to maintain all the licenses, bonds and insurance to protect the public. However, the governing bodies are not working to protect them in return. Each time a fee increase is initiated, it puts another hardship onto the licensed contractors and installers because we cannot compete with those who do not follow the rules -- and there are plenty who do not.
I personally have lost several install jobs to unlicensed installers simply because the owners could not also afford the permit fees. With nonpermitted systems being installed, there will be no way for DEQ to assure the wastewater and water quality of the state.
When push comes to shove, the residents who can’t afford the permits also will be getting installings with inferior materials, lack of proper design, and possibly in areas that under permit could not be used for septic installation and pushing the progress we have made in cleaning up the environment back to before DEQ existed.
With the downturn this last year in the economy, I can understand the state’s desire to keep the fees high enough to support the program, however, in doing so, it will be forcing businesses such as mine further and further toward the “out-of-business” unemployment line, when we can no longer compete with bootleggers who have no qualms about bypassing the requirements and fees for the systems.
Today’s economy cannot support additional fees, and tomorrow’s environment should not be jeopardized for the price of a permit. I’m asking that DEQ delay its proposed fee increase until such time as the economy as a whole can be counted on to help maintain the costs.
Loves Barter Faire
From Melissa Barker
Kerby
The Hope Mountain Barter Faire is one of the biggest fund-raisers for The Dome School in Takilma, and we take great pride in presenting this event year after year.
Because the Faire is such a huge event, it takes months of planning and hard work to pull it off. The parents of children who attend the school, and numerous community members donate hours of hard work and their time to make this event great.
This year’s Faire was held at a new site, and we had two weekends worth of work parties to ready the property, set-up and paint signs. I personally watched community members working at these work party weekends, mothers with their babies strapped to their backs painting signs so that everyone who comes from afar knew where this year’s Faire would be, and I shopped at a few stores in town that our Barter Faire attendees were shopping at on their way through.
Not only did our Faire benefit our school, it benefited the city of Cave Junction, and that’s a good thing, especially during these hard times affecting our nation.
That’s why it hurts me to know that certain individuals of our great valley, who had nothing better to do Friday and Saturday nights, decided to drive from Redwood Hwy. all the way out to the front gate of the Faire site, damaging each and every one of our Barter Faire signs. The majority of our beautifully painted signs were broken in two; some with arrows showing direction were moved to point other ways; and some were nowhere to be found.
But those who did this didn’t stop our great time last weekend -- and they didn’t keep us from joining to raise money for our beautiful children.
Making nice with lefties
From Gregory D. Anderson
Cave Junction
This is strange.
The little South American country of Honduras has been a democracy for a number of years. Its citizens decided when they wrote their constitution that their presidents would only serve one term (like Mexico).
Their constitution also contains the wording that if a sitting president tries to change this so he can be re-elected (like his good friend Chavez did in neighboring Venezuela) then he can be kicked out of office.
So Manuel Zelaya, the Honduran president, after several warnings, was deposed and deported for agitating street protest for another (illegal) term. Their Supreme Court ordered his arrest, and the military escorted him out of the country. The congressional members of his own political party, the Catholic Church, the country’s human rights ombudsman, and every major Honduran institution agreed with this action.
Meanwhile, elections are planned for November; and a temporary president, Roberto Micheletti who is prohibited from running for office, is in place.
You think, “Gee whiz, everything is working like it should in this democracy according to their laws and their constitution, so what could possibly go wrong?” Well, neighboring Venezuela’s Chavez, Cuba’s Castro brothers and Nicaragua’s former guerilla leader and now president, Daniel Ortega, all want their deposed friend Zelaya back in office.
This normally would be no problem except for two other left-leaning politicians want the Chavez wannabe back in office as well. Their names are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
So the very same people that said we had no business getting involved in Iraq’s business by deposing their dictator and killer are getting involved in the little peaceful democracy of Honduras and their democratic process. Obama cut off aid to this country, and threatened Honduran assets in the United States and to pull visas of their independent judiciary to enter the United States.
Meanwhile, with the support of the United States, the deposed Zelaya has been smuggled into the Brazilian Embassy in Honduras, and violence is becoming a real possibility.
So far it seems as though the Obama administration is determined to alienate America’s democratic friends while making nice with those lefties traditionally unfriendly to the United States. Go figure.
When they come for you?
From Raymond Ronald Karcewski©
Cave Junction
This is in response to George McElroy’s letter last week regarding police brutality in Josephine County.
What the sheriff’s office lacks in competence, it more than makes up with force used upon people who are not criminal, but just unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The recent campaign of highway piracy at the hands of JoCo deputies (unlawfully impounding automobiles) is testimony to that.
Seven years ago, I was arrested at gunpoint by four JoCo sheriff’s deputies after leaving a traffic stop after being told four times that I was not under arrest. The original offense was that my automobile high beams were on as I was coming home on Hwy. 199 in my private automobile, not engaged in commerce, therefore not required by law to have a “driver license,” a document designed toward regulating commerce on the highway and binding otherwise unaware people to a multitude of vehicle code infractions via unlawful adhesion contracts which lack full disclosure of terms at time of application.
Like Paul Jackson, they pyramided charges on me hoping I would cop to a plea, and they would make a few easy bucks via fines and court charges. They threatened me with 35 years in prison, but were willing to reduce it to time served if I would plead guilty. I rejected the offer, and went through two fraudulent trials by a special prosecutor brought in from the Attorney General’s Office.
The deck was stacked. When convicted, I refused to accept the corporate court’s offer of sentencing, since none of the judges, D.A., or anyone in the AG’s office would show under oath or affidavit proof of their jurisdiction over this “Living, Breathing, Flesh-and-Blood, Sentient, Natural man.”
I was/am not a person as defined in the Color of Law Statutes, nor am I a 14th Amendment citizen, which makes me a slave and a “ward of the Court” in the minds of the double-talking public officials.
After holding the Judges, D.A. and sheriff responsible for their fraudulent enforcement of “Color of Law” upon one over whom they had no jurisdiction, numerous Proof of Claims accompanied by affidavits leading to UCC liens were placed against the judges, prosecutors, and sheriffs deputies. All of which they defaulted on via Commercial Law, so they decided they were going to flex their muscles and try me as a “Paper Terrorist.”
A total of 128 days total were spent in incarceration; 121 days in “the hole” -- held in an isolation cell in the maximum security wing of county jail 23 hours a day with one hour out for showers, etc. One would have thought that I was public enemy number one, when up until that fateful night, I had never been in jail nor had a blemish on my record, and I was near my 65th birthday.
I underwent two combined hunger strikes of 55 days and was near death, according to the jail nurse when former Undersheriff Anderson dumped me at the curb of the Three Rivers E.R. stating that I would have to pay for hospital care and the county would not be responsible.
Was that really the issue? Dollars and cents, and not justice? Is that what we pay for? By the way, throughout the past seven years, Josephine County and the State of Oregon have not gotten a penny out of me in court costs and fines despite their “huffing and puffing.”
To this very day, I continue to assert my Unalienable Right to Liberty, which includes the Right to travel without seeking permission from my government. Now they will not arrest me. Nor will they take me before a judge. They just handcuff you, throw you in the back seat of a patrol car until the tow truck takes away your property, and then release you. In short they just steal my car and abandon me wherever I happen to be.
The last time I demanded to be taken before a judge to get this question of jurisdiction answered, I was driven from Cave Junction to the county jail, then abandoned there without booking, leaving me stranded in Grants Pass. They drove in one door and walked me out the other door. See: http://www.ark enterprises.com/piracy.html.
It is time the people of Illinois Valley and Josephine County wake up to what is really going on in their sheriffs office.
What will you do when they come for you?
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