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(Editor’s Note: Views and commentary, including statements made as fact are strictly those of the letter writers.)
Letter to the Editor:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
For two hundred and fifty years our country has proudly been the leader of the free world. Other countries have modeled their governments on ours, looked to ours as an example. We have enjoyed the privilege of our democracy. We can no longer take it for granted; it is being uprooted and shredded.
The three branches of government, executive, judicial, and legislative, were created to check and balance each other. Our current president is disrespecting its very foundation. He has ignored directives of, and threatened the members of, the Supreme Court. He is pressuring them to revoke the power of judges. He is intimidating members of Congress. The House of Representatives has already abdicated their power, subverting their own purpose. The Senate is next. Let us hope they and the Supreme Court have the fortitude to stand in the way of a tyrant.
Susan Gustafson,
Cave Junction
White Supremacist Trump Administration
Donald Trump and his henchmen have finally unveiled their true core as racists and white supremacists. We had plenty of indications in the past, from his 1973 Federal lawsuit filed for failing to comply with the Fair Housing Act and again with his defense of white-nationalist protesters at Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally by calling them “very fine people”. Trump’s cozying up to the Proud Boys (proud of what, by the way?) and other white nationalist militias, pardoning and praising them at every turn, underscores the continuing bigotry in the man. But recent invitation of apartheid oriented wealthy (English speaking) white South Africans to come to America as preferred refugees is the final straw. At the same time, black and brown immigrants are chased down by hooded, masked secret police (without names, badges or warrants), who handcuff and shackle them, hauling them off without any right to due process. These are poor people of color who fled violence at home, including former interpreters and partners in our ill-conceived foreign wars, and are now put in concentration camps awaiting a brutal deportation. The vast majority of these folks have no criminal history here and the few who do, still have a right to due process. If Trump and his white supremacist lackeys get their way, tens of thousands of black and brown immigrants will be shipped off to foreign gulag torture prisons in countries notorious for unstable political violence such as Salvador, Libya, South Sudan and Ruanda. True Americans should be ashamed of this so-called President, who self-flatters with billionaire Gulf nobility and white South Africans, while squashing the tired, poor and huddled masses under his gold trimmed boot heel.
Michael Baldwin,
Takilma
Logging Is Not the Way to “Fix Our Forests”
Wildfire season is coming, and a bill in Congress purports to make our communities safer via the chainsaw, but would instead make forests even more prone to intense fires by increasing the removal of trees that retain moisture and slow wind speeds. This deceptively named “Fix Our Forests Act” (FOFA) wouldn’t fix forests, but would help destroy them instead. The bill goes hand in hand with Trump’s executive order to ramp up logging of treasured national forests from Alaska to Arkansas. To reach the increased volume the administration is pushing for, many more big and old trees would have to be cut. FOFA would pave the way for such harm by eroding bedrock environmental laws and putting up roadblocks to public participation and pushback on bad projects near our own communities.
Real solutions for community wildfire safety begin with preparing homes and their immediate surroundings, along with evacuation and community safety planning. Let’s ask Oregon Senators Wyden and Merkley to support homeowners and community leaders in doing this work, instead of unsustainable logging far in the back country and erosion of sideboards that protect forest waters and all of the species that depend on them—including us.
Carol Valentine
Selma