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THURSDAY January 22, 2004 - Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels Letters to the Editor: Troubled by Bush response to Iraq looting, 'anarchy' "Anarchy in Baghdad" is the title of an article in the current Time Online Edition. It also states "From a military point of view Baghdad remains, as one U.S. officer put it, 'an ugly place.' " I am disgusted, saddened and deeply troubled at the destruction, looting and anarchy that is taking place in Iraq and the response it has gotten from the Bush war initiators! People are being killed, hospitals, shops and the National Museum are stripped bare, and in response, Rumsfeld muses "Things happen" and Richard Perle chides "give it time, things will settle down." What the hell? In a war that is precision planned and executed, of course the planners assessed the scenarios that would take place after they wiped out the existing authority and social structure. Where is the replacement structures to keep this civil and humanitarian disaster to a minimum? So once again, I find Bush's planners and war executors to be incompetent, fools, callous or worse! David Wick Ashland *** Ski area works to protect plants It was recently reported that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFW) turned down a petition from the Rogue Group Sierra Club (RGSC) to list two rare plants growing on Mt. Ashland as threatened or endangered, and that the petition was one tactic used to block efforts toward ski area improvements on Mt. Ashland. While that may be true, this is an area where the Mt. Ashland Association, operators of the Mt. Ashland ski Area, have worked equally hard to help maintain and increase the habitat and health of these plant populations. We reviewed the site with representatives from USFW and RGSC and made substantive comments to the Forest Service regarding the conservation agreement which now protects the plants - even advocating for stricter measures of protection including closing the access road to the habitat area near the Mt. Ashland summit. Most importantly our crews, working with our Summer Service volunteers, Real Corps students and a Forest Service botanist, performed projects last summer which provided habitat improvement for the plants on Forest Service land south of the summit. This is an excellent area for continued cooperation with local environmental interests. We plan to continue habitat restoration work and our advocacy for more restricted vehicle access to the habitat areas in the summer when the plant are most vulnerable. Jeff Hanson General manager Mt. Ashland Association *** Guest forum: Greatest good for greatest number By Aaron Corbet Ashland Silly me. It seems to me that the business of government is to GOVERN. But the word is full of several divergent connotations. So to be clear, interpret this as a sort of engineering function. For example, in the old steam engines there was a flyway assembly with weighted spheres on arms which rotated faster and swung outward as the steam pressure rose. This was called the "governor." At some point this would open a valve that released the steam and kept the thing from blowing up; ostensibly not among the desiderata. The Utilitarian recipe of "the greatest good for the greatest number" (GGGN) clearly cannot be a societal absolute. This might work for ants, but not for people. People require a great deal of individual freedom; to pursue their own interests. Is this an absolute then? Of course not. If their "interests" happen to be stealing cars, or babies, or setting fire to things, then boy we want the government to do something about it! These sorts of caveats appear to fall into two groups. The first is of those "inalienable rights" that every individual is entitled to have defended: life, liberty, etc. The second group can indeed pretty much be summarized as GGGN. Since it turns out that individuals pursuing their own happiness (or profits) can dangerously derail this goal, there must be a compromise between personal liberty, and social welfare. The most important function of GOVERNment is to protect and ensure that compromise. The U.S. is unique among civilized industrial nations (CINs) in its ignorance and neglect of this function. This was beautifully illustrated by Michael Moore's recent documentary "Bowling for Columbine." The reason for the enormously higher incidence of violent crime in this country over what other CINs experience is not the prevalence of guns. It is not the violence in movies and other media. These are symptoms, not causes. The cause is the powder keg level of rage in the U.S., stemming directly from the widening chasm between haves and have-nots. This chasm continues to grow because unfettered greed is encouraged over the general social welfare. We are the only CIN not to have some form of universal health care. Among other things. We are, of course, a plutocracy. Have been for quite some time. Let's not here analyze the history of this. It is a fact. Our government is unwilling to govern. In that best, absolutely necessary sense. All this dereliction is not solely the fault of the Feds: it is a cultural trait that permeates all levels of government. The City of Ashland now has a unique opportunity to pass some, perhaps landmark, legislation. We clearly need rent control here. Many cities in those areas most suffering from out-of-control population influx and gentrification - the Northeast United States and California - have opted for some form of rent control. Most are satisfied with it; it often works very well, in fact. There are several models. There are problems. This needs to be carefully written, and will undoubtedly require some full-time staff to administer. It will be a divisive issue; which must be faced, and put in place on its public merits: GGGN. It is the most important issue, by far, facing Ashland. One finds several powerful groups loudly propagandizing against rent control. They invariably consist of those landlords and investors whose margin of profit cannot be limited by conscience, along with anti-government types such as Libertarians, and the Cato Institute. These are the same sorts of people who shot down Oregon's health care bill. Don't let them screw up your life again. 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