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MONDAY February 23, 2004 - Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels December 11, 2003 President can't care for forests We cannot entrust the care of our forests to the Bush administration. This current president cannot even be entrusted with basic elements of American democracy. I offer as evidence the so-called "Healthy Forest Restoration Act" he signed into law last week. Bush seems to think that achieving a healthy forest means cutting down big trees. These trees, he claims, constitute a significant fire hazard. Fire science simply does not support that assertion. The act cuts American citizens out of crucial parts of the decision-making process. Moreover, it weakens environmental safeguards which have been carefully thought out over the past few decades and which have received the overwhelming support of the general public. Under this law there is no assurance that old growth trees deep in the heart of our forests will be protected. It is important to understand what kind of logging this act permits and what the Bush administration has in mind for our forests and for American democracy. It is time to elect a president who is truly a public servant, not one who serves the financial interests of a select few. The American people deserve a president who respects and restores our precious natural and political heritage. JoAnne Eggers Ashland Reagan doesn't belong on dime "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" was a popular song during the depression years. FDR spared that dime by initiating/supporting programs easing the burdens of impoverished people. Joseph Alsop wrote, "None can doubt ... that FDR was a truly good man. He was against, indeed he was the unrelenting enemy of misery, poverty, oppression, cruelty, injustice, meanness, smallness, obscurantism and every other form of nastiness and source of unhappiness that human beings and their societies are given to, and he was the stout friend of plenty, generosity, decency, liberality, geniality, openness, justice and freedom." It's being put forth that FDR's profile be replaced on the dime with Ronald Reagan's. Brethren, this should not be. Give Reagan the quarter, but touch not the symbol of the new deal for those in our population who suffered so much from the old deal. Perhaps there are many who don't know our present Social Security system was inspired by a minister who observed elderly woman digging for food in garbage cans. He put into action the Office of the Christ: "feed; give drink; take in; clothe; heal; bind up; comfort; give beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, praise for heaviness; repair waste cities, etc., for 'the least of these, my brethren.'" Richard Reeves wrote, "Ronald Reagan, for years, made his living as an industry spokesman. ... The method of Reaganism was: to strip government of the capacity to solve or even respond to those problems. He created a political world populated by bureaucrats, the deserving rich and truly needy, welfare cheats and other ne'er-do-wells, 'the average American' and - somewhere out there - 'the evil empire.'" (Sound present-day familiar?) Such political spin on words reminds me of the Nevada "Right to Work" law. Translation: No unions are allowed here and you (poor simpletons) have the right to work for the least amount of money businesses can get away with paying you. (The writer, while working at a community college in Reno, observed a young couple with children buoyantly ascending the steps to the registration office. Their clean clothing was collectively shabby and almost paper-thin. Scholarships would enable the parents to learn skills to lift their family up from the abyss of their right to work pitiful wages.) In his "side-line economics" Reagan believed in government for business, with falling crumbs trickling on down (of, by, and for the people). He supported the idea of a fiercely self-reliant populace given the opportunity and left to paddle their own canoes. Out of sight and mind were those who could barely lift a paddle, let alone manage their own canoes. Greyhound became his Ship of Fools by which the mentally impaired were dropped off into oblivion. Whereas FDR once famously said, "They may be [a problem], but they are our [problem]." Kurt Vonnegut relates how a Dr. Cordinar tested him and his sister. "'They have almost no ambition at all,' she said, 'so life can't disappoint them ... I suggest he be sent to some special school, which won't be too demanding academically or too threatening socially, where he can learn to paddle his own canoe.' ... Mother stopped being a weak and polite and credulous doll ... Mother spoke to her throat, and, in a tone between a purr and a growl, she called Dr. Cordiner an 'overdressed little sparrow-fart.'" I do not suggest such name-calling or any form of unkindness. Only that we arrive at the conclusion that Reagan didn't propose to spare even a very thin dime for the undeserving hoi polloi, thus it would be inappropriate for his profile to replace FDR's. Jeanne Marie Peters Ashland DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Site Search: A new improved archive search is coming! Look for it in mid-February! .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - ODOT Road Cams