Letters to the editor: July 19, 2019

Abominable actions

Sen. Brian Boquist’s actions concerning the legislation addressing climate change, and the support for those actions, are abominable.

The indifference to climate change has been a historic crime that could potentially make the wars of the 20th century look like a picnic. And we are facing our first waves of catastrophe.

This is not controversial. Few professional historians or national security analysts would dispute that climate change was what was known as a “stressor” — that is, not an ultimate cause, but a contributing factor — in the outbreak of civil war in Syria.

Why? In 2005, record heat in Russia depressed wheat harvests, so Russia exported no wheat that year, stressing its main markets in the Middle East and North Africa. The attendant rise in bread prices resulted in all manner of destabilization throughout the region.

In Syria, the unusually warm weather triggered drought that impoverished small farmers, adding to Syria’s instability, ultimate civil war and attendant refugee crisis.

What happens if two nuclear powers — say India and Pakistan — go to war over disappearing water from the Himalayas? What happens when the tens of millions who inhabit vulnerable deltas, say in Egypt or Bangladesh, are displaced by sea level rise? What happens when drought displaces vulnerable Central Americans and our borders — the borders of the country most responsible for the crisis — are overwhelmed?

History has, at this delicate and vulnerable moment, bestowed upon us a profoundly deleterious president and administration, stunning in its collective ignorance and incompetence at risk assessment, and a pusillanimous and distracted media.

It is about the most dreaded confluence of factors I can imagine. And the catastrophe is aided and abetted by your local representatives and their party, which appear incompetent to connect the historic dots of this unfolding cataclysm.

Steve Rutledge

Sheridan

Just a killer and rapist

How dare the state of Oregon give Jeffery Dana Sparks another appeal. What are they going to do, let him out on parole so he can kidnap, rape and kill another child?

The reason he hasn’t gotten into any trouble in 20 years is because he has been kept away from society. They need to put him in the prison’s general population and make him face reality for what he did to my daughter.

Sandra Holder

Mother of Lacey Robancho

Los Angeles

Root out the tansy

Its bouquets are seen along roadsides, volunteering in gardens and splashing pastures with streaks of yellow.

Tansy ragwort is an invasive menace that is poisonous to cattle and horses. It damages their livers. And its numerous parachute-like seeds will drift for miles. 

When you see tansy, be a good neighbor. Cut the flower heads, bag them and discard them in the garbage. Pull the flower stalks as well, as they will continue to bloom until frost.

Diligence now keeps an already big problem from growing.

Nancy Thornton

Yamhill

More Trumpian doublespeak

The president is a master manipulator.

His handlers put out skewed stories that the public believes. Then, at the last moment, the story changes and spokespeople reveal what he really intends to do.

For example, when information about the big city immigration raids first surfaced, ICE agents were expected to go to immigrants’ houses, arrest anyone who was undocumented and hold them for deportation. The day before the scheduled raids, all this was revised.

Now it’s just people who have committed crimes in the U.S. who are being sought. That is an entirely different matter, and not at all what the populace was given to expect.

We have people in the government who are interested in manipulation for their own purposes and their own political agendas. I can’t help but think the first version was offered to rally the president’s base and the second to deal with actuality.

This doublespeak undermines the government’s credibility to the detriment of us all.

Democracy should not work this way. We need people in positions of power whom we can trust to say and do the right thing.

Janet De With

Yamhill

Same old liberal drivel

It gets so tiring listening to the same liberal drivel concerning the left’s hate for the president.

Corruption, deceit, collusion, conspiracy, unconstitutional, popular vote and more is all we hear. No constructive solutions, only complaining.

As if the Ukranian deal Biden made for his son was not corrupt. Then there was Benghazi, resulting in the deaths of heroic Americans, the Clinton foundation’s collusion with the Russians, Obama giving millions of dollars in cash to Iran and, the best of all, concentration camps at the border equaling the Jewish Holocaust.

Yes, the Democrats have much to be not proud of. They started the separation of families at the border, and not this administration. All lies.

I am a Democrat. I have voted for various Democrats in the past, but no more.

After watching the ugly display of Democratic values play out in the Kavanaugh hearings, and the disingenuous collusion of partisanship with lawbreaking entities, I will never vote for a Democrat again. Their actions are not genuine, and certainly not in the best interests of our country.

Dennis Carmody

Sheridan

 Hold Boquist accountable

Both sides don’t do it. Once again, it’s a Republican who tries to change the narrative.

After Sen. Brian Boquist’s threatening remarks toward another legislator and the state police, Peggy Boquist laments some threatening telephone messages.

Well, random members of the public do make some reprehensible statements. But Sen. Boquist, as an elected official, should be held to a higher standard than individuals who live in the fever swamps of ideological extremism.

Which other legislators made threats of physical violence? To my knowledge, only Sen. Boquist has done so.

Let’s keep the focus where it belongs.

Sen Boquist made statements, on the record, encouraging physical violence. This type of behavior has no place in the public service sector.

Sen Boquist should be held accountable. He should be voted out of office, as he surely doesn’t have the capacity to feel enough shame to resign.

Alisa Owen

McMinnville

Electroshock abuse

I am a retired Level 1 trauma nurse of many years, and I’m trying to get the media to address the coverups and harm surrounding use of electroshock. I hope you and the public will hear me.

ECT is being performed at an alarming rate for a variety of reasons. But it has undergone no Food & Drug Administration testing for either safety or effectiveness.

Lawsuits taking place around these devices are now going national. Law firms are building cases for medical malpractice, as every procedure has been proven in court to cause a traumatic brain injury similar to the NFL injuries.

But electroshcock devices are still being used to deliver up to 450 volts to the brain, and patients are not being warned.

Suits have been filed against the FDA, but victims seem to be secondary to societal power structures. And those with psychiatric histories hold little credibility. 

Doctors are culpable. They should be held criminally liable for failing in their duty to warn, protect and avoid causing harm.

Procedures are being performed at leading institutions. They are being performed on our veterans, our children and women in pregnancy.

This is trauma, pure in simple. It’s not help.

The truth of these outcomes needs to come to light. I hope you will print this warning to the public, as the major media won’t touch this.

Please see www.ectjustice.com for more information. Thank you.

Deborah Schwartzkopff

McMinnville

Leaders don’t flee

I want someone representing me who does not fear standing up and fighting for what he believes.

A good captain shouldn’t always go down with his ship, but he should be ready to fight – tooth and nail – to keep that ship afloat. I don’t want a captain who is first over the side when defeat seems imminent, threatens violence on his own crew if he is bodily hauled out of the water to perform his duties, then starts trying to blame everyone else when his integrity is called into question.

For the love of America, we followed Washington into revolution, fostering the birth of this great nation, because he quite literally rode with us into battle. The least our elected officials can do is stand at the head of the policies and ideals we elected them to represent and push for us, even if it is to the bitter end of something as non-violent as a vote.

Alexander Gyenes

Sheridan

Let Portland lead way

In regard to the letter, “Time for some explaining”:

It wasn’t the Republican 11 that killed the cap-and-trade bill as much as the three Democratic senators who said they would not support it. Two of them went pulic and the third let it be known the vote would be no if HB 2020 came to the Senate floor.

In other words, if the 11 Republicans had stayed in the chamber, the Senate president still wouldn’t have had the 16 votes he needed from his fellow senators. He said as much on June 25. 

One size doesn’t fit all for cap and trade, and rural senators knew that. At best, it addresses a regional problem, not a state problem.

So where is the clamor arising? That would be the Portland area.

Why not just institute cap and trade for that part of the state to start? After more study, you could design different ones for different parts.

Child psychologists state that children don’t believe in what they hear, but what they see, example by example. In this case, adults should think like children and start by setting an example.

In any event, according to Oregon State University climatologist Dr. Philip Mote, the impact would be minimal if Oregon were to go carbon-neutral today.

Mike Sullivan

Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers

McMinnville