Web Letters

IBOA BRINGS PASSION
I am a 19-year-old drummer, activist and first time voter, and I am beyond stoked to support Joel Iboa for Lane County Commissioner on Nov. 3. I first heard Iboa speak at an Abolish ICE rally; his charisma, his record of defending immigrant rights and his progressive idealism for our community impassioned me. As a leader with Causa Oregon, Iboa has implemented sanctuary laws and is the youngest person to be elected chair for the Oregon Governor’s Environmental Justice Task Force. It is time we have more BIPOC leaders representing our community. While some local politicians sat out and kept silent during the Black Lives Matter movement, Iboa has been vocal on the front lines, and that’s how he will lead us as our county commissioner. Vote Iboa for Lane County Commissioner, District 3!
Alden McWayne
Eugene

WEAVER’S WILDERNESS LEGACY
For anyone who has ever experienced the unparalleled clarity of Waldo Lake, the ruggedness of the Kalmiopsis, the French Pete arm of Three Sisters and so many other iconic places, we must give deep gratitude to the late Jim Weaver, who represented Oregon’s 4th Congressional District in the ’70s and ’80s and helped usher in much needed, permanent protection for these areas. Against difficult odds, he advanced wilderness, not just for this generation but for those to come, and it is comforting to know that these unique landscapes will be forever safeguarded from the jaws of industrialization.
May his legacy inspire more wilderness and wild and scenic advocacy and future congressional action to permanently protect the outstanding, yet unprotected, wildlands and waterways of our incredible state.
Josh Laughlin
Executive Director, Cascadia Wildlands
Eugene

GOP = DAOS
When Antonin Scalia died in February, 2016, Sen. Mitch McConnell and his colleagues insisted that because it was an election year, they would refuse to confirm the replacement chosen by President Barack Obama. With Ruth Bader Ginsberg having died in September of this year, less than two months before the election, Senate Republicans are rushing to confirm Trump’s selected replacement, Amy Coney Barrett.
We need a new acronym to help us tease apart what’s going on in the minds of Senate Republicans. I suggest “DAOS”: Delusional and/or Sociopathic. Either they are using astonishing intellectual gymnastics to rationalize a complete reversal of their earlier position rendering them essentially delusional as to their towering degree of hypocrisy or else Senate Republicans simply do not experience guilt or remorse. In other words they are without conscience, making their behavior sociopathic.
It’s so difficult to know if Senate Republicans (and many Democrats) are delusional or sociopaths, and really it’s probably a combination of both. So, my new acronym, DAOS, will be very useful in helping us understand and articulate the inner workings of these people who have no business being janitors at our nation’s capital, much less running the place.
Robert Bolman
Eugene

A NEW OLD HEALTH PLAN
OK, neighbors, cast your distracted minds in this direction for five seconds.
Health care. Untether Oregon from the national debacle and save money. Millions of dollars for the state and for us.
How? The plan exists. Take the original Oregon Health Plan, developed by two doctors in the Oregon legislature in the early 1990s. The original Oregon Health Plan was unconventional and effective — thoroughly Oregonian, like the Oregon bottle bill and public beach access of the Tom McCall era.
Now give it an update to make it financially sustainable using incentives based on respect for human nature and individual responsibility.
Done, thanks to Sean Scorvo, a retired physician running for Oregon House District 23. Scorvo would make a terrific representative in Salem. Smart, creative, articulate, open-minded.
If you want even more to fill your distracted minds, head to SeanScorvo.com.
Evelyn Lee
Monroe

NOT TOO LATE TO IMPEACH HIM
Even this close to our election, President Donald Trump should be impeached again to prevent what he has already “hatched up” as a lame duck between November and the 2021 inauguration.
Impeachment is justified for his supporting the overthrow of a sitting governor in Michigan. That’s clearly insurrection/treason.
Are Democrats actually just going to simply wait for this Trump to leave peacefully- when he has already declared election results invalid?
Trump is preparing to unleash illegal militias, has publically encouraged violence, thuggery and weapons at polling locations all over the country. We call that “inciting a riot.”
At least Vice President Mike Pence is sane enough to abide by basic laws. Trump, on the other hand, could legally pardon anyone he wishes, even for murder.
Roger Stone, Trump’s best friend forever, a convicted felon who never spent a day in jail, has surrounded himself with a private army of Proud Boy white supremacists as bodyguards. Stone has already declared war; just ask him.
Fascist writing is on the wall and being shouted from the presidential bully pulpit. American media is covering this pathetic tragedy as if it’s just another reality show where some loser gets voted off the island but doesn’t actually blow up the country. Sure hope I don’t have to say I told ya so.
Glenn Jones
Eugene

NANCY PELOSI, YOU DON’T KNOW ME
I watched your interview a couple of days ago with Wolf Blitzer. At one point, as you were both talking over each other and interrupting each other, you repeatedly said to him that “We (meaning, I assume, Democrats) know our people.”
Madame Speaker, you don’t know me. You can’t possibly.
You don’t know what it’s like to have a decades long career of public service and not be able to pay your power bill.
You don’t know what it’s like to watch your neighbors have to collect cans in order to be able to afford bread.
You don’t know what it’s like to never see above four figures in your bank account — ever — while reading that those who supposedly represent you are well into seven figures.
You don’t know what it’s like to watch your children working two jobs and still unable to feed their kids without missing the rent.
You don’t know what it’s like to watch medical bills destroy 30 years of savings in 11 months.
You don’t know, because you can’t. Your worth is in the millions. Neither I, my children or my friends will ever see a million, or a hundred thousand, or even in the ten thousands. Ever.
You do not know what that’s like.
You might know about it, but you cannot possibly know it. The fact that you think that you do is the entire problem with the Democratic party.
Judith McKenzie
Eugene

WILDE OFFERS REAL LEADERSHIP
You might not know that state Rep. Marty Wilde (District 11) spent 27 years in the military and is a colonel in the National Guard. Who would be better to lead us out of a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic?
As the virus remains dangerous to all Oregonians, Col. Wilde uses his expertise in medical administration to protect and defend the Oregon Health Plan (OHP) for his constituents. In fact, over 40,000 residents of Lane County and 12,000 residents of Linn County would be without health care if not for his work on a budget shortage in OHP during the 2019 legislative session.
However, healthcare and even universal healthcare are not the only problems that the COVID-19 pandemic brings to mind. Many of his most vulnerable constituents need help to stay safe in their homes. Marty helped provide $200 million for low-income and supportive housing; he helped eliminate evictions that had no cause; and he helped pass legislation to prevent rents from being greatly increased in a short time.
We all need state Rep. Wilde in the Oregon Legislature to serve and protect us.
Bryan Haynes
Eugene

WILDE SUPPORTS EDUCATION
I am writing today to talk about the importance of education and to urge your support of state Rep. Marty Wilde this election.
I read recently that we are ranked below the middle of the pack in education. We should and can do better. Kids need to be able to learn voraciously and broadly until they discover what type of gifts they bring to the table. Only education across all disciplines will give children the tools they will need to create and fulfill the jobs of tomorrow.
It is our legislators who help make this happen, and it’s paramount that we elect ones who fully support funding education. That is why I am supporting Marty Wilde for state representative in District 11. Wilde worked to pass the Student Success Act that brought Oregon schools an additional billion dollars. He passed legislation to allow small schools like Oak Hill to expand to fulfill the needs of their students, and was able to get additional funding for Central Linn Middle School to build some very needed new buildings. Wilde understands the importance education plays in our society and should be reelected in November.
John Fearing
Leaburg

A FLAG THAT SHAMES VETERANS
With all the extra time to watch TV and so little good TV to watch, I rediscovered Victory at Sea, a series I first watched half asleep in 1952 on my father’s knee. Victory at Sea documents the WWII sea war from beginning to end on both the Atlantic and Pacific fronts. It is well worth the watch. It also documents what led to the rise and fall of facist regimes led by dictators in Germany, Japan and Italy. The story of Italy’s tin-pot dictator Benito Mussolini is very timely.
I realize now how young and how brave those sailors, soldiers, Marines and airmen were — many in their teens and twenties. Some ran into withering gunfire and planted American flags on the Normandy shores and atop Mt. Suribachi. To all of them the flag meant far more than just a political statement.
I used to ignore the pickup trucks with large American and Trump flags speeding by as if they have some kind of ownership of the American flag. Now I resent them. Could the driver find Mt. Suribachi or the Normandy shores on a map? Does he know what happened there? I doubt it. And how could he follow a man who calls war veterans “suckers” and “losers.”
Please don’t fly those two flags together.
Leslie Weinstein
Eugene