Letters and Comments for April 15, 2009

A great FFA convention 

To the Editor:

On behalf of Oregon State University and Collegiate FFA, congratulations to the city of La Grande for hosting an outstanding 2009 Oregon FFA State Convention, March 20-23.

The huge success of the convention can be attributed to the thoughtfulness, hospitality, friendliness and hard work of a city coming together to make a positive experience in the lives of more than 1,800 young people from across the state.

It was truly evident that the citizens of your great community are professionals in hosting successful events. La Grande High School administrators, faculty, students and staff, Eastern Oregon University, OSU Agriculture Program at EOU, Union County and the La Grande FFA pulled all the stops to make the convention a first-class experience for those involved in FFA.

A special thanks to La Grande High School agriculture teachers and FFA advisers Paul Anderes and Sara Campbell for hosting this year’s convention. The Eastern Oregon agriculture teachers also deserve recognition for their outstanding efforts to host this convention. We realize it takes an inevitable amount of planning, coordinating and implementation to host such a huge event.

The city of La Grande should be proud of their agriculture teachers, FFA members and school district for hosting such a huge event and bringing positive attention to your fine city.

It was an honor to attend the State FFA Convention in La Grande. Thank you for welcoming FFA and hosting such a huge event in your fine city.

Greg Thompson

Oregon State University

Corvallis

DA orchestrates charges

To the Editor:

I cannot resist responding to the Wallowa County DA’s comment to Observer reporter Gary Fletcher that I do “not understand the process’’ when I said I believed she acted out of malice toward Donna Dunning in assigning charges for a crime.

It would appear that the DA does not want to accept responsibility for her own actions when she states that the grand jury made the decision. I understand enough to know that the DA decides the charge(s) for an offense. It is the DA alone who orchestrates what information to present and how it is presented to the grand jury. It is not the grand jury’s job to assign guilt or innocence. They decide if there is enough evidence presented for the case to go to trial. 

I believe the DA thwarted justice for Donna Dunning by putting Donna and her deceased companion on trial at the same time primarily on the testimony of her accuser, a participant in the shooting. Donna turned down a plea bargain of having the attempted murder charge dropped if she would plead guilty to the assault charge. She used to have trust in the jury system. Yes, I know that other information was presented. Prescription drug use by Donna’s companion were announced but no blood tests were done on the accuser. 

The accuser’s testimony, echoed by the DA, gives incorrect information. The accuser could not have seen his father shot by Shane Huntsman. The accuser stated his father “flipped off the back of his horse.’’ There is no knock-back force to a .30-.30 rifle bullet. A victim simply drops. One is left with the question, “Where was the rifle pointed when the rifle fired as the accuser tackled Shane Huntsman?”

Rita Snyder

Corvallis

Disgraced veterans 

To the Editor:

The man who several million Americans voted for for president of the United States recently stood on French soil, where thousands of Americans fought and died. By calling our beloved nation arrogant I feel he spit in the face of every person who in any and every war have fought the enemies of our country.

This man is not in my humble opinion fit to slander his office, his country and those who have fought and died for this beloved nation.

Roy Hills

Island City

Playing games in Congress

To the Editor:

I sometimes wonder how many people remain who are capable of independent thought.

I watched C-SPAN April 9 and witnessed an incredibly ridiculous congressional debate that actually made no sense whatsoever. Any time that a junior member of the Democratic Party got up to speak about anything, a more senior member of  the Republican Party would stand and demand time using an old rule allowing senior members to question junior members of Congress.

He or she would then ask the junior member of Congress a number of questions. It did not matter what the junior member of the Democratic Party had stood up to speak about, the questions were always the same.

Each of the more senior members of the Republican Party could be seen reading from a list of questions that had been handed out earlier by the leadership of the Republican delegation.

One of these questions that they read multiple times was: “Did you know that the cap and trade proposal is going to cost the average American Household $3,100 per year?” This amount was, supposedly, based on the findings of independent research that was conducted to suggest the impact of the Cap and Trade proposal. They repeated this over and over. The report actually stated that the average household would be paying $31 more a year on average for the cap and trade bill.

Why didn’t anybody fact check this? Who in the Republican Party is capable of actually questioning anything that leadership says? Certainly not our representative.

Greg Lawrence

La Grande

Warming: A discredited theory

To the Editor:

Kudos to Vicki Fleshman for telling it like it is, “Will cattle go the way of timber?” (April 11 edition).

Also for the Bend Bulletin editorial in the same issue.

The Bulletin editorial acquaints readers with “an inconvenient and painful truth.” Government efforts to force the use of renewable energy are costly to PacificCorp and Portland General Electric customers. Actually, it’s even worse because the sacrifice is for nothing. Politicians, even those who may think so, will not fulfill their “desire to save the earth.” Their efforts are based on ignorance, or a push for power, or both.

The theory of carbon-driven global warming has never undergone serious scientific scrutiny and, even worse, is now being disproved by observations. The earth’s surface temperature has not increased for 10 years and 2008 is the coldest year in a decade. So much for Gore’s “hockey stick” graph.

For energy independence and a robust economy, we must all demand serious, honest, public debate on climate change. As a professional meteorologist, I would be interested to see how global warming enthusiasts will defend their discredited theory.

Jerry Perren

Enterprise