Letters and Comments for September 23, 2009

Morehead

Wyden is part of the problem

To the Editor:

One wonders why Sen. Ron Wyden comes to Wallowa and Union counties at all. He comes, he says, to listen to our problems, but those of us who have spent our lives here know, while he didn’t author our problems, he, Rep. Peter Defazio and the rest of the Democratic contingent along with Oregon Natural Resource Council under Andy Kerr and James Monteith plus HCPC, Sierra Club, Audubon and all the labor unions from the west side (with the exception of the Steelworkers and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) were enablers of the twisted maze of phony environmental laws that have destroyed our economy not just in Wallowa County, but the whole of the rural west.

How do I know this? Because I was one of two Timber Union members who spent days in the office of Irv Fletcher, president of Oregon AFL-CIO, in Salem trying to get support from our brother and sister union members to stop the carnage. Well, forget about union brotherhood with the exception of the Steelworkers and IBEW. I know because I was there.

The sad thing is the enviros don’t really care for the environment or even really know or understand it. The environment is a tool to acquire power over people, and once they acquire that power, the environment can go to hell. Take a good long look at the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest if you don’t believe me.

The Wildlands Project is alive and well and is the reason for the incremental tightening of the screws such as closing the forest roads. Breach the dams? No electricity? Too costly to live here?

Wyden doesn’t answer these questions because from the beginning he and the rest of the Democrats are the enablers and therefore the problem.

Paul Morehead

Joseph