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April 16, 2009 Opinions |
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—Letters To The Editor—
Baling Twine Memories
To The Record-Courier:
We read with interest your article about Sara Bates and her efforts to recycle baling twine.
This brought back fond memories of my father, Art Chaves, who had his own unique way of recycling twine years ago.
He would go out and gather up the pieces of twine in the fields around Baker City and take them home.
Then he would very patiently tie the ends securely together until he had enough to wind it on a spool that fit in a wooden box he had made so it could be unwound as needed for stringing up vines, tying up packages, etc. He always laughed and said that he imagined that is what they had people do in the 'nut' house! Before he died, he managed to make a spool for each one of his grown children. We treasure that twine and this memory so much that we ration it out to make it last as long as possible.
Marilyn Chaves Fullmer
Hillsboro, Ore.
Shotgun Approach To Economy - The Bailouts
To The Record-Courier:
The President is using the last $100 billion from the $700 billion bailout for banks to continue to loan money to them, and he desires an option for another $250 billion. The optional $250 billion should not be approved and the $100 billion in loans should have significant restrictions.
The President instituted a $75 billion program to allow troubled homeowners to refinance their mortgages. They are mostly mortgages approved by conspiring banks for low income people with poor credit ratings, which were instituted under the Clinton Administration and continued in the Bush Administration.
After providing $17 billion in loans to the automobile industry the incompetent auto executives are back for another $20 billion, but thankfully the Administration is placing restrictions on future loans. The auto CEO’s have annual compensation packages worth tens of millions of dollars. The average hourly pay of the unionized workers, including hourly rate and all the extravagant fringe benefits is approximately $75 per hour compared to $45 per hour for non-union workers at foreign manufacturers with plants in the U.S. The U.S. auto industry has to reorganize, manufacture small, fuel efficient vehicles and cut the salaries of executives and get the pay of hourly workers close to $45 per hour. However, the government should not be running any private corporations, and should not be firing employees of these companies.
Despite the dire and gloomy economic predictions of Barack Obama and some of his staff from November 2008 through February 2009, the incompetence of the Detroit auto industry, and the greed of Wall Street, AIG and various large banks across the country, we will overcome the financial difficulties and prevail as a country because of the hard work, tenacity, stamina and wisdom of the American people, but we have to stop bailing out banks, the AIGs and the auto industry.
Donald A. Moskowitz
Londonderry, NH
From Under The Desk
To The Record-Courier:
When I was a small boy, daily we looked into the grim and menacing face of communism. We were trained to hide under our desks in the classroom in the event of nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. We hid under those desks for years until John F. Kennedy took a stand and backed the Soviet missiles from our southern door and out of Cuba. The United States breathed a sigh of relief and prospered under the freedom of capitalism while the world stagnated in confusion and turmoil. We soon found ourselves again under those childhood desks. We thought that being the strongest, best and free would sustain and protect us. Slowly and insidiously came the resurgence of the roots of communism across Europe, Asia and the third world nations. Not until a leader named Ronald Reagan challenged the axis of evil and the soviets to “tear down this wall” did we see the collapse of the soviets and the regression of communism. Again we breathed a sigh of relief and came out from under those childhood desks. But just as elm tree roots live on and spread as its heart decays and dies, the socialist roots of communism advanced. Neo-socialism had spread and was rejuvenated across the globe under the promise of economic equality for all. Socialism generated the vilification of capitalism, nationalization of private industry in the third world, unprecedented growth of unions in Europe and the old British Empire, worldwide experimentation in government controlled health care and untold entitlement programs in the west. Socialism, not communism, had broadened its base and we in the U.S. again slipped back under those desks and chose not to recognize the roots cracking our foundations.
The stage was set for today’s end product of socialism. As the twentieth century had its fascists, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao Tse Tung, and Fidel Castro, the twenty first century has its own. Saddam Hussein, Mahamoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-II and our own, Barak Hussein Obama, who we view daily through the teleprompter. Yes, fascism is alive and well in our world. Fascism:
(1)A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. (2) Oppressive, dictatorial control.
From secularism to leftism, from leftism to dependency, from dependency to socialism and from socialism to fascism the progression has been swift and deliberate in the United States.
From children fearing communism from under a desk, to an entire free society, caught in the grasp of extreme socialist oppression, who would have believed our worst enemies were those who would rise from within? Will those who would deliver us from suffocation of our freedoms also come from within? It is up to us to make that decision. Read your Constitution, get involvedand take our country back. You may become the leader or the one vote to make that difference.
Tim Smith
Harney County, Ore.
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