Salem-News.com Op Ed articles

Opinion: Fight Fire with Fire

In order to protect ourselves from the threat of future fires, we must become a society of fire fighters.

(EUGENE, Ore.) - The fireman is a bold and noble figure in our society. He embodies the virtues of bravery, sacrifice, and duty toward others. The fireman is technically proficient.

He skillfully executes his duties using both mind and body, and relying on a set of tools that he has mastered in order to perform his task.

Op Ed: Reason-Assaulted
Abandons Rationality
Threatens Consensus

Public Sphere Distortion, Perversion Eroding Democracy.

(EUGENE, Ore.) - Democracy demands consensus supported by the majority. Without consensus, support surely and certainly slips away, sooner or later.

Consensus is the overwhelming consequence of the “conversation at the heart of democracy,” as John Dewey, famous American educator/philosopher, has declared. ANY such “essential conversation” must depend on rational, reasonable, factual sources.

Op Ed: Nobel Award Proves `Rational, Reasonable`
CAN Win Change

But the process demands patience, trust, full support.

(EUGENE, Ore.) - Our 21st Century world was never constructed in any single day, despite faith-based myth, magnificent stories, and centuries of systematic religious teachings.

Since the Reformation and the Enlightenment, millions around the world have come to depend on the difficult, demanding, dangerous application of rationality --with reasonable action so-shaped/and/driven-- for any advances whatsoever shared by all nations now.

Landowners Need to be Able to Defend Property from Wolves

When I see the emotional polarization in the news and wolf forums and opinion boards, I realize this 'wolf experiment' is a very complex issue.

(JACOBS RANCH, Keating Valley, Ore.) - On Good Friday morning three generations of Jacobs' got to experience firsthand the havoc two wolves could wreak. Just a two-minute jaunt from our sleeping households, four of the five documented wolf attacks occurred on what we call the "Home Ranch," a 640-acre chunk of farm and pastureland, just a part of what we make a living on in this high desert country.

From that day in April until today, Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife and Animal Damage Control confirmed 29 lambs, a pet goat and one calf killed on two ranches. This act stirred and spread the hotbed of debate in our small ranching community of Keating Valley to the Legislature in Salem and beyond.

`Listen and Learn`: NOW or NEVER On Healthcare

Millions-Deprived Equals Rage, Revolt “Sooner or Later”.

(EUGENE, Ore.) - Ever since Teddy Roosevelt’s tenure in 1912 this “richest nation in the world” has been allowing many millions of its too-often otherwise-enslaved citizens to be deprived also of their world-recognized human right to adequate, available, affordable healthcare.

Private/profit providers have long-ago proven that without rigorous regulation their dollar-driven marketmanipulation can manage only distortion and perversion.

Op Ed: 5-Stage Fascism
Nearing Rapid
U.S. Action

Level Building Since KKK, Pandering Produces Deadly Product.

(EUGENE, Ore.) - That long-threatening fear-word “Fascism !” has now reached what world authorities for decades have declared as “the final stage” --right here in our beloved America, home of “The Dream” and the Bill of Rights.

Constant concentrated erosion and inevitable attack ever since early Colonial days --driven at first by rabid determination to continue and consolidate slavery-- has already forced the U.S. through four known preliminary stages. It clearly began with the notorious KKK.

Op Ed: WHY Political Pandering
Damages Democracy So Deeply

Seductive Subversion Seeks Private-Gains Goal.

(EUGENE, Ore.) - Political pandering is today particularly prevalent precisely where it should never appear without solid precedent taken from national, reliable non-political sources -- in open-dialog channels on the the Internet.

Its major damage to our American democracy is becoming so obviously dangerous that it is demanding probing examination by all of us deeply concerned about the consequences for a democracy determinedly built on principles of honesty, openness --and thus democracy.

Op Ed: `Stupid` Police Policy
Produces Stupid Debacle
By Stupid MS-Mediation

Obama Enemies Now Intent On Seduction, Distractions.

(EUGENE, Ore.) - “Stupid” is as stupid does. Behavior and action in the public eye prove up what it is, by what it does and the consequences.

Surely in America today --after the past eight years of a very stupid “Presidential administration”--we are suffering from solid consequential proof of that common sense maxim --at high costs around the world.

Op Ed: Healthcare Reform
Demands Responsible
Public Demonstration

D-I-Y Democracy Endangered By Citizen Ennui.

(EUGENE, Ore.) - Factual probing by wide-ranging channels long ago proved up solid American public demand for direct and strong reform of our obviously now-corrupted and broken healthcare system.

Many current continuing polls, journalistic projects and formal reports from agencies involved show the same continuing demands: The American people understand their healthcare dilemma, and when properly consulted they demand true and comprehensive reform as their human right.

Op Ed for Salem-News
Op Ed: `D-I-Y` Governance
Now Demanded For Second `New Deal`

Where’s the strong, impassioned, continuing and overwhelming true “public opinion” which was so forceful a strong factor in New Deal days, surely felt by the Congress?

(EUGENE, Ore.) - Long-prevailing conservative myth-making states that “the New Deal failed to end the Depression, with World War II the real factor for eventual return to prosperity.”

That erroneous story is now recognized as a canard, distorted Far Right propaganda to denigrate the New Deal and its far-reaching changes of American lifestyle and inevitable impact of democracy on the whole world.