‘Money is speech’
Sixteen years ago, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision bestowed on corporations the rights of individuals and a “money is speech” clause. Recently, SCOTUS further rendered campaign finance virtually unregulated, qualifying dollars as a First Amendment right. Elon Musk contributed more than $250 million of his free speech to Trump; other billionaires lavished mega million$ on Republican PACs. Conversely, Democrats support reasonable limits on campaign finance.
What returns are we enjoying for billionaires’ opulent investments in our politics?
So far, we’ve gotten a right-wing Republican party that unashamedly embraces Nazism, sexism, racism, elitism, cronyism, election denialism, religious nationalism, pedophilia, criminality, deception, hatred, ICE, unprovoked war, mob-style kleptomania, a partisan SCOTUS and a fire sale of our democracy.
Billionaire-secured influence is actively dismantling our system of democratic protections while the people, left-wing and right-wing, struggle to afford housing, healthcare, education, gas and groceries. Our life-sustaining environment is suffering deadly assaults from poorly regulated chemical slathering of our foods, soil, air and water. Fossil fuels are heavily subsidized and granted carte blanch drilling rights as climate overheating accelerates into devastating wildfires, droughts and floods.
Now, the bloated wealthy are overwhelming candidate airways with expensive AI campaign ads that convincingly impersonate Democrats as radical socialists and communists. Democrats have never promoted either, but AI can make whatever billionaires imagine look and sound real.
Conversely, Democratic Socialism (DS) provides the best of possibilities. Through our taxes, DS affords roads, hospitals, schools, clean water, sewage treatment, electricity, libraries, Social Security, medical research, healthcare, police, firefighters, unmolested elections and so much more. Republicans have dramatically decreased funding to many of these essentials.
Democrats, while imperfect, are decidedly more aligned with our founding principles rooted in serving the collective struggles of the masses rather than the exclusive enrichment of the merciless wealthy.
We the people need protection from the cruelties of heartless greed in the self-dealing governance that SCOTUS and Republicans are now aligned with. Let’s not be hoodwinked. The Democrats are not radical; they are rational and believe democracy works best without heavy-handed billionaires running roughshod over our self-governance.
Chris Connolly
White Salmon
Under threat
The U.S. Forest Service is under threat of a significant reorganization by the Trump administration. While most of the proposals deal with the organizational structure at the higher levels of the agency, there are two areas where changes at the local level could significantly affect the way the Forest Service is able to carry out its mission here in the Gorge.
The first of these is to move the fire management function to the newly formed U.S. Wildland Fire Service in the Department of Interior. The removal of the fire folks from the Forest Service would have impacts on staffing of local offices as people are moved and shifted around. Our Gorge communities could see the loss of families and the negative effects could be many, from the loss of economic activity to coaching Little League and so many more. It is also important to remember that fire folks do more than fight fire. They provide input to the planning of all management activities, the most obvious of which are fuel reduction activities. And the removal of fire management from the Forest Service would seriously hollow out the agency.
The second concern is with the workforce in general. It appears that folks on the ground would be asked to do more with less. That means their regular work suffers, and projects on the ground would be adversely affected. There is also the possibility of these folks being moved to new locations away from the Gorge. The agency has already lost a significant number of employees through the actions of the administration over the past year. Further reductions in the workforce only further the degradation of the agency.
The Forest Service has a major footprint in the Gorge. As a Forest Service retiree, I, along with so many of my fellow retirees, see no value in what is being proposed. If you are a user of the National Forests, or make your living in some way based on the Forest Service, I urge you to contact your elected representatives at all levels of government.
David Gross
Dufur
Taking stock
I have been writing letters to this paper since around 2018, warning about the encroaching fascism that we are now deeply entrenched in, and all because we failed to punish Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
Let’s just take stock of where we are:
We have a masked paramilitary organization, accountable to no one, ostensibly to arrest and deport immigrants, but who are arresting, detaining, and warehousing both immigrants and Americans alike in concentration camps;
Concentration camps that we absolutely have on our own soil, by the way. We can call them detention centers, but we know a euphemism when we see one;
We have an administration helmed by a sociopathic, malignant narcissist and psychopath who rules by decree;
We have a Congress that’s completely out to lunch;
The administration has declared that if one is anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, or radically pro “trans ideology,” whatever that means, or anti-fascist, you have been declared a domestic terrorist and are at risk of being arrested and sent to the aforementioned concentration camps;
And the DOJ has declared that it’s not going to prosecute states that fail to prioritize community-based care for Americans with disabilities rather than warehousing them in mental institutions.
Let’s not forget that Donald Trump is an adjudicated rapist who is featured in the Epstein files more than 1 million times, according to those who have seen the unredacted files. As of this morning, the Department of Justice has officially closed any investigations into the Epstein files. I can’t imagine why. Maybe it’s because the president is also allegedly a pedophile.
But … but Joe Biden! Kamala Harris? Republicans sold out this country because they couldn’t stand a Black woman with an annoying laugh.
To top it all off, now what was once a beautiful reflecting pool has become a metaphor for everything that is disgusting and deplorable about this country.
Benjamin Sheppard
Hood River
Editor’s note: This Benjamin Sheppard is not affiliated with Sheppard’s Orchard and Vineyard Equipment.
‘Self-evident’
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
This government deprives men of life, liberty, and the pursuit happiness. This government squanders the ultimate sacrifices of patriots!
The Uniform Code of Military Justice clearly reinforces the “securing of rights” obligations of governments, imposing the duty not to issue an illegal order, and not to obey an illegal order!
People join the armed forces with the intention to risk their lives to secure these rights. Mjrs. O’Brien and Klinner; Cpts. Khork, Savino, Koval, Angst; Sgts. Amor, Tietjens, Coady, Simmons, Pruit, Pennington; and CWO Marzan all gave the last full measure of devotion. What rights did they secure? None of the rights in the Constitution! Free speech? Free press? Assembly? … Equal protection? Vote? None!
The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCOPA )was an agreement with not just Iran but includes China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and Germany. In May 2018, the Coward and Thief withdrew the United States from that agreement. His incompetent action has created devastation in the eastern Mediterranean, the loss of tens of thousands of lives, and disruption of the world economy. His “deal” will not bare the fruit of the JCOPA!
Iran was not developing a bomb; it was making progress in joining a peaceful world. Dim-wit Don’s withdrawal directly caused the enrichment of nuclear fuels, the cessation of inspections, justified Iran’s support of Hamas to attack Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Hezbollah to attack from Lebanon.
None of this secures the unalienable rights of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!
Trump is flippant and irreverent of the truths inscribed by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams. His national “Frog Pond” does not enhance our Independence Day celebration!
Terry Armentrout
The Dalles
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