Your voice: June 12, 2024

His lies about immigrants hurt, too. According to his words, which have no basis in fact, immigrants are flooding our land, coming from insane asylums and prisons. They are terrorists and vermin. In a speech in Michigan in April, he called illegal immigrants “animals” and “not human.”

This rhetoric promotes hate and violence. Our immigrant friends and neighbors here in the Gorge are none of those things. The diversity they bring enriches us all. They are leaders and partners in our businesses, schools and churches. They help to make our communities thrive. Please don’t give a vote or a voice to hate.

Kathy Godwin

White Salmon

Impeach Songer

Klickitat Sheriff Robert Songer is a disgrace to Klickitat.

Sheriff Songer plastered garish billboards around the county warning drug users to leave the county.

Now he is desperate to keep them. Now that it affects his power and money. Of course.

We are unsafe under Songer and all his divisiveness.

Recall Constitutional Bob!

James Barrett

White Salmon

Convicted

Trump has been indicted, tried and convicted of 34 felonies. That makes him a convicted felon, and I accept that reality. I also know that nobody else in this country other than Donald J. Trump would ever have been indicted, tried and convicted of those charges. That makes it a weaponization of the legal system for political purposes. Regardless of how giddy the conviction makes you feel, you should be aware it is a precedent with ominous implications.

Steve Hudson

The Dalles

Democracy matters

In 2024, we face a broad split in our vision for the future, but many people are paying little attention. In a social media video, Donald Trump called for a “Unified Reich,” mirroring Hitler. He praises the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and the Proud Boys and states “false” charges against him will bring “potential death and destruction.”

He supports a constitutional amendment that would place term limits on the members of the House and Senate (12-year limits), removing limits for the president. He praised Putin as brilliant for invading Ukraine. He blocked the bipartisan bill to deal with immigration and does not want the problem solved because keeping immigration issues unsolved is a central rallying issue for Republicans, even though we need moderate immigration for our own continued economic prosperity.

Trump brags about getting Roe versus Wade overturned and vacillates between letting all states make their own separate decisions on a woman’s right to choose and saying he will ban abortions nationwide, without exception for rape or incest. His economic plan is to extend the Republican tax cuts for billionaires and wealthy corporations and solve the resulting massive Federal deficit by increasing military spending while slashing social services including ending social security and federal support for health care. He presents himself as self-made, yet he inherited a vast fortune only to squander it in failed casinos and failed real estate deals. Considered a brilliant financial manager, he would be bankrupt except for massive cash infusions by his supporters. He claims his current legal problems are purely political, yet does not mention the more than 4,000 lawsuits, State and Federal, prior to his election in 2016. The legal cases included battles with defrauded casino patrons, battles with undocumented immigrants and blue collar workers he refused to pay, million-dollar real estate lawsuits, personal defamation lawsuits, and business tax disputes. He has succeeded in delaying his three biggest criminal cases until after the election and now voters need to decide guilt or innocence and then decide whether Democracy matters any more.

“Justice delayed is justice denied.”

— British Prime Minister

William Gladstone, 1868

Michael Beug

White Salmon

Remember Gaza

This evening (June 7), my daughter will graduate from high school. Along with hundreds of other proud and joyful parents, I give thanks for the teachers, staff and community members who have nourished and supported her into adulthood. It is a great blessing to raise children in an environment of care and compassion.

This evening, as our graduates walk across the stage, each one called by name, I will also hold in my heart the thousands of children whose names I do not know who are being bombed, starved, and destroyed in Gaza. Just this week, our tax dollars supported an Israeli military attack on a UN school, where hundreds of desperate families were seeking shelter. Among the dead, more than 14 precious children.

As people of compassion and care, please join me in reaching out to your congressional representative, senators and President Biden to call for an immediate embargo of offensive military weapons to Israel. And if you're willing and able to devote 30 minutes in the coming weeks to show your support for a ceasefire and a return of all hostages and political prisoners, please join us on Fridays from 5-5:30 p.m. at Second and State streets in downtown Hood River for a peaceful, interfaith, community action.

In the name of love, and on behalf of the children, may we do all in our power to stop the killing and create conditions where peace with justice might flourish.

Rev. Vicky Stifter

Hood River

Cleanup overdue

A little island in Multnomah County beautifully lies in the middle of the Columbia River. Since time immemorial this area has supported rich, diverse fishing traditions by the Confederated Tribes of the Yakama Nation, and by local communities. The Yakama Nations right to fish in that area has not been taken away, but their right to safe and healthy fish, indeed has.

After the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took over Bradford Island in 1942, there have been many changes. Bradford Island’s resident fish have some of the highest polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the country, the land was used as a dumping ground for electrical components, hazardous waste, and light bulbs, the contaminants found in this area form a long list from PCBs, to PAHs, as well as metals such as lead and arsenic, mercury, and phthalates, and the Bonneville Lock and Dam was constructed– permanently altering the landscape and flow of the river.

After years of community organizing enormously credited to the Yakama Nation, Bradford Island finally became a Superfund site in March of 2022. Two years later, on April 23rd of this spring, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finally signed a Federal Facility Agreement for the Bradford Island National Priorities List Site Cleanup. This agreement signifies the cleanup finally moving into action, most importantly with the Yakama Nation having a say, and a seat at the table.

The Columbia Gorge is your home as much as anyones, and you deserve a say in holding the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers accountable for the harm they’ve done to the river, the land, the fish, and the people that rely on them. Let’s make sure the cleanup of Bradford Island moves forward righteously.

Jenna Boivin

Hood River

Red and Blue

(Blue) President Carter (late 1970s) was the first president to recognize the huge results of climate change from increased pollution with his environmental agency statement stating, “energy damage is an equivalent of war.”

(Red) Presidents Nixon and Ford ('70s) encouraged expansion of oil drilling, but reduced Carter’s efforts to deal with recent alleged global warming issues.

(Red) Presidents Bush and Reagan ('80s) joked about “Carter” plans to reduce pollutins and so pushed for more drilling. Reagan claimed environmental problems, but both destroyed a decade of progress.

(Blue) President Clinton ('90s) called on his administration to find a cost-effective way to reduce increase in heat, wind, floods, forests, drought, fires, deaths, etc., to attempt curbing further destruction of climate change.

(Red) President Bush (2001s), two weeks after taking office, supported Exxon Mobil’s closure to global warming study and backed a few efforts to reduce former programs on the results of global warming, barely evident.

(Blue) President Obama (2010s) took seriously major steps for cutting carbon emissions, at least 17%, to begin saving our country with devastating growth of floods, fires, drought, loss of homes and increased damage of hurricanes and tornadoes, etc.

(Red) President Trump (2016) dropped former Democrats’ attempts of reducing the destructive results which costed accelerated damage and loss to our climate change.

(Blue) President Biden and Vice President Harris (2020s) began multiple programs to partner with other countries to accelerate the reduction of global warming contributions, as well as developing plans locally to focus on car and factory emissions.

(Red) 2025?: If Trump wins, free rein to polluters, reverse environmental protections, unleash oil on all federal land, rescind all Biden’s electrical pollution standards and gut Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (most ambitious climate law known).

(Blue) 2025?: Commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2030. Release methane and nitrous oxide from industrial sites, and reduce heat from earth's atmosphere.

Audrey Bentz

The Dalles