O Little Town in Oregon

By Kelpie Wilson

t r u t h o u t \| Perspective

Tuesday 01 January 2008

A recent edition of the local paper in my little Oregon town contained
some real shockers. First came the news that our former mayor had been
murdered by a young man he had once sheltered. The 19-year-old, likely a
schizophrenic, had allegedly thrown the 70-year-old man to the ground
and repeatedly pounded his head on the pavement. Friends say the mayor,
fearful of the young man\'s violence, had phoned the police earlier, but
got the usual response people get in this impoverished rural county:
\"Sorry, we don\'t have the manpower to answer your call.\"

The next disturbing news came, in of all things, the five-page spread of
children\'s letters to Santa. Many of these letters were intensely
heartwarming, funny or even irritating in the way that children have. I
had to roll my eyes at the long lists of brand name toys desired by
children, including one child ready with the helpful hint, \"Santa, you
can get this at Wal Mart.\"

On the disturbing end was a five-year-old\'s letter: \"I wish I really
had so much Army stuff and I wish I was in the real Army. I wish I had
so much guns too.\"

But the letters that really startled me were the ones from children who
wanted help with big problems in their lives. They asked Santa to stop
their parents from fighting and to heal the sick people in their
families. They asked Santa to repair the city pool that never has enough
funding to stay open, because \"it is no fun without it.\" They asked
Santa to reopen our county library system which had shut its doors last
year: \"Please Santa, I want a library book.\"

One child asked for a new house, saying, \"There are leaks in the roof,
because there are hols in it.\" And then there were the children who
asked for food:

\"Dear Santa - I want something that will make my family better because
they keep getting sick so can you give me something that will help them
to be better? I want more fruit so people can live a healthy life. Can
you bring us more fruit? I have been very good this year.\"

\"Dear Santa - I want more food for my family because we are almost out
of food.\"

These letters could not have surprised our elementary school teachers.
Every day, before school starts, teachers must provide some children
with breakfast and a shower because they don\'t get these things at
home. Josephine County is one of the poorest counties in the state, but
there are still plenty of middle class and even wealthy people here. The
erosion of public services in the county has less to do with poverty and
more to do with the fact that this area is also a haven for strong
anti-tax ideologues.

Even though our property taxes are some of the lowest in the state,
every time a levy is proposed to fund the police, or the library, or the
pool, it is defeated by a wide margin.

Part of the problem is the legacy of timber money that goes back to the
Teddy Roosevelt era. Because so much of the land ended up in public
ownership (In Oregon, it had to be rescued from a huge railroad company
scam), the federal government ultimately promised that a portion of the
timber receipts could go to fund county governments. On Forest Service
lands, it was 25 percent, and on the O&C (Oregon and Californian
Railroad Company) lands it was 50 percent.

People got used to low property taxes, and even today, some county
commissioners are lobbying the federal government to start up old growth
logging again to pay for county services. What they fail to realize is
that there is no way such a scheme can be sustained.

After World War II, logging on public lands accelerated, and by 1990 the
timber industry had liquidated about 80 percent of the old growth
forests. Public outrage finally stopped most, though not all, of the old
growth logging in the early 1990s as a series of protests and lawsuits
led to the Clinton administration\'s Northwest Forest Plan.

As logging declined, Congress enacted the Secure Rural Schools program
to compensate counties for lost timber receipts. Meant to be a temporary
bridge while counties came up with new funding sources, it will finally
expire in 2008. Lawmakers from Oregon and other states with
forest-dependent communities have tried all year to pass an extension,
with no success. In Oregon, some desperate county officials now see
increased logging as their only hope, and are casting their lot with the
Bush administration by supporting what locals call \"the Whopper.\"

The Whopper goes back to 2003, when the Bush administration decided not
to fight a timber industry case against the Northwest Forest Plan. Even
though the timber industry\'s case was seen as weak and headed for
defeat in court, the federal government settled it by agreeing to a new
forest plan for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in Oregon. The
new plan is called the Western Oregon Plan Revisions (WOPR), aka, \"the
Whopper\".

The Whopper truly lives up to its name. The BLM\'s preferred alternative
would nearly triple logging levels, remove protections for old growth
forests and streams and clear-cut over 14,000 acres per year.

Because the preferred alternative increases clear-cutting and regrowth
in even-aged plantations, it would also convert thousands of acres into
a \"low fire resiliency\" category. Unlike old, wet forests with
thick-barked trees, young plantations have zero resistance to fire.
Because much of the BLM land here is interspersed with private land in a
checkerboard pattern, many homes will be directly threatened.

Local officials are not thinking about the cost to defend homes
surrounded by highly flammable tree plantations. All they can think
about is the money that cutting those old growth trees will bring in.

There is still some hope that the \$1.8 billion Secure Rural Schools
program could be renewed before it expires. For the sake of the forests,
the streams, our homes and our children, let\'s hope Congress passes
this safety net for rural counties.

For the sake of our common future, let\'s hope that the radical,
anti-tax ideologues wake up and realize that liquidating precious
natural resources to fund recurring annual expenditures is nothing but a
dead end.

The final deadline for public comments on the BLM\'s WOPR plan is
January 11. To make a comment, go to:
http://www.daylightdecisions.com/wopro/.

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Kelpie Wilson is Truthout\'s environment editor. Trained as a mechanical
engineer, she embarked on a career as a forest protection activist, then
returned to engineering as a technical writer for the solar power
industry. She is the author of \"Primal Tears,\" an eco-thriller about a
hybrid human-bonobo girl. Greg Bear, author of \"Darwin\'s Radio,\"
says: \"\'Primal Tears\' is primal storytelling, thoughtful and
passionate. Kelpie Wilson wonderfully expands our definitions of human
and family. Read Leslie Thatcher\'s review of Kelpie Wilson\'s novel
\"Primal Tears.\"