LETTERS IN THE EDITOR'S MAILBAG.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Voters should update address

To be a nonvoter would imply that you had received an election ballot. Hundreds of registered voters move between election cycles without re-registering to update their current mailing address.

These ballots are missing from Don Kahle's June 4 Commentary article on nonvoters and are also effectively tossed in the trash, but not before the Postal Service has provided a forwarding address so Lane County Elections can hopefully mail - if the voter hasn't moved again - a ballot to a correct address the next election cycle.

The citizenry also has an obligation to perform its duty to enable Lane County to provide timely, efficient and effective services that enable you to participate in the democratic process as a voter by actually receiving a ballot. Address correction information cost Lane County Elections more than $9,000 for the May 2005 election cycle and will certainly cost more than that for the recent May ballot season.

An 8 percent "no" vote, 35 percent "nonvoter" and 8 percent "did not receive ballot" (due to move, no registration update) creates a majority of registered voters that does not accurately nullify the true desires of the 49 percent of registered voters who voted "yes" and impacts the double majority requirement. Updating your address information through re-registration is particularly important if you do not want to be a part of the silent majority.

ROY L. VARIN

Springfield

Bush policies erode freedom

President Bush wants all of your your e-mail and Internet search records to be available to the Justice Department and FBI for two years because anyone now can be suspected of breaking federal laws!

These regrettable presidential goals about the Internet go right along with other Bush directives of withholding judicial and energy policy information from Congress, carrying out warrantless wiretaps of masses of Americans and blatantly ignoring the Geneva Conventions on prisoners held around the world.

How much freedom does one country have to lose before it is gone? Does anyone care?

PHIL KESSINGER

TERRY KESSINGER

Eugene

Sadler's criticism was unfair

I'm a Republican, but I'm here to defend the Constitution Party against Russell Sadler's intemperate attack (Register-Guard, June 5).

I'm not shocked that he criticizes them for fielding a pro-life option when both major parties are offering us pro-abortion candidates for governor, but I do care that he accuses them of embracing a "seditious doctrine of Christian Nationalism" and then backs up his pugnacious words with nothing but pseudo-history.

Sadler says the Constitutionalists believe America was founded on biblical principles, and he doesn't. Well, the Supreme Court has called America "a Christian nation," and the House Committee on the Judiciary reported to the full House that Christianity "must be considered as the foundation on which the whole structure (of law) rests." President George H.W. Bush, in a proclamation requested by Congress, declared that "a biblical view of man ... inspired the principles upon which the United States is founded." There you go. "Seditious doctrine" from all three branches of American government!

These are not isolated quotations, but the slightest fraction of what the Supreme Court called a "mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation ... we find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth." So, is it the Constitutionalists who believe in "revisionist history," or Sadler?

Mix in the columnist's accusation that some Constitution Party members are Christians who advise other Christians to send their children to Christian schools, and you have the makings of a really "radical" (his word) crowd. Seditious, even!

NORM FOX

Springfield

Don't take your life for granted

In response to Matt Harvey's June 6 letter, "Pre meet a soaking letdown," I am sorry his time with his father did not go as he would have liked.

I had been looking forward to the Prefontaine meet this year, however I was diagnosed with cancer for a second time and treatments prevented me from attending. I was crushed. Harvey's letter was a harsh reality that some people choose to take life for granted and let small inconveniences of life get in the way of living happily.

I would have given anything to walk in the rain with my father to enjoy an Oregon track meet at Hayward Field. My father loved track and field. He was a pole vault official for Oregon for many years, often standing in the rain. He would still be participating but he died of cancer in October at the young age of 66.

We don't need a new parking structure. We need to remember to live each day enjoying the small things rather than spending our precious time griping and complaining.

A walk in the rain sounds pretty good to me.

JULIE GILLIS

Eugene

We're to blame for gas prices

Tom Friedman's June 1 column took General Motors to task for encouraging gas-guzzling by offering $1.99-per-gallon gasoline for a year to purchasers of new, large SUVs. I must say that there's no need to blame General Motors. We seem not to need any encouragement on this score.

Case in point: My daughter was in Springfield looking in on family members who were having health problems. She drove home to Coos Bay on Memorial Day. She was encountering the usual holiday weekend parade and began to count at Reedsport. In the 28 miles from there to North Bend, she met 138 gas-guzzlers, each one towing its boy-toy hauler, loaded with anywhere from one to six gas-guzzling playthings.

Put the blame where it belongs - on "We, the people." If "We, the people" would reduce our consumption of gasoline by even 10 percent, just watch the price come down! Besides, anyone who can afford to buy a Hummer can afford to pay $3-plus at the pump - even if he shouldn't.

MEL MEAD

Springfield

Bicycles don't pay for roads

As a person who has seen first-hand while riding as a passenger in a log truck out on country roads, it is very disconcerting when the truck rounds a corner and right there is a group of bicyclists, not in a line but all bunched up like it is a social gathering.

Do they understand 200 pounds versus 80,000 pounds and what it takes with the laws of physics to slow down or dodge a road hazard and still be alive yourself?

Then I read about how the drivers are to blame for their vehicles that use the road that they have paid for. Until all these bicyclists can buck up and get licensed and insured and pay a registration fee so that they may help pay for the use of roads now paid for by drivers, I say quit whining and understand that you choose to endanger yourself because no one ordered you to ride out there.

No one person owns the roads, but the roads are designed for vehicular traffic. Like was stated earlier in this letter, bicyclists need to take responsibility for their actions and step up to the plate and pay for a share of the road instead of whining about it and hoping everyone else will pay for their recreation.

As I see it now, everyone is paying a stiff price for a few to enjoy what others pay for - be it a truck driver who has to live with what happened or the cyclist who is not living because of what happened.

PAT ANDERSON

Harrisburg

Fund addiction treatment

On June 5, The Register-Guard published an article that linked the rise in child abuse and neglect to cuts in drug and alcohol addiction treatment programs. This is yet another example of how Oregon has backward priorities.

We spend hundreds of millions of dollars funding excessive punishments for criminals, while doing nothing to prevent the crimes themselves. What would help children more: having Mom go to an addiction treatment program or having Mom go to prison? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to stop abuse and neglect before it happens, rather than sending abusive parents to prison after the damage has already been done to the most innocent of bystanders?

Furthermore, the expense of treatment programs to taxpayers is far less than the expense of imprisonment. We all know that the threat of prison is not a deterrent to crime. The only way to make our community safer for our children and ourselves is to put our money into treatment.

JENNIFER HARDWICK

Pleasant Hill

People also bicycle to work

An "us vs. them" provincialism has reared its head as a result of the bicyclist fatality on Territorial Road one-half mile from where I live.

Bicyclists are not limited to outsiders from Eugene or to those who ride for fun, as Pat Edwards' column, "Narrow road not built for bicyclists" (Register-Guard, June 9), implies.

Daily I join the procession of Lorane-area commuters who use Territorial Road to get to work. That I do so on a bicycle makes me rare, but by no means unique. Some of our rural neighbors bicycle because they have lost their driving privileges from alcohol abuse. Others pedal because they cannot afford a car or the gas to power it. I commute by bicycle for my health. My fitness saved me when I contracted life-threatening sepsis a couple years back.

Territorial Road was not designed for fast cars or large trucks. It was built for horse-drawn wagons in the 19th century. In the early 20th century, bicycling was the most efficient transportation available and, no doubt, bicyclists used Territorial Road well before the internal combustion engine was invented.

Until the highway department reconstructs Territorial Road to modern-day standards (soon, I pray!), drivers should be especially alert to its inherent hazards. Whether it is a bicycle or a slow-moving farm tractor that you pass, please drive cautiously. The next life you save may be your neighbor's.

ANDY STAHL-WELLBORN

Eugene