LETTERS IN THE EDITOR'S MAILBAG.

Byline: The Register-Guard

City should honor voters' will

I sit here in a real funk. I just read that the West Eugene Parkway is dead.

Part of me says, "Good. The wetlands are important and we need alternative transportation - not just another freeway." But then I am filled with darkness.

You see, I have been lamenting the erosion of the democratic processes in this nation. I am horrified that the present administration treats habeas corpus as if it is just an old-fashioned idea. I am terrified by the very real possibility that our government, as it taps phones and peeks into financial transactions, just might be on its way to becoming the Big Brother we were warned about years ago.

In short, even when it results in an action I favor, I oppose any erosion of democracy. So, as I savor the fact that my side won, the taste quickly becomes foul when I realize that the most basic tenet of democracy, the vote, was ignored by the Eugene City Council. Twice the citizens of this city voted for the West Eugene Parkway. But it seems those votes meant nothing. That is wrong!

Therefore, I urge the city to do what I think is wrong, but right. It is wrong to build through wetlands; but it is much more wrong to undermine the democratic process. Build the West Eugene Parkway.

GEORGE JEFFCOTT

Eugene

Deficit depends on perspective

Things are going so well in the Bush administration that the president personally rushed out to tell us that his administration had just achieved the fourth-worst budget deficit in U.S. history.

MARK S. KONTNY

Eugene

It's work to preserve freedom

We have been citizens of Eugene since 1973. We have spent years being led by mayors and city councils that we felt spoke for business and the Chamber of Commerce. We never once considered calling for their removal or questioning the ethics of these leaders.

When the living wage was voted down, we didn't feel we lived in a fascist state. When our views were erased by later votes or the courts, we didn't think dictatorship. We return for another day. In a democracy, you have to work all the time to keep freedom alive.

We who have in our circle of friends low-income people, illiterate people and imprisoned people have the privilege of hearing from the powerless. We do not need more isolation from one another. We need to bring more of us to the table to hear all these different truths.

CYNTHIA KOKIS

GEORGE KOKIS

Eugene

Ralston hit the nail on the head

I stand up and applaud Springfield City Councilor Dave Ralston. Finally, one of our local leaders has risen above the rest to address the illegal immigration problem we have in this community.

Instead of leaders like Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy, who has no guts when it comes to leadership and addressing problems, Ralston has hit the nail on the head. So what happens to him for expressing his concerns? He gets lambasted by all the liberal wackos who think Ralston has the problem. I am sick of illegals taking welfare and benefits from hard-working Americans like myself. If we had more leaders like Ralston, this community would be safer and more pleasant to live in.

Shame on Mayor Sid Leiken for not supporting Ralston. Please don't let Springfield become another Eugene. Wake up, Oregon - take America back!

MIKE VALLIER

Veneta

Bush isn't much like Lincoln

There is a bust of Abraham Lincoln on display behind President Bush in a room he uses for press conferences. This symbolism is not lost on me, but I'm troubled by it.

Does anybody favorably compare the two presidents? Please note some comparisons:

Lincoln is known to have suffered deeply from depression. He moped and shuffled around the White House during his darkest emotional times. News of the casualties of the Civil War only made it worse. He was heartbroken for the nation.

When President Bush's war turns dark and tragedies mount, he struts and prances before hand-picked audiences, bragging, craving adoring applause, celebrating "the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power."

Also, President Lincoln loved our language, mobilized it, spoke it with wonderful skill and profound pathos. He also wrote voluminously - his collected speeches, printed letters and other writings contain more words than either the Bible with Apocrypha or the complete works of William Shakespeare.

Bush shows no love of the language. Jokes abound about his bloopers and goofs. He speaks only cliche and buzz words. Listening to him, there is no wonder or awe or humility, no literacy, no soul. What will his collected letters and papers look like? Will he really have a presidential library?

So, how about a bust of President Grant in the briefing room? Or perhaps Calvin Coolidge or Herbert Hoover?

DALE TOWNSEND

Roseburg

The poor get no respect here

I wish The Register-Guard would get off its rump and do some real reporting.

When it runs a series of articles talking about the people who hold signs and beg for money at intersections or on sidewalks and looks at no other aspects of poverty, it is really just engaging in assuaging middle class guilt. Truth is, without an enormous amount of support, which often isn't available, the poor who are dysfunctional stay locked in a hopeless lifestyle.

Want to know suffering in Eugene? Hang out at Whitebird, especially Whitebird dental, which recently lost its dentist. Listen to the pain in the voices of people who can't get their teeth fixed, and even if they could, can't pay for it.

Want to see the face of the poor? Go over to Legal Aid and get a sense of the thousands in Lane County who cannot get desperately needed legal services because there is so little funding. Talk to a woman who lost custody of her kids because she couldn't afford an attorney. That's despair.

Want letters from the poor and suffering? Ask for responses from people who had essential medical services from emergency rooms and then spent years being dunned for impossible-to-pay doctor bills. Bill collectors can be gigantic jerks.

The huge numbers of very poor in Lane County are mostly hidden. Don't use the few who hold signs as scapegoats. Eugene is now a place where the poor will never own a house - or, it seems, get respect.

HUGH MASSENGILL

Eugene

3 a.m. train horns unnecessary

Scott Phillips is quite hilarious (letters, July 17). I'm sure as he sits in his quiet, comfortable, heavily surrounded and researched, breeze-whistling house, he has quite a laugh at us "simple" folk.

I guess he doesn't understand that some people can't always choose where they live.

I suppose I could get a big SUV and drive down from the silent south hills every day to my job. That would be great. But I think he is missing the point. It's 3 a.m.! There is no need for a train to blow its whistle five times before crossing a street with a crossing guard, then to blow its whistle five more times at the next street, one block away.

All we are asking for is a slight refrain for certain hours, the hours the "vocal majority" sleeps. I guess we'll see whose letter to the editor hits the back page when a cougar eats someone's precious cat up there in "sleepytown."

AARON DOUGHAN

Eugene

Smoking drives away business

I certainly agree 100 percent with The Register-Guard's July 17 editorial about secondhand smoke. I have my way of handling it. I simply refuse to patronize any bar or restaurant where smoking is allowed.

I enjoy watching TV sporting events on big screen TVs like one sees in a typical sports bar, but even though I'm a resident of Springfield, I will drive to Eugene and give my business to a bar owner who cares about a smoke-free atmosphere. The same goes for when I dine out. Eugene businesses get my business.

I have never understood why businesses don't gear their business to the 85 percent of the folks who don't smoke and dislike smoke instead of the 15 percent who either smoke or don't mind what it does to them.

DANIEL WOLFE

Springfield

Time will prove Israel's point

Alas for poor humanity. The Arab world has ceded its destiny to factions who do not believe in freedom. And what's the world's response? "Israel is overreacting."

I hope that time will heal today's wounds and the Lebanese of the future, like the Germans of today, will enjoy peace with their neighbor, free to choose their own way forward, rather than submit to the Syrian strategic game and the Iranian ideological imperative.

BILL SARNOFF

Eugene