Letters in the Editor's Mailbag.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Use CDCs for stimulus

There has been a considerable amount of discussion about the importance of community and faith-based nonprofits before and after the horrific attacks of Sept. 11. Now, as Congress and the White House consider an economic stimulus proposal, we hope that they continue to look to the nation's 3,600 community development corporations (CDCs).

By making strategic investments in proven federal community economic development proposals that create jobs and help businesses grow, Congress and the president can ensure that all levels of the economy quickly benefit from the stimulus plan.

The direction taken by the U.S. House of Representatives will do more damage to communities. House Resolution 3090 provides enormous tax cuts to giant corporations and wealthy taxpayers. Instead, Sen. Robert Byrd's stimulus package should be supported. It has the support of the National Congress for Community Economic Development, because it invests in proven federal housing, business development and job creation programs that will assist moderate- and low-income communities in urban and rural America.

LAURAN DAVIDSON Leaburg

Consider health initiative

The paper reports on rapidly escalating health care costs (Register-Guard, Jan. 8). And a David Broder column (Register-Guard, Jan. 6) shouts that "something must be done" to deal with this mounting problem. A better solution was devised in 1888 by Otto von Bismarck in Germany. It's called universal health care.

Now Oregonians have an opportunity to examine that solution to the urgent health care problems that face many of us. Signatures are being gathered to put on the November ballot a plan to provide all residents with comprehensive health care for necessary medical services. This plan will cover all residents with better coverage and at less cost than we are currently paying to cover health care.

I urge Oregonians to take a look at this plan. Think about the many people who have no insurance coverage - including more than 20,000 children in this state. You will quickly see that now is the time for change.

Sign the initiative to get this plan on the November ballot.

BOB CASSIDY Eugene

No 'walk across Europe'

Regarding Peter Hays' comments in his Jan. 8 letter: I'd really like to know how he could even begin to think that World War II in Europe was a walk across Europe for U.S. forces. Before Hays makes public the fact that he thinks the freedoms he enjoys, such as writing letters to the editor, came at no cost to the United States, he should read "The Victors, Eisenhower and His Boys: The Men of World War II," by Stephen E. Ambrose.

Now for the "walk." Start with the U.S. Army's A Company, 116th Regiment, 29th Division, that took 90 percent casualties at Omaha Beach. Follow with Company D 82nd Airborne Division, 505th PIR, made up of 600 lightly-armed paratroopers who faced 6,000 German soldiers armed with artillery, tanks and self-propelled guns at Ste. Mere-Eglise and thwarted a counterattack meant to drive the invasion back into the sea.

Or consider the 101st Airborne Division, which held off a dozen crack German armored and infantry divisions in the Battle of The Bulge. This was a battle that lasted through the month of December and pitted our soldiers - who had not received winter gear, who lacked air support because of weather and who were lightly armed - against these crack German divisions. They held the line, and these U.S. soldiers became known as the "Battling Bastards of Bastogne." These are just a few of the battles that U.S. soldiers fought in their "walk" across Europe facing an already "defeated" German army.

The next time Hays decides history is his long suit and is going to educate the people of Eugene, he should take the time to check his facts.

PAUL RAFFIN Eugene

Be angry - very angry

I was surprised last month when Lane County commissioners made the right decision to deny Eugene Sand & Gravel's outrageous plan to carve a gravel pit out of prime farmland along the Willamette River. With two commissioners, Bobby Green and Cindy Weeldryer, obviously siding with the pit people, and with another, Anna Morrison, blowing with the wind, it seemed that Commissioners Bill Dwyer and Peter Sorenson would be in the minority. So it came as a real surprise that Morrison voted against the pits. Common sense prevailed.

You didn't have to be a pine cone eater or a tree sitter to see the consequences of allowing the plan to go forward: ruined farmland, degraded water and air quality, displaced wildlife, destroyed fish habitat; it just made sense that a majority of the commissioners opposed the plan.

If you have worked against this terrible and greedy proposal for more than two years, if you attended the hearings in August and if you wrote letters urging the commissioners to save this land, then you should be very, very angry. Even if you didn't do any of the above, you should be very, very angry, and you should ask the following questions:

What exactly did company President Mike Alltucker do to cause Morrison's call to reconsider the decision? While the rest of us citizens, researchers, farmers, etc., had a deadline of late September to file our evidence and opinions, why did Eugene Sand get to continue lobbying through November, December and, now, January?

Presumably we elect our commissioners to represent us fairly and intelligently. The capriciousness of Morrison and the self-serving or, at best, ignorant votes of Green and Weeldryer should justify a resounding recall come election time. These people do not represent us.

BARBARA DALE MAY Eugene

Improper influence

I was both disappointed and very angry after reading the Jan. 8 article about Eugene Sand & Gravel's gravel pit proposal possibly getting a new vote by the Lane County commissioners.

Although a private meeting with Eugene Sand President Mike Alltucker may not have been illegal, it certainly was unethical and showed a real lack of integrity on the part of Commissioner Anna Morrison and the other unnamed commissioner involved. This gives an unfair advantage to Alltucker by not allowing his opponents an opportunity to respond to any matters they discussed. The whole thing smacks of impropriety and improper influence.

If he can't get through the front door, it appears Alltucker will try and sneak through the back. As to the question Morrison posed in the article, yes, it appears she can be swayed.

LUCI BOYER Eugene

Ask combat veterans

I agree with Peter Hays (letters, Jan. 8) that children need to be told the truth. But that truth is not Hays' version, I hope.

The Russians did defeat Hitler on the Eastern front. What Hays fails to mention is that Russia would never have accomplished that feat without American supplies through the Lend-Lease program. As far as the Americans walking across Europe as if it were a "cake walk," why don't we ask the combat veterans what they thought about that? Every World War II veteran that I know who participated in the battles in the European theater would disagree with Hays' distorted view of European victory by the Allied forces.

Jumping ahead to the present: Hays' statements are a direct insult to the young men and women who serve in our military and to the police officers, firefighters and emergency medical people who so selflessly demonstrated their skill and courage in the face of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.

Contrary to Hays' opinion, our nation is a nation of major achievement; the most evident being the freedom that allows people such as Hays to freely speak his opinion in a public forum and my right to debate him in the same forum.

DAVID M. MONTGOMERY Noti

Daschle no obstructionist 

I would like to respond to the Jan. 9 letter by Alana Rhodes stating that Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is an "obstructionist" because he opposes portions of President Bush's stimulus package. I have never read anything further from the truth.

I grew up in South Dakota, Daschle's home state. One of the things I remember about turning 18 was finally being able to vote. I voted for Daschle for U.S. Congress. Daschle is a man who knocked on thousands of doors and talked to people in order to win his first seat in Congress. He is a man who has easily won re-election despite being a Democrat in a heavily Republican state. How could he possibly be considered an "obstructionist?"

Daschle is a man who to this day still remembers my mother, a homemaker and part-time bookkeeper who volunteered for one of his earliest campaigns, by her first name when he is in South Dakota on Senate business. My mother is more important to him than a bunch of robber-baron Enron executives.

Tom Daschle is one of the most honest, humble, hard working members of either chamber of Congress. He votes his conscience. I know this about this man from personal experience.

IRENE HENJUM Springfield

Science is human

The difficulties in debating evolution in letters to the editor are more fundamental than simply a lack of space and time. It seems to me that each side argues from insufficient understanding of its own positions.

For example, one writer declares that evolution is broadly accepted in college textbooks, yet such theories are frequently overturned with new and convincing evidence.

The creationists, on the other hand, believe the Bible to be the infallible foundation of creation science, and therefore no amount of evidence against it will change their minds. However, both viewpoints have missed a crucial aspect of how science works.

Science is not what is written in a book. Science is a way of seeking understanding about nature, even if that knowledge flies in the face of our deepest intuitions and strongest prejudices. For that reason, no matter how accepted a scientific theory is, it can change or even be replaced with the acquisition of new knowledge.

Science is a very human endeavor, and as Jacob Bronowski once said, "Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: `I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.' '

JENNIFER and JOHN DONOVAN Eugene

CAPTION(S):

The Register-Guard welcomes letters on topics of general interest. Our length limit is 250 words; all letters are subject to condensation. Writers are limited to one letter per calendar month. Because of the volume of mail, not all letters can be printed. Letters must be signed with the writer's full name. An address and daytime telephone number are needed for verification purposes; this information will not be published or released. Mail letters to Mailbag, P.O. Box 10188, Eugene, OR 97440-2188 Fax: [phone] E-mail: [e-mail]