Sunday, February 10, 2008

OPEN LETTER CONTINUED

I would also like to ask the former senator how the so called homosexual agenda caused any of the problems I listed in my last entry and how preventing same sex unions would solve these problems. The answer is that they didn't and it won't. All it does is show that the emperor really doesn't have any clothes on and never has.

These politicians had a chance to address these problems when they were in office and they didn't. to do so would have meant deviating from their narrow, no tax increases for any reason agenda. That is a very real agenda and enough Oregonians got tired of the legislative in fighting to kick some of their asses out of office in '06.

OPEN LETTER TO A FORMER SENATOR

There is an old saying, “where there is one, there is a majority of one

 

I remember the campaign to limit access to marriage. I also remember that some of the supporters used the argument that the winners wouldn’t try to block civil unions if the ballot measure passed. Now the winners argue that we can’t ever rethink or revisit an issue because the majority has spoken.

 

I suspect that if the original ballot measure had failed, it would have been recycled to the next election. And the next, and the next, and the next. As long as there was money coming in to pay the people holding the pens and petitions.

 

I wrote this letter to the Oregonian this morning. It might even get published. I wrote it in response to an op-ed piece from the former state senator helping to ramrod attempts to repeal access to some kind of same sex union here in Oregon. If I could use more than a hundred and fifty words and I wanted to get more personal it might have run something like this.

 

Dear Ms Shannon,

 

……..continued from original letter.

 

For the record I am a single, hetero woman who has lived in Oregon all her life. I haven’t noticed any “social upheaval” because a fellow Oregonian who is a man or a woman happens to love another man or woman and wants the whole world to rejoice with them.

 

Here’s what I have seen.

 

A brokenfoster care system that can’t keep track of its charges because quite frankly the system is busted and there’s no money to fix it.

 

An epidemic of drug use because there’s no money for prevention or intervention. Yippee, putting the Sudafed behind the pharmacy counter may have driven out the mom and pop meth labs, it didn’t put a dent in what’s coming over the border.

 

A state mental hospital so old, dirty, and decrepit even the feds want to close it down.

 

A state more willing to spend money for prisons than schools.

 

A school year shorter than many other states. (and a sister and brother in law who are totally exhausted at the end of the school year, teaching is no profession for wimps.)

 

Conservatives who have no problem with insurance companies who pay for Viagra prescriptions but don’t pay for birth control supplies.

 

Families who fall on hard times only to be told that “you never should have had kids if you couldn’t support them.”

 

Too few places in emergency shelters for shattered families needing to get out of abusive situations.

 

A recession that will probably put a dent in my 401K account, at least I have one.

 

An increasing deduction from my paycheck for health insurance. I don’t mind, at least my employer still offers health insurance.

 

Frankly, Ms Shannon, I could fill a book before I got to domestic partnerships causing social upheaval. Help fix these problems and maybe I’ll listen to your arguments. Of course, by then we’ll al be a lot older and a lot grayer and we’ll discover that this particular problem was a tempest in a teapot. A very small teapot.

 

And after working through two pages of entries on Ms Shannon on Google I haven’t been able to find out if she was defeated for re election or didn’t run again. Either way she’s one of a stable of ‘Pubs who were elected in the mid nineties. Most of them were kicked out in the last couple of election cycles because they didn’t get anything done. See the above list. These are all problems that could have been on the table when Ms Shannon was in the state senate. I could only find one bill attached to her name in my very limited search. A bill to legalize road side memorials for accident victims. Important, perhaps. A better memorial would be a better Oregon.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

MEAT RECALL

Frankly I hope nobody reads this during or after a meal. I’ll be honest I haven’t gone looking for links to the video the humane society put out. I’m sure it’s on YouTube or some place like that.

 

This ties in with some of the things I’ve been commenting about. There’s been a huge meat recall out here on the west coast. The LA Times had a good version of this story.

 

I think about the descriptions in Renault’s books of the animals offered at the festivals in early Greece. They offered the best they had and treated the animals with respect. The meat was shared with the celebrants. And frankly most of the meat people got probably came from the festivals. Heaven knows they seem to have had enough of them. Heck, we’re not vegetarians yet, but we’re as careful as can be about where the meat and poultry comes from.

 

But what pisses me off goes beyond the relatively small chance that one of these animals might have something like mad cow disease. It’s the unspeakable disrespect the cattle owners and this company has shown for everything and everyone involved. And this meat is specifically made for school lunches.

 

 I’m sure these animals weren’t in the best shape when they were shipped but they put them on the trucks anyway. To treat any creature like this is an abomination. To treat creatures meant for the food supply is a double abomination. To feed this meat to our children is……well words fail me.

 

And the interviews I’ve seen on the tube show people concerned about their kids getting sick, I haven’t seen any comments of concern about how the animals themselves. I don’t know about anyone else, but the idea of eating meat from these poor, tormented creatures is nauseating.

 

It is disrespectful to the animals, it's disrespectful to the employees who have to deal with these poor beasts, and it's disresptful to the captive consumers of this meat, our school children.