Walden should respond

I appreciate Sam Lytle’s recent guest column about the difficulty in getting a response from Congressman Greg Walden. I also have sent him emails with no response, such as my concern about his support of the appointment and confirmation of such incompetent cabinet members as Betsy DeVos and Scott Pruitt.

Having spent over 40 years as a teacher and administrator I have been extremely concerned about school safety and the ease with which insane and deranged individuals can acquire assault weapons and the inaction of our Congress to do anything about it. I saw the fear in the eyes of students and parents the day of the Columbine massacre in 1999 when over 300 students at Mountain View High School checked out of school seeking a safer place.

Schools should be the safest place our children can go!

Ed Tillinghast is the former principal of Mountain View High School in Bend.

Protect our public lands

Are you one of the millions of folks who enjoy hunting, fishing, hiking and horseback riding on publicly owned lands throughout the West?

Do you know that the Trump administration has made a concerted effort to reduce the size and value of our public lands? Under this administration, 67 environmental rules have been overturned or rolled back.

Obstacles to extractive industry development on public lands have been removed, and public resource/environmental protection agencies have seen their budgets radically cut. One of the more egregious decisions was to make public review of potential oil and gas leases on public lands optional, rather than required, thus giving extractive industries an inside track on leasing even more public lands. They will pay as little as $2 an acre for control of beautiful canyon country, critical sage grouse habitat, and Native Americans’ sacred lands. When will this onslaught end? When more of us take a stand to fight back against these insidious threats to public lands that are ours to enjoy, not for industries to exploit.

Here in Oregon, one of our most ecologically important national monuments, the Cascade-Siskiyou, may be reduced in size to the benefit of logging and ranching interests. This is an area that has some of the highest biodiversity in the West, yet this Administration has put it on the chopping block. Please step up and say no to this onslaught by writing letters and attending upcoming events to learn more about how to protect our public lands.

Joanne Richter

Bend

Madras should not promote beer industry

I’m confused. Why is Madras offering $500,000 worth of the public’s money to attract a beer-making company? Is it so people can drive to Madras, dine and drink and then drive home?

While I understand a municipality has an obligation to provide a hospitable permitting and taxing structure to allow businesses to establish and flourish, I fail to see why any city should provide a half a million dollars’ worth of incentives to a single business or single type of business. That is not the business of government.

What makes this situation especially egregious, is the number of DUII citations reported weekly in The Bulletin for the tri-county area. Drunk driving is the number one cause of traffic fatalities in the United States, amounting to around 40,000 deaths a year.

Seventy percent of the fatalities are the people in the vehicles, but 30 percent are people outside the vehicles, so all us bikers, runners and pedestrians shouldn’t be too thrilled about all these libations being so prevalent in our society!

Whenever I’m driving, without fail, I see people on their telephones. As distracted driving is the number one cause of vehicular accidents, this is obviously poor driver judgment. Alcohol-impaired drivers are even less able to have good judgment. Yet Bend’s claim to fame is hosting 22 micro-breweries. The citizens of Madras probably don’t need another watering hole, and the city of Madras needs to be more fiscally and morally responsible.

Rick Craiger

Redmond

Installation was well done

Kudos to Bend and all the people who worked on Bend’s 27th Street sewer line project … rarely given but much deserved. Traffic moved smoothly through every phase of construction; plenty of signage helped inform and direct; no major interruptions or inconvenience.

Mat Clifford

Bend