Posted: Sunday, August 24, 2008 12:00 am
Sour notes from John McCain
John McCain is not "Poor Johnny one note" (Rogers and Hart,1937), but the two notes he continually chants are both sour. His insistence that the surge restored calm to Iraq and that drilling to recover oil and gas will solve our energy problems demonstrates the tunnel vision that would impair his presidential effectiveness.
The Iraq scene remains less than peaceful notwithstanding the year-long cooperation from several leaders of the various factions. Generally overlooked in current exchanges on the surge's effectiveness are the numerous, unpopular walls subdividing Baghdad (6/28 A.P article). These walls, which limit movement within the city, were erected-arguably-to separate Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods. If the surge had been highly effective, our troops would be leaving Iraq and establishing a surge in Afghanistan.
McCain incessant call for drilling, to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and relieve consumers of currently high gasoline prices, hasn't lessened despite repeated, well-founded replies concerning its near-term futility.
Consequently, current emphasis must be placed on developing the techniques and facilities that can provide affordable, non-polluting renewable energy in the mid-term and thereafter. Apparently, McCain can't accept that. He's too busy spellbinding with his studied sincerity to hear and appreciate the facts that must guide the next president.
Mike Wolf
Corvallis
The only route to good jobs
Hats off to the paper for recognizing ("Boom times for OSU research," Sunday, Aug. 17) the importance of research and technology transfer growth success at OSU. That OSU and the OUS system are growing their market share of federal and private research funding is very, very good news.
The U.S, state and local economies are entering a time of great change and risk, but if one thing is clear, it is that the only way to preserve or create high-wage jobs is innovation leadership beginning with competitive research success.
Industry, under short-term pressure, is increasingly abandoning basic research and early stage innovation, leaving this crucial responsibility to universities, national laboratories and the spinouts they enable.
So there has never been a more auspicious time to be a research university, and Corvallis stands to benefit disproportionately from its signature asset, Oregon State University. The state of Oregon, however, has not yet grasped this truth as fully as a high-tech-intensive state should. Funding for higher education (including faculty salaries) lags all but three other states, and bureaucratic/legal shackles long since lifted in progressive places like North Carolina intensify the disadvantage.
Citizens who want a strong economy, good jobs for their children, or merely the future means (prosperity) to pay for social goods such as health and education, would do well to emphasize this long-term competitiveness issue with elected officials.
And while I'm passing out kudos, hats off (or perhaps heads off?) to OSU for the uproariously wonderful production of "The Mikado." Missed it? See the revival Oct. 3, 4,and 5!
Robert D. "Skip" Rung
Corvallis
Rung is president and executive director of the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute.
If there was no withholding
Your editorial (Sunday, Aug. 17) on the taxing of income we never see reminded me that most of us do not pay attention when it comes to taxation. This is primarily a function of government claiming first dibs on our personal income.
Most of us focus only on what is seen (take-home pay), not what is taken (withholding). If taxpayers realized in a more direct way how much income is taken by the government they would be outraged. Increased awareness can be achieved in two easy steps.
One, ban every form of periodic withholding and make everyone pay their income tax in one lump sum at one time. There is nothing like writing a big, fat check once a year to focus the mind.
Two, move the tax due date from April 15 to the first Monday in November. There is nothing like a huge payment to focus the mind on government spending priorities. Voting our pocketbooks would suddenly become very real.
But, alas, even these reforms may not cause the outrage that is needed. Why? Two reasons:
One, because a large and growing segment of our population pays no income tax. They are tax eaters. Two, the probability of our legislators changing the current system is zero. To a statist any level of economic freedom is dangerous.
Leaving citizens any portion of their earnings is, to quote the U.S. Supreme Court, a matter of "legislative grace."
Gordon L. Shadle
Albany
A victim of erroneous science?
In his Aug. 17 letter, "Where to find warming info," Laurence Padman attempts to put me in the opposite corner from the Bush administration. Ordinarily I would not like that position, but I think Bush is the victim of erroneous science, just as he was of faulty intelligence in the Iraq war.
Padman asserts that scientific consensus exists on this subject, namely that human-emitted carbon dioxide warms the planet with a greenhouse effect.
But a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Oleg Sorokhtin-Gorokhtin, writes in an essay for Novosti that "Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind."
The Encarta online encyclopedia gives the following information: "The most common greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapor. It accounts for 60 to 70 percent of the natural greenhouse effect."
Danish physicists Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen write, "The Sun appears to be the main forcing agent in global climate change." So much for scientific consensus.
Lest we forget: In the late 15th century, the scientific consensus was that the Earth is flat.
Joseph G. West
Corvallis
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