Inspired to keep moving

Hooray for you joggers and walkers who pass by our home in the country! Hooray for the bikers too! You encourage us to keep moving. You raise our spirits as we connect to your endeavors to spit in the face of old age. Your determination and strength are an inspiration to the rest of us. Please keep it up.

Pharaba Pankratz, Albany

Let Canada bail them out

In regards to these bailouts, especially the auto industry bailout, why would we bail out the auto company when they have deserted our workforce and gone to Canada and Mexico? Let Canada and Mexico bail out the auto industry where their people have jobs and ours don't. This fair trades agreement only benefits large companies. You cannot even find clothing in a department store made in America.

Jack Miller, Albany

The Big Three auto companies have 240,000 employees in the United States, according to published reports.

Kulongoski's megawatts

I have discovered a perpetual source of electric power. First build a platform in front of a wind-powered generator. Place Gov. Kulongoski on the platform, facing the generator, and ask him a question, any question. Stand back and enjoy the resulting megawatts.

Seriously, his latest proclamation on energy is total wind. He plans to drop the $1,500 credit for the purchase of a hybrid car and replace it with a $5,000 credit for the purchase of an all-electric automobile. Clearly this slaps the country folk where a hybrid made some sense but an electric car is impossible due to the distances we travel.

Can you picture the draw on the power grid when everybody gets home from work and plugs in their electric auto to charge up for the next morning's commute? Talk about brownouts. Not one word from the governor on increasing grid capacity. In fact, after we pull the four "salmon-killing" Klamath river dams there will be 70,000 additional homes without any power.

Blow, Ted, blow!

Mike Downs, Lacomb

Our wild-river fantasy

Seems to me that removing dams from the Klamath River during the development of a worldwide energy shortage is at least imprudent. During a long dry summer, who will convince the salmon that they are better off with Klamath River spring runoff in the Pacific Ocean rather than in storage upstream?

Who would want to replace the power to run 70,000 homes with fossil fuel energy these days? Is the expense of dam removal, the increasing cost of replacement energy and the decrease in agricultural productivity in any way worthwhile?

What is to be gained other than a free-flowing stream for kayaking and fly fishing? Not that I am opposed to such things, but at a time of warming and drying climate, and increasing human population, the fantasy of wild rivers teeming with salmon is unlikely to be realized again in the West.

Jack White, Albany

Not for public information

The Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association effort to gain access to the names of concealed handgun license holders has resulted in an unneeded $2,000 expenditure for Linn County. People obtain concealed handgun licenses for a variety of reasons, ranging from immediate danger posed by a stalker to the simple desire to have peace of mind. To make their information a matter of public record is incredibly counter-productive.

The woman who left her abusive husband and carries for fear of his threats now has an increased likelihood of needing to defend herself with lethal force, and since her abuser knows she's packing, she's lost the element of surprise.

Since it is likely that any given gun owner owns more than a single firearm, the neighborhood meth-head who lives across the street needs only wait until the permit holder is out of the house before breaking in and stealing a gun or two.

We may think it's only right to know when the neighbor given to road rage is packing heat, but stop and ask yourself do you really want everyone to know it?

Devin "Malcolm" Robertson, Albany

The Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association has made no request for handgun license data. One of its members, the Medford Mail-Tribune, did so. Another member, the Democrat-Herald, has editorialized against making the names of license holders public.