Opinion

One opportunity the Obama campaign is missing (and they seem to be doing just fine without me) is that they're not posing the question, "Did John McCain put his country or his election first when he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate?" We all know the answer: he chose her because he thought it would help him get the Hillary defectors and the ultra-conservative voters who weren't thrilled about him. But I'm sure that whether it was best for the country never entered his mind.

Nothing has done more to alienate voters from the democratic process than the lack of clear choices and substantive debate. Local elections in particular tend to ignore the most important issues in favor of well-intentioned but meaningless platitudes. With so many pressing issues facing our community, I refuse to allow another election pass us by in a blur of don't-worry-be-happy bromides. Though The Source apparently feels that my candidacy is hardly worth mentioning, this is precisely why I am running for City Council Seat 2.
Watch my opponents' slick television ads or listen to their feel-good rhetoric, and you would never know that Bend is in the midst of a major economic crisis. Property prices have plummeted in our community, foreclosures are on the rise and families are finding themselves owing more money on their mortgage than their house is now worth. Having brought Bend to this unhappy condition by fueling ever more unsustainable housing growth, our local leaders now refuse to even acknowledge that families are struggling. We can't allow local leadership to serve the needs of real estate developers while ignoring the long-term health of our community.

"Where the heart is without fear, and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow, domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sands of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let our country awake."
by Rabindranath Tagore, one of India's great poet laureates, the recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1917, and friend of Mahatma Gandhi.

Retiring 18 years ago as a former science teacher and school librarian for 22 years, I escaped the "No Child Left Behind" education wrecker. I have been around many, many, teachers every day of my wonderful career. And I am still in awe of all the talented, concerned professionals I spent 23 years with. To name a few - Jack Ensworth who embraced every child, instilling an awe and wonderment for learning and exploration of all life, human and otherwise. Clayton Smith, who in his kindly and gentleman's way inspired his students with reading, learning and calligraphy, a gift they can use forever. Cherie Crane, who gave the gifts of knowledge, art and elegance to all of her students. Florence Bradley, small but mighty in her teaching skills. And I could go on and on about all of the exceptional teaching staff here.
In today's schools, the No Child Left Behind Program can eliminate the beauty of learning with a lockstep obedient emphasis on never-ending (like the war) test-taking. A child's intuitive and sensitive appreciation of discovery and finding out can be totally crushed by testing, testing and more testing. Tests should be merely another tool in education, not the be-all and end-all of schooling! Children learn in their own way and constant testing can destroy all that is inspiring for children to learn and develop. School is not a military assembly line to enforce non-democratic authoritarian objectives such as complete obedience, and uniformity of all students and teachers.

In a previous editorial I pointed out that fewer than four out of every 1,000 Bend residents ride the bus each day, and that number is declining on a yearly basis, even as oil prices increase. In fact, Bend Area Transit's numbers indicate that ridership is now down to one person per mile. Thus, even the claim that BAT is good for the environment is simply not credible. The problem is ridership on the current system. It's got to be increased, or this system as it currently exists just doesn't make any sense.
Here, I'd like to examine the costs of the transit system. We find that not only is the system very underutilized, it is also very expensive. The city and BAT have not properly laid the groundwork for a new tax district.

I am sitting at my desk right now sick to my stomach and embarrassed for the citizens of Bend. On Friday in the local Republican office, a man working there was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of (Barack) Obama shining Sarah Palin's shoes.