For the record, I like timers on irrigation systems: lets my grape vines survive my horticultural blunders. I like hiking up the Table Rock mesas and Crater Lake rim trails. I like pontoon boating on Fish Lake with a batch of Mojitos. I like hiking in the mountains in the fall with a rifle, secretly hoping I won't have to shoot anything and consequently kill myself getting the carcass to the car. I like to see king salmon in the rivers and creeks, especially Bear Creek in Medford, where I saw my first Southern Oregon chinook.

Things I don't like? The king salmon in Bear Creek ramming their heads against the board dam under the freeway in downtown Medford. The Gold Rey Dam remaining in place to slow down anadromous salmon migration up and down, just to count the adults as they swim by the counting window. I don't like plumbers who sign on to roter-root your drain pipe and then when they get the snake stuck, just cut it off and walk away. I don't like it when some young people in Central Point shoot out 60 car windows and only get a slap on the wrist. I don't like Fish and Wildlife Department bureaucrats undermining a perfectly good plan to restore salmon runs in Southern Oregon because it means more work for them.

Which brings me to a larger illness going around society today as demonstrated by the paragraph in quotes. There is a lot of momentum for such craziness and I'm not convinced sharing information widely is smarter than physically doing something. The 18% of our population who run these rackets don't share, share, share, they go get what they want. Generally it's at the expense of the rest of us.

Take for example privatizing the fish stocks. Next time you go ocean fishing you might find a 'Pacific Seafoods Property, Release Immediately' sticker on that fish you just landed. If you can find any remnant of your share after the Oregon Trawl Commission has scraped the whole bottom with trawls so effectively.

"The EU experiment with a carbon trade system has been soundly declared a failure. Over-allocation of permits, free permit giveaways, overblown estimates of baseline emissions, cheating, and the passing of permit costs to ratepayers have all contributed to the failure. According to a Citigroup report, it failed to reduce emissions and resulted in huge profits to polluters at the expense of consumers."

I wouldn't object so much to being bilked out of my birthright on fish, clean air and water if they didn't look down their noses at the rest of us so much. I had a real lesson in this psychopathy recently. Namely, a young guy gets in a position of power through no merits of his own and suddenly declares wrong is right simply by virtue of his position. It's interesting to watch one of these guys' face when you declare the truth and explain why. They just blink like a lizard in the bright sun with uncomprehending eyes, (also called the 'racoon in the headlights' look). They don't intend to try understand reasoning.

Should we roll over for these folks? One person CAN make a difference. I saw where it was a retired Canadian Mounted Policeman who bought a couple of surplus deuce and a halfs and started the Ice Road Trucking long ago. But I resent these politicians saying they believe in society's ability to step up and solve the new problems, while taking campaign contributions from the privatizers who are causing the problems. I've heard it said, and I saw it in action, where enough people stand together, speaking the same truth, the psychopaths will take their toys and go home.