Free Republic

With two-thirds of Oregon county governments, including Lane County, facing financial crises, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski on Monday urged residents to accept modest local property tax increases and more logging on federal forests to help stave off deep cuts in county law enforcement and other critical services. Those steps are just two of 54 recommendations in a task force report delivered to the governor on Monday. Kulongoski commissioned the report last year to address the imminent loss of about $238 million in annual federal timber payments, including $47 million a year to Lane County. The top recommendation was for Oregon...

<p>The wildfires ravaging California from north of Los Angeles to the Mexican border marked a grim first yesterday with the death of a firefighter battling the blaze in San Diego County. He was the first worker to die fighting the fires, which cover an area the size of Rhode Island. At least 18 Californians have died since the fires began a week ago. Some 2,000 homes have been incinerated -- including, yesterday, the entire mountain village of Cuyamaca.</p>

One of the good things about traveling across the country is being able to pick up newspapers in small towns, which often cover issues not seen in the national press. In the West, these issues often concern the clash between private property rights and an aggressive environmental lobby which often appears both dogmatic and nonsensical. In Montana, for example, the U.S. Forest Service is fighting a battle with local and imported "tree huggers" over the dispensation of firewood in the areas horribly burned during the catastrophic Yellowstone fires of a few years ago. The Forest Service’s position is that the...