No headline

It’s 1978 and Ronald Reagan only knows of three useless laws which have ever been canceled — a British lookout stationed on the White Cliffs of Dover in 1803; to ring a bell when Napoleon was coming, a law which was canceled in 1945; and the U.S.A. canceled the government’s breeding horses for the calvary and stopped making rum on the Virgin Islands.

Reagan felt that the only thing that has immortality is a government program.

Printed in our Bee is a letter to the editor to stop canceling some rules, executive mandates and laws. July 26, 2018, Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, Sen. Jim Risch, and Oregon Sen. Merkley, Democrat, are resurrecting "Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program," in a farm bill, no less. "Collaborative" is mentioned in every paragraph, sometimes twice in a sentence. $1.2 billion old price, jobs, forest health, etc., are the benefits, to be enlarged — translation: more money — in the revival lasting until 2029. Darn it, I must have been out of country when this critical, crucial subject made the headlines.

I’ve made several flights between Oroville, Wash., and Sandpoint, there were very long stretches of dead and dying forests and just going to waste. Ignore the government apathy, sell projects to harvest the timber — capitalism — before it burns. Get some revenue out of a fire hazard and let the folks who know how to log it earn a living. Think: more taxes for the pols to spend. If it burns, the spotted owl wont have a home anyway. Homer, Alaska, had an identical problem. Environmentalists prohibited the harvest of timber and it did burn.

PETER HERAPER

Sandpoint