As counties disappear, so does Walden's shot at Mahonia Hall

Don't underestimate the intelligence of Oregon's rural citizens.

What former Timber workers want isn't forever welfare payments. They want their dang jobs back.

They want their legislators to cease catering to environmental-whacko Marxists who use killing the timber industry as part of their campaign to kill off any form of capitalism in America.

Walden's vote was overdue. It was about time he got over the afterglow of his little mountain hike with Blumenauer.

What rural folks want is to see the end of forever lawsuits every time a tree is slated to be cut.

Like the Klamath farmers they want their original contract rights returned that allowed them to earn a respectful living independent of government.

They don't want any more legislators who have the unmitigated gall to act as though they are knights in shining armor riding in on white horses to rescue them with gov't welfare $$ after they already voted along with the environmental-whackos to kill their livelihood under false pretenses.

Timber families and Klamath farmers alike are fed up with being forced to be welfare recipients.

The only real answer to the timber and farm problems is to end the eco-terrorism that legislators like DeFazio, Blumenauer and Hooley have allowed to go on and on.

What incentive is there for legislators to return the timber industry to what it should be if they are allowed to shove welfare pacifiers in the mouths of the wrongly unemployed?

Walden may be more in touch with the liberty-loving rural voters than you think.

wow, who let these two buffoons out of their caves and onto a computer?

The kind of welfare Walden supports is tax breaks to oil companies and handouts of public timber to the private timber industry, preferably at below cost with toothless environmental laws.

But the market for timber is in the tank, has been for 18 months, and will be for as long as this recession continues.

In fact, the market is so bad, that timber production in Oregon has dropped to its lowest point in a decade, not due to 'wackos' or 'eco-terrorists' but the mysterious 'invisible hand' of the free market. Private timberland owners (both large and small) understand the free market and how 'supply and demand' works, so they've slashed production as prices for timber and demand have dropped.

The greatest source of job losses in the timber industry the last two years has been shuttering of mills due to OVERsupply and low prices, not environmental laws.

As Jay Ross, CEO of North Pacific Lumber recently told the Portland Business Journal: 'The forest products industry can't shut down capacity fast enough to match the decline in housing.'

But good 'ol 'Oregon Conservative' above, just like Walden and Gordon Smith, asks us to toss the law of supply and demand out the window when it comes to federal land. He wants the government to intervene 'to return the timber industry to what it should be.' Newsflash: handing out cheap federal timber to private industry during a down market is welfare. Second newsflash: hitching county budgets to the boom and bust nature of the timber industry and housing market only works when federal logging levels are maintained at unsustainably high levels, divorced from real world market conditions. Its the public that demands sustainability, not some fringe element.

If you like capitalism and believe the federal government should be fiscally conservative, then stop the kneejerk clamoring for more federal timber.