Local letter to the editor

The debate between the iron mine versus the welfare of the waters of the regional watershed will not abate. The two sides are polarized in their positions. As it stands, we will no longer be able to see what the world would look like if our alternative is not taken. We need the mine because we are poor, and it is our salvation or, If it is built, we will lose everything . Let us leave that alternative alone for a second and look at the process.

Why are we in our present condition?

The entire world has been shaken to the core because of greed so bad that makes the Holland Tulip Bubble look like fun. Yes, that is right, 1624 people of Holland thought that the Tulip was the most prized possession; the illusion grew until it busted. As all illusions, they do not leave much behind. In another misguided illusion, during the nineties I heard intelligent men and women talk about real estate increasing its value forever. That was the lie that was sold and resold by cunning banking institutions that knew better. At the "so-called" end of that debacle, which ensues, we still have to pay for it. The banks were saved. The institutions of investment that brought this illusion of world-collapse were saved, and saved without penalty or restructure. A Bad- Boy is taken to Macy's so he will behave better.

How is it that we pay for this illusion?

The United States has had the answer since 1973. You see, between 1973 and 1989 Milton Friedman and the School of Chicago economics went to Chile and implemented a deregulated system. It is called, "balance the budget on the backs of the working class and poor." They privatized welfare, roll -backed the unions, and deregulated the market, without the voice or the vote of the people. The Chilean President Augustus Pinochet was a dictator, but he was our dictator. The plan given to the Chilean President included a reduction of the money supply, gutting government spending and the privatization of government services. Do these ideas sound familiar? Are we being treated like a third world government? The answer is no, not a third world government, just a third world people. We are going to pay for their illusion. We will not tax those that the governor envies, or companies more powerful than the people. We, the working class, will pay for their illusions and their trip to Macy's.

To mine or not to mine, we still have the question.

I do not have an answer, but I do have a question. When you have something that somebody else wants badly, desires, covets: aren't you supposed to be the strong one in the dialogue? They have machines but we have the ore. Their machines are of no use without ore. Their machines will get old and new modern ones will be made - and they will still want the ore.

We in northern Wisconsin did not create the real estate bubble, yet the government and big business want us to respond with guilt and penitence and thank them for their attention. I understand the difficulty for businesses during a downturn. My own small business went belly- up during the Reagan trickle-down economics era.

But if business and commerce want to investigate the mining possibilities in northern Wisconsin, please understand that it is our region that you are dealing with. I ask the governor to please have decorum; don't trip over yourself to please commerce. Please don't sell your constituents in the north so cheaply. It is they, big business, that want what we have. In time of great conflict the citizens have shared in responsibility to fulfill a need. Like many of my neighbors, my uncle was in Okinawa, a brother fought in Vietnam, nephews were in the Middle East. We have all taken on burdens to help the greater good.

But this is not a conflict of that proportion. In the future, in a period of great international stress, we may need these same resources that are not renewable.

In a period of world need we may need to respond with vertical national economic growth as opposed to our present situation of just trying to simply please the international market. The current market and our leaders have us supplying the world with raw material.

So much of this seems so good for America: we have the greatest bread basket in the world and even our woods will oaken in 60 years. But, at this moment, is it worth it? The iron ore will not grow back. We will never be able to use it again.

Luis Salas

Ashland

By CALVIN WOODWARD and EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writers Calvin Woodward And Eileen Sullivan, Associated Press Writers – Fri Mar 5, 5:54 pm ET

WASHINGTON – The river of discontent running through America turned toxic in the fevered mind of the Pentagon shooter and others of his ilk. In a culture awash in conspiracy theories and raw anger at government, they are lone wolves who find a sense of community for their hate — yet act alone.

They are, in some ways, more unsettling than organized and trained terrorists because they come from us.

Their diatribes and smoldering grievances are familiar and homegrown. For the Texan who steered a small plane into IRS offices last month, it was taxes. For the Nevadan who shot at a courthouse in January, it was his Social Security.

In these times, disgust with authority — a president, a tax law, a health plan, one political party or both — comes with a hard-edged hallelujah chorus.

Few kill. But many rant.

The litany that made accused Pentagon attacker Joseph Patrick Bedell smolder and rant is varied, and still coming to light. His history was one of mental illness, not fringe-group agitation.

In an Internet posting, Bedell had suggested an act like the 2001 terrorist attacks could have been the work of a criminal organization controlling the U.S. government, accepting a "sacrifice of thousands of its citizens ... as a small cost in order to perpetuate its barbaric control."

His poisonous view of the government appears well out on the extreme — until you see what some people close to the center of power are saying these days.

"America is teetering towards tyranny," Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina told the Conservative Political Action Conference last month. He accused the governing Democrats of peddling socialist policies "that have been the enemy of freedom for centuries all over the world."

Republicans have been branding Democratic policies as some form of socialism for generations, par for the course.

But tyranny? America has real issues with that — it violently overthrew that enemy at the start.

However outrageous the notion that the government would sacrifice its citizens "as a small cost," it's not limited to warped malcontents.

It was California Democratic Rep. Pete Stark who said, late in the Bush administration, that Republicans want to spend money "to blow up innocent people — if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

Multiply rhetoric like that and you have the new public square, swarming with bloggers and broadcasters reaching for the provocative and feeding the grievances of the like-minded.

Altogether it's a rage against the machine. Activists such as the tea party movement tap that rage for political and policy ends — stopping the health overhaul, getting supportive politicians elected.

But it's surely not been lost on the lone wolves, whether it fuels their acts or not.

The Pentagon gunman, who wounded two police officers and was himself shot to death, joins two other men with anti-government sentiments who have attacked the government since the beginning of the year.

Just last month, Joseph Stack flew his small plane into an Austin, Texas, IRS building. In his online turn on the public square, Stack had railed about U.S. tax laws.

In January, a Nevada man, Johnny Lee Wicks, fired shots at a Las Vegas courthouse, killing a security guard and being shot to death soon after. Wicks was angry about losing a lawsuit challenging a cut in his Social Security benefits.

All three men appeared to have acted alone, without ties to the militia or patriot groups that gained traction in the early and mid-1990s.

That was another era of rising anti-government sentiment and a decade marked by the domestic terrorism of Timothy McVeigh, who in 1995 blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City and killed 168 people.

Mark Potok, co-director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which published a report that listed 363 new patriot groups that appeared in 2009, said the Pentagon shooter does not fit the profile of radical organizations.

Not an activist himself, Bedell appeared to be one who absorbed the ideas of those groups and twisted them to his own ends, Potok said.

Oddball ideas alone are no red flag. True, Bedell subscribed to conspiracy theories about "the September 11 demolitions."

But Debra Medina, too, said last month there were "some very good arguments" for believing the U.S. was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. And she won 19 percent of the votes in Tuesday's Texas Republican primary for governor.