David McElroy

You know your city government is in trouble when its people are so incompetent that they can’t even balance their checkbook and come up short by $420,000 one month. That’s the current situation in Oakridge, Ore.

For a small city with an annual budget of only $3 million, a mistake of $420,000 is a pretty big deal. Because the city adopted its budget based on faulty information, it starting spending money based on the new budget — only to find itself going broke when the income wasn’t matching the outgo.

The city is currently seeking a loan to cover the shortfall, but the city’s planning commissioner — an unpaid position — is out soliciting local citizens to lend the city the money if banks turn them down. The city says it’s just “Plan B.”

At least one local man wasn’t happy to be asked to lend money to the clowns at City Hall. “Why would I loan them money if they can’t even balance their checkbook each month?” asked 87-year-old Eddie Roberts.

Sonny has never had a real home. For all of his relatively short life, he’s lived on the street where I live. For most of his life, another neighbor fed him so he wouldn’t starve. She also had him neutered and got him shots. But she and her husband moved a month or so ago, so I’ve taken over feeding him. He doesn’t need just another meal. He needs a real home.

My former neighbor and her husband have seven cats of their own, so they couldn’t take yet another. Sonny and another one they called Tommy were among the strays they regularly fed. When they moved, they couldn’t take them because the neighborhood where they bought their new house has a strict covenant against outdoor animals who roam free. The best she could do was continue to buy food for them — and leave it with me.

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We learned Saturday that 30 American troops (along with seven Afghans) were killed Friday night when Afghan rebels shot their helicopter down during a raid. The obvious question: Why are U.S. troops still there?

Afghanistan is no danger to the United States today, and it’s not our business to fix the country’s twisted political situation. I don’t see any evidence that it’s even realistically possible, especially considering that Afghanistan has a long history of humiliating invaders. Ask the British and the Russians about that.

So why are U.S. troops still fighting over this inhospitable piece of land where the people don’t like each other very much and like us even less? Many people would give many different justifications for the continuing war. (You do realize that it’s been going on for almost 10 years now, don’t you?) Some people would claim that if U.S. troops pulled out that terrorists would be able to go back to using the country as a safe haven. Others would say the U.S. needs to stay there to build a stable and democratic government. Others would be more honest and just say that since we started the fight, we have to gain a complete victory or else lose face.

All of the listed reasons are bogus. The real reason the U.S. military is still there is that war itself is good for the state, even though that’s not necessarily the conscious intent of the politicians making the decisions. In fact, many of them have spent their careers opposing U.S. involvement in wars, but when you reach a position of power — especially something such as the U.S. presidency — you frequently end up making decisions that reflect the permanent interests of the state.

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