We should just say no to national heritage area

To The Eagle:

Three weeks ago we did a dot connecting exercise showing the tentacles...er, connections between ShoreBank Enterprise Cascadia, the outfit pushing the National Heritage Area, and the original ShoreBank of south Chicago, which in turn has ties back to radical organizer Saul Ailinsky and, more recently, convicted felon (fraud and bribery) Tony Rexko. Among other heartwarming projects of ShoreBank was a 10 million dollar credit line to Reverend Jeremiah (G..D..America) Wright's church.

Right here in our backyard, we have noted that the CEO of ShoreBank in Portland, David Williams, sits on the board of both ShoreBank Enterprise Cascadia and the Columbia Land Trust. In the commissioners' public comment meeting (held after the official closing of public comment) SBEC's Mike Dickerson opined that their only connection to ShoreBank was the name, which is a statement we are certain has some relationship to the truth.

In the same edition of The Eagle, Robert and Jane Rose did a nice job of summarizing the pitfalls of NHAs. In fact, there is a movement afoot to get the Park Service out of the NHA business, not only because of the poor track record of NHAs but because they are doing such a poor job of their primary business of running the national parks.

Despite all this, our editor thinks supporting it is "no big deal" and Krist Novoselic thinks we ought to belly up to the trough for our share of federal pork, referring to those opposing it as a "vocal group of partisans ideologically opposed to federal programs." Last time I saw this group, they were standing in their fields behind broken dikes up to their ankles in mud, watching their fishing rights get moved to Portland and spotted owls building nests in the unfelled, unsold timber, all due to federal programs.

This is partisan?

I should go back to Nancy Reagan's advice and Just Say No.

Howard Brawn

Puget Island