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Common-sense seems to be slipping away from our public consciousness. With common-sense no one needs a biology expert, scientist, certificate or license. With common-sense one can understand plain self-evident truths and you don't even need a PhD.
The government, or the statists, have layered on so many controls that more and more of our independence is falling away. Under their dominion, we rarely have the freedom to live out our own lives as we see fit. The safety of the collective is deemed more important than the freedom of the individual.
Government intervention is growing more and more burdensome. As a result, people have become complacent. Their reluctance is only natural. After all, who can fight the voluminous regulations? This in turn, causes people to forego using their own common-sense. They see common-sense as a tool that no longer works in the modern world.
In fact, it doesn’t work because the vast majority of the rules and regulations were never constructed with any sense in mind. People end up just going along to get-along. Common-sense is missing today because it is now more advantageous to suffer the idiocy while at least making ends meet. This is a dangerous place for our society.
For example, take the water shut-off at Crater Lake.
The current snow-level is still between 100 and 120 inches. Parking is difficult due to the piles of snow in the parking lots. The park received more than 570 inches of snow in 2017. Yet, people will be informed that the park is experiencing a water shortage!
Tourists and Oregonians visiting
Crater Lake will struggle making sense of the scene at the rim. The lake
is beautiful, blue and full, the skyline is magnificent and the air is
fresh and clear. However, the Rangers will inform them of the severe
water shortage. They will be told to greatly limit their water consumption.
The park will instruct our visitors to use non-flush toilets, take
short showers, wash camp dishes, dry-brush teeth and clean the kids – all with their own dainty-wipe. Does this make sense?
Everyone
is aware that these restricted conditions are due to a Tribal
water call which included Annie Creek. Annie Creek, which normally
supplies the park’s water, is a tributary of the Wood River and Upper
Klamath Lake watershed affected by the call.
A
priority call allows a water-right holder who has a senior priority
claim to secure his water first. This may require other secondary
water-right holders to undergo water volume restrictions or other
regulations, so that priority rights can be met. This current call
simply doesn't make logical sense, since current stream-flow volumes are
off the charts and there is more water in our rivers, tributaries and
reaches than in the past several decades.
Never-the-less, this call, as senseless as it is, leads Crater Lake National Park to find an alternative water source.
The
park typically uses about 36,000 gallons a day in May and that use will
increase as summer visitation spikes in July and August – Chiloquin to
the rescue!
The City of
Chiloquin has contracted to pump 2.5 million gallons of water out of
their groundwater well, place it into tanker trucks, drive it 40 miles
round-trip while traversing several thousand feet of elevation to fill
water storage tanks at the park.
The
cost of buying water from the city of Chiloquin is nearly $40,000,
while the cost of hauling the water will be closer to $400,000 for May
& June. The absurdity hits the fan when one realizes that the rivers
are flooding, snow is piled high, an existing aquifer is being tapped,
millions of acre-feet of water are flowing into the salty Pacific, and
the public will probably expend over $1,000,000 to accomplish – nothing
Common-sense
is becoming harder and harder to find. Common-sense is getting
smothered under the laws, rules, regulations, proceedings, motions, and
summaries of the strategies. We will lose ourselves to the villains of
this world if we can no longer approach an issue with forthright virtue
and honor.
This recent water call is obviously not about common-sense regulation, it is about control.
Regulations
are a necessary part of life. Regulation comes from a Latin word
meaning rule, i.e., a standard, norm, or law. Regulations govern us from the day of our birth. We are regulated
by our physical and mental capabilities, our family life, our parents,
our church, our job experiences and much, much more. So, regulation per se,
is not bad
However, control is
another matter. Control, comes from a French word meaning a register,
roll, or catalogue. This is why the Federal Registry is named as such.
It is a giant rulebook of controls and it is constantly growing. Last
year it grew by 80,000 pages and the total cost for compliance is in
excess of $4 trillion dollars. This would be greater than the GDP of all
but four other nations.
Regulatory
growth is the unfortunate bureaucratic habit which can destroy the very
resource that it tries to protect. It has become an administrative
juggernaut of senseless rules for the purposes of control and the gradualistic
accumulation of these regulations, combined with our collective
loss of common-sense, may be our undoing.
Remember, if we don’t stand for rural Oregon values and common-sense –
No one will
Best Regards,
 Dennis Linthicum
Oregon State Senate 28
Capitol Phone: 503-986-1728
Capitol Address: 900 Court St. NE, S-305, Salem, Oregon 97301
Email: sen.DennisLinthicum@oregonlegislature.gov
Website: http://www.oregonlegislature.gov/linthicum
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