I contact my representative

I picked up the mail the other day to find this huge full color postcard campaign advertisement which gave out the personal cell phone number of the Sate Rep from Yamhill County. His name is Jim Weidner and frankly I don't know if I like him or not. I have not really been paying attention to the news. I figure all politicians are either morons or corrupt or both.
But this postcard caught my eye. It was slick and well done. Someone spent a lot of money to accuse Jim Wiedner being behind trespassing and of misrepresenting a vineyard owner's stance on illegal immigration. The vineyard person is Susan Sokol Blosser who was one of the early wine promoters in Oregon.
I don't like vineyards, I don't like vineyard tourism, I don't like short pants wearing, wine swilling, bicycle riding, commies who think they are better than average cause they drink rotten grape juice. (Except for Hauer of The Dauen which is pure entertainment as I know the folks.)
So I dialed the phone number while waiting for a truck so I could start chopping silage again. To my surprise Jim himself answered. I told him I had no idea what he had done to peeve Susan Sokol Blosser but it provided me with a lot of entertainment and he should keep doing. Anyone who annoys a vineyard owner enough to inspire than kind of money has my vote. Assuming I will actually vote...(didn't say that)
I ended up having somewhat of an interesting conversation with him. Susan Sokol Blosser is hooking into some serious progressive funding sources. Perhaps she is not so much an independent as she would have us believe. Not that it matters. Vineyard owners as a rule are not part of the bread and butter ag community. They have more money, more snobbery, and as many or more immigrants with fake ID as anyone else, except for the nursery industry. Susan brought the whole immigration issue onto herself by stating in her book that the family hired immigrants that were most likely illegal.
We discussed the local dump and the Save Grand Island campaign.
He cited environmental restrictions that go so far as to stifle innovations and to force companies to take the more difficult and less effective route to solving problems.
His example was the common sense solution of burning garbage to generate power and reduce the volume of material. I did not argue as I think a modern garbage burning facility could work.
On the other hand why do we need to take Portland's trash? Portland can deal with their own problems.
Or the issue of Baker Rock having a gravel pit on Grand Island. They can't take the rock out of the river anymore so they have to buy land and mine it. Frankly I don't care that much about Baker Rock's problems. I suppose I would care more if they were a local company instead of the company that bought Birch Concrete. So if the folks on Grand Island want to fight it out, good for them. I did point out that those folks on Grand Island are no longer truck farmers and they are renting their ground to big farmers and I thought it was kind of funny they were trying to preserve a lifestyle that hasn't existed for 30 years.
I think I side with Baker Rock as I figure the gravel trucks will scare off the bicyclists which are the bane of local roads.
Anyway, I had a nice chat.
Then I went back to chopping silage.
As an after thought, if you click on the link to Oregon House Democrats you will see that a crowning achievement was a bill banning the use of cartoon characters to advertise tobacco use, oh but that's not all, the evil tobacco companies can't give away free samples either! Wow! What a victory for truth and justice. I bet that Joe Camel was really making a lot of kids smoke. Yes indeed, a cartoon character that looked like a giant limp penis made people want to put burning things in their mouths...At the same time they increased the tax on chew to bring in more tax revenue. You ain't gonna get the tax revenue if kids can't look at giant limp penises cause we all know that's what makes em addicted to nicotine!
The official country color should be purple, the color of wine, or should we say maroon, cause the whole shebang is run by MAROONS!!!