Ten miles outside Eugene in west central Oregon, little wooden houses and mobile homes make up the town of Alvadore. The homes are too far apart to give the town—population 1,358—the appearance of a city, yet too close together for it to come off as true countryside. Old, domestically manufactured cars line the streets, as well as a few rundown mom-and-pop… return to article
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Reader Comments (5)Page 1 of 1 pagesHave you checked the voting record of Alvadore?
Have you checked to see if Alvadore was part of the overwelming rural vote to ban gay marriage?
Have you checked to see if Alvadore was included in the round of suckers that voted for Measure 37 and completely screwed up the land management system so that they could capitalize on selling off their trailers for suburbs someday?
How do you reconcile the po’ folk of Alvadore with the stats that make Oregon more racist than Mississippi?
Rural Oregon continues to vote in wars and developers and vote away social services and civil liberties. Oregon Legislature has never seen a social service it didn’t like but for rural Oregon, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and supporting the arts are all considered part of the homo eco-terrorist plan.
The article neglects the irony that the people of Alvadore are surrounded by organic farms in the most fruitful and diverse year-round growing region in the U.S. Which would mean that they would have to interact with those freak hippies.
Better, I suppose that they hide in their trailers, hungry, and voting for Bush, ignoring their communities, and perpetuating a racist homophobic agenda; praying that a developer will buy their trailer and lamenting the days when a man could earn a living by cutting down all the old growth and raping the rivers.
Posted by skidmore212 on Mar 26, 2008 at 2:24 PM When I first came to Oregon twenty years ago, I noticed the rural poverty. This isn’t news to people who live here. Also, not all of Alvadore is poor. There is a good portion of it’s middle class. If you want to paint a dour picture of Oregon, you should go to Eastern Oregon. Now there’s some poverty.
Posted by ecotopian on Mar 27, 2008 at 2:05 AM The problem is largely due to massive immigration, both legal and illegal. Take Juan Cortez -Villa, for example. He has a job that should have gone to a native Oregonian. He needs things like an interpreter, has 4 kids in the school system, and probably has a family unit that is draining its share from medical, educational, social and other programs. The financial cost of these programs is born by those who were here legally long before he came here. and have either been displaced by his kind or had their wages reduced. This is a sweet deal for him and his family. It also would be a sweet deal for millions of others living in Latin America and elsewhere who would love to come to the States and improve their lives immensely. And many American companies would prefer to lure and pay immigrants lower wages than they would have to pay to American citizens. Ironically, the gain that corporate America receives in its lust for immigrant workers is but a fraction of the cost and harm meted out to the middle and lower classes. If Cortez-Villa has 4 kids in school, his family is receivng at least $20,000 a year in educational benefits; undoubtedly his family is picking up many other benfits—-even if he is here illegally, his kids are legal (if born here) and qualify for minority status and privileges above other native born children. Our country would be better off by providing such companies free workers (American), which of course, would be insane. Nothing will change until corporations stop bribing politicians.
Posted by jay smith on Mar 27, 2008 at 11:32 PM Wake up, folks!
This is not by happenstance or greed or mismanagement but BY DESIGN:
The EU and the coming North America Union are products of the 1940s GATT formulations, and very few analysts are aware of it.
My missive to Ron Paul’s staff, regarding my view that this financial crisis is not by happenstance nor mismanagement—but BY DESIGN!:
The Honorable Ron Paul is ignorant of an ongoing conspiracy to topple, financially, the West, in order to equalize the world’s economies; for building one-world government under GLOBAL ECONOMIC SOCIALISM. // The conspiracy began in the 1940s with the GATT formulations. // Ask why Greenspan had violated his chairmanship duties by advising prospective home-buyers to take out an ARM. // Ask why Greenspan had sent out fed regulators to warn banks that they’d be charged with RACISM if they didn’t loosen home-loans for minority, HIGH RISK home-buyers. // Ask why Greenspan recently, TRAITOROUSLY, had advised OPEC oil producers to de-link from the U.S. dollar. // Greenspan - the FEDERAL RESERVE - has embarked on a purposeful set of monetary policies designed to destroy the West’s financial underpinnings. // Read about the WHO, the HOW, and the WHY of it in my below article (first one): Planned Destruction of America: http://planneddestructionofamerica.blogspot.com/ // Corporate America: What Went Wrong?: http://corporateamericawhatwentwrong.blogspot.com/
This helps to confirm efforts to PURPOSELY trash America’s financial underpinnings: http://www.321gold.com/editorials/engdahl/engdahl031808.html
Posted by Deacon on Mar 29, 2008 at 7:17 PM The poverty in much of rural Wisconsin is severe, yet we don’t have massive immigrant labor here. If there really is a problem of too many migrant workers in a particular area, the answer is to require companies to comply with the law, imposing harsh penalties for those who don’t. But our economic crisis has little to do with our economic crisis.
On illegal immigrants taking jobs, one must fill out a job application form which requires information about citizenship. The employer is required by law to verify this information. If they don’t they are breaking the law, and yet I have never heard of one being held accountable. If employers met their legal obligations, there would be few illegal workers. The demand for illegal labor would be eliminated if there were legitimate efforts to ensure that no workers were paid substantially lower wages than others doing the same type of work. This would remove the incentive to use illegal workers. As for immigrants in general, remember, they have been a problem ever since the first Europeans came here, slaughtering Native Americans and taking their land.
US corporations seek skilled workers from foreign countries, where people (even the poorest) have access to higher education, and where government, in the interests of the common good, ensures that real job skills training is available to all capable people, regardless of economic status. Most Americans simply can’t afford the training and education needed to create a strong, competitive workforce in the US.
On the tangle of factors that have brought the US to this point, we got what we allowed. We embraced “government is not the solution”.Step by step, government raided the public treasury, taking an ax to the New Deal policies that, until Reagan, turned this into the richest, best educated, most productive nation on Earth . We “reformed” welfare with the knowledge that it would result in tremendous suffering, because we (naively) thought thought there’d be something in it for us (lower taxes). Of course getting rid of the New Deal policies includes wiping out surplus food supplies, or selling it overseas. It also meant attacking fundamental rights that protected job security, wages, the right to strike, etc. Reagan started the ball rolling on “deregulation”, which essentially means giving big business carte blanche, putting it above the law, accountable to no one.
All of these issues intertwine, and all are a result of the public losing control of the government. When that happens, government takes control of the people. No foreign government needs to bother with “destroying the US”; the marriage of government and big business is doing just that.
Posted by dhfabian on May 17, 2008 at 4:53 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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