Our Klamath Basin Water Crisis
Fighting for Our Right to Irrigate Our Farms and Caretake Our Natural Resources

John Brogoitti
PO Box 1432
Pendleton, Oregon 97801
Phone: (541) 276-8351
Fax: (541) 276-1175

August 5, 2002

To the Editor: Without the Northwest Power Planning Council there will be no
process in place through which agriculture and industry can advocate for water
and power. My grandchildren are the fifth generation of my family in
Pendleton. I am the third generation on my land. Needless to say, I feel
passionately about Eastern Oregon. Even those that don’t like me agree I have
done a good job of balancing the needs of fish and power. The reason I felt it
necessary to speak up is that I believe that the entire dispute brought about by
my governor in making claims of discrimination against neighboring states
over what is and always has been a symbolic chairmanship of the council was
simply as smoke screen behind which he intended to revive the three
sovereigns concept to replace the power council. The three sovereigns are the
Federal Government, State Government and the Tribes. Why I believe that his
three sovereigns proposal did not fly when he originally proposed it is there is
no representation for agriculture or industry. The false accusations of
discrimination was so that he might garner the support needed from the
legislature to pull Oregon from the council. The state’s economic woes were
bad enough and then the wildfires struck destroying natural resources and
further crippling the timber industry. The drought has claimed the agricultural
crops. The final straw was for the governor to try a dirty political trick of
screaming discrimination against our neighboring states to slide a totally green
agenda over on the people of Oregon.

Let me say that I am still on the Northwest Power Planning Council and I will
remain there. If my boss the, Governor, were able to fire me from my job
because I exercised my first amendment right of free speech then every man
and women in this country could lose their job in the morning for doing
nothing more than having an opinion. I may serve at the pleasure of the
Governor but I don’t speak at his pleasure. When I accepted the position on
the council I never relinquished my first amendment rights. My job description
is very specific. The geographic area I am appointed to represent is a matter of
state law. Few will understand how it saddened me to have to speak out
publicly against a man I respected and thought of as a friend. My job
description is clear and my employment cannot be terminated for doing that
job.

What we have here is a lack of priorities. This is not an issue of fish verses
power; this is a matter of stewardship. To be a steward of a land you must first
have a land to steward. Am I the only one in the State of Oregon that is aware
our nation is at war and it looks like there is every possibility that war is going
to escalate? This is one hell of a time to have ambiguity over our nation’s
priorities. Agriculture and industry must come first if we are going to survive.
When we secure our land from terrorism, then we have something to steward.
Where was I when it became chic to be un-American? Why the hell is it
politically incorrect to be a patriot? On September eleventh my wife, who was
my fiancé at the time, and I stared at the television in horror with the rest of the
nation. Tamera’s first fears were for our children and grandchildren who are
scattered around the country. Like most people we didn’t know what would
happen next. Would the attacks continue? What would the enemy throw at us
next? I told her not to worry that we could gather the family and that we would
come through this because she was marrying a farmer and farmers know how
to survive.

Ours is an instant gratification society; out of sight out of mind. I want to say
the bodies in New York weren’t even cold before the environmentalists went
back to their single-minded green agenda but the sad thing was they never
even stopped because they can’t. Theirs is an artificial economy based not on
a product produced and marketed to the public but they feed off of the bloated
belly of our economy that is fattened by industry and farming.

You can’t be a little bit pregnant and you can’t be a little bit patriotic. It’s
pretty simple either you love our country and are willing to stand up and be
counted or I think you should move. Any Governor who would propose an
action that weakens our nation when it is at war needs an immediate change
of address. May I suggest Afghanistan? We need to think globally all right but
we have to act locally. Even a dumb farmer has the common sense to know
that we need a strong economy to pay the bills for a war. Is the Governor
relying on Enron math when the bill comes due? I have had a gut full of
intellectuals telling the dumb American farmer how to steward his land. There
are no dumb farmers because if a farmer employed unwise farming practices
that depleted his land he paid the ultimate price. He lost the farm. The present
day American farmer is the ultimate environmentalist and he has the resume to
prove it, generation after generation living in harmony with the land.

Priorities are what are needed by every arm of government if we are going to
keep our freedoms, like the one I exercised when I voiced my opinion last
week. Perhaps my governor thought the war was over and we lost when he
had the audacity to attempt to fire me for exercising the very freedom our
nation is fighting to preserve. No one else wants to be the one to say it because
it isn’t politically correct, but if it ever comes down to a choice between a
suckerfish and one of my grandchildren, I am going with the kid. Humans are
at the top of the food chain. Get over it! That’s the natural order of life. How
in the hell did it ever become fashionable to apologize for being a superior
species? Supporting those radical environmental agendas at the expense of the
American farmer is crazy. What is the logic behind biting the hand of the
farmer that puts food on your table?

Knowing full well that every radical fundamentalist group of nutcakes in the
world now has or will soon have nuclear capabilities, why are we having a
hard time getting our priorities in order? With our nation at war, even a dumb
farmer knows it’s one hell of a time to destroy our agriculture and industry. I’ll
tell you one thing; When it comes down to deciding which is more important,
a fish or a child, the guys who flew the planes into the trade towers aren’t
going to have trouble deciding.

Sincerely

John Brogoitti (signed)

John Brogoitti
PO Box 1432
Pendleton, Oregon 97801
541-276-8351