u/unsoundamerica

TL;DR: Shame on 80% of you.

I write about congressperson Cliff Bentz to retrain my fellow Oregonian's focus on his part in all that is happening in our country and around the world. I will not stop doing this.

I don't know Peter Larson well, but after talking to him I knew he was ten times the man — let alone the potential congressperson — that Cliff Bentz is. If you're a registered Republican, you saw his name on your ballot. 80% of you skipped over it.

Clearly, not voting for Peter Larson or any other candidate means you voted for Bentz. If you are a registered Republican but did not vote in the primary at all, have no illusion: you still elected Bentz. And most critically, you elected his so-called leadership and its catastrophic results for Oregonians in the Second District. 

You want more of the same.

I'm sorry to say that you haven't just met with my lowest expectations for the outcome of your primary; you also have confirmed my long-held assumption of who you are at the core: you'd rather burn down your own country than share it (aside from roughly 20% of you who supported the other candidates).

Voting for Bentz is voting for the regime and our decrepit dictator. You'd rather protect monsters than admit you follow one with soulless, monolithic devotion. You'd rather betray your own children than change your ways to save their future. You'd rather ruin the environment than take responsibility for it.

Clearly, not voting for Peter Larson means you voted for Cliff Bentz. If you did not vote in the Republican primary at all, have no illusion: you still elected Cliff Bentz. 

You have tacitly endorsed his so-called "leadership" and its disastrous results. You implicitly want more of the same, which is so much worse than owning up to what you believe and filling in the bubble with your pen.

Most people would've changed their underwear by now but you refuse to admit to the mess you've made and you continue to wear it with pride. Saving face is impossible for you, but cruelty is always an option.

The Republican Party might have devolved into a narrow spectrum of misanthropic con-artists, but there is still a bottom to this pit and Cliff Bentz hails from it. He upholds our corporatist, racist, fascistic status quo by not challenging it, and by actively supporting it, and by shunning his constituents when he's confronted about it.

Cliff Bentz knows well the slime he swims in and how it nourishes his dishonest worldview. And how desperately he needs that slime: to fulfill his identity but also to then hold it against his fellow Oregonians like a blade while he robs us.

I will not let history forget Bentz's complicity in the darkness of our times. Nor will I provide any distinction for his supporters from his toxic legacy. It is your darkness to perpetuate. Those are your hands on the wheel. 

What you do is who you are. If you deny that, than it's no wonder you can look at our wars, our "leaders," our national decline and still say: "keep up the good work, Mr. Bentz."

You are slaves to a dark future you don't even know is creeping into your everyday lives. You are cheerleaders for crimes against humanity very much capable of coming back to haunt us later. You are gambling with everything we have in a game you know is rigged. You win by self-injury.

Perhaps it gives you a sense of purpose. The demolition of a country comprised of so many cultures, beliefs, and aspirations might just provide you with the motivation you need to throw your state — and your country — away. 

But your enemies will never leave. Those who oppose MAGA will not all be deported or snuffed out. Your concept of victory is, and forever will be, a work of desperate fiction. 

I am tempted to delight in the pain Bentz and his deliriously deranged deity in the White House continues to heap upon you, but I am not immune from that pain. I fight against it on my behalf and yours. 

All you bring to the table is willful tragedy and that sickening, thoughtless, heartless cry for "more." 

Posterity will not pretend that you didn't know any better. You will not be excused.

You have chosen:

The U.S. Dollar losing 10% of its value.

Homeland Security Investigations  suspending child exploitation cases to pursue the administration's whims.

Billions of dollars in lost revenue from illegal tariffs.

Billions of dollars in lost revenue from our illegal war in Iran and blockade of the Hormuz Strait.

Billions of dollars in lost revenue from deporting our nation's integral migrant workforce and the destruction of their communities.

Billions of dollars paid to the regime and its family members, collaborators, and sycophants.

Billions of dollars paid to a genocidal apartheid state whose blood-soaked borders will only broaden further under our continued protection.

Billions of dollars paid to none of the victims of fraud after the regime's shameless pardons for friendly financial fraudsters. 

Billions of dollars withheld from hungry and sick Americans in order to subsidize a national militarized police force with one allegiance: the regime.

Billions of dollars sent to Argentina instead of to our schools, or put into our bridges and roads, or paying down our debts.

Billions of dollars spent to undermine our elections, bribe politicians, and ensure vast, sweeping protections for the industries and interests that pose the biggest threat to this nation's continued existence.

Trillions in lost government revenue to bathe the ruling-class in cash they earned off our streets, off our grids, off our data, off our health, and off our lives.

If congressperson Cliff Bentz is a fiscal conservative or a champion of the free market, he has yet to show it. If that's your stated reason for protecting his bad faith representation of the People, you cannot be trusted or believed. And if trans athletes or DEI is what motivates you, I am sorry your misery is all you have.

Voting Bentz is like begging to self-destruct — on your knees, no less, so as to dodge any effort to save you. That is the very picture of insanity, and it is committed to our collective memory.

The future will either ask forgiveness on your behalf or curse your name. To suggest the possibility of admiration or thanks for your political cowardice isn't just laughable; it is abominable. You will not be spared the shame Bentz embodies; he imparts it to you now.

Backwards Bentz Burns It Down

TL;DR: Cliff Bentz touts the One Big Beautiful Bill’s mandate for increased logging as forest fire mitigation and a source of jobs — but the science of forest fires and the economic realities of the timber industry undermine his assertions entirely. 

Overview (using TLDRThis)

1. Increased logging does not necessarily reduce the risk of forest fires and can even increase the risk or severity of fires. Studies have shown that protected, unlogged forests do not burn more frequently than developed forest areas.

2. The federal government has cut funding and staffing for agencies like the Forest Service, Department of the Interior, and National Park Service that are responsible for wildfire prevention and fighting. This will make it harder to manage the increased logging mandated by the bill.

3. Increased logging can have negative environmental and economic impacts on local communities, including increased carbon pollution, damage to habitats of endangered species, and reduced tourism revenue. The Secure Rural Schools Act, which helps offset lost revenue from reduced logging, is a more important achievement for Bentz.

4. The bill's logging mandates may not be feasible given the current capacity of the timber industry and workforce, and long term contracts could lead to reduced competition and higher prices.

*****

A few weeks ago, Cliff Bentz created and mailed out his guide to the Working Families Tax Cut Act — which was, is, and ever shall be House Resolution 1 — the One Big Beautiful Bill.

I’ve thus far taken on his assertions about who really benefits from the bill’s tax cuts, how the bill will impact American agriculture, Social Security, tips, overtime pay, and US-made car purchases.

With the third item on the list inside, Bentz diverts his focus from taxes tell us about what he calls “Forestry and Wildfire Mitigation.” He expounds that “The legislation increases timber harvesting on federal lands, a measure intended to create jobs and reduce the risk of wildfires.”

Let’s go over what the bill prescribes for timber harvesting. The US Forest Service is now responsible for increasing the volume of timber harvested on the land it manages by 250 million board feet — and 20 million board feet annually from land administered to by the Bureau of Land Management. 

The bill mandates that these agencies sell the specified amount of timber in at least 40 contracts for National Forest land and 5 for the BLM — contracts that must span at least 20 years. Even logging businesses have pointed out that this will harm competition, and by extension, prices.

Keep in mind, the Forest Service sold 2.9 billion board feet of timber in 2024. The mandated increase in this bill would be 8.7%. If the mandate is carried out as planned, the forest service could see as much as 37.2 billion board feet of timber by 2034 — a 75% increase.

If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. And while Oregon’s own sawmills are currently working at 73% capacity — and increased logging inherently means more employment — it’s not clear if the infrastructure or the workforce (or the market) exists to make the bill’s logging dreams come true. In Oregon, the Bureau of Land Management already grows more trees than are being harvested.

One might argue that this is the kind of good-paying job that Americans need. I hope one would also recognize that OSHA has ranked logging as the most dangerous job in America. Roughly one out of every 1,000 loggers will die from work-related accidents. It has an exceptionally high rate of injury. It is 30 times more dangerous than the average American occupation.

This is not to discount the danger of being a firefighter, especially in remote and forested locations. The Forest Service employs 11,000 firefighters annually. Some estimates place the national annual cost of fighting wildfires at $3 billion. A great deal of that funding has come from congressional appropriations.

In addition, the Department of the Interior recently announced a token $20 million to help “strengthen local wildfire response.” This came on the heels of the regime’s executive order entitled “Empowering Commonsense Wildfire Prevention and Response.” This executive order essentially boosts the urgency with which the federal government wants to increase logging. 

Beyond that, it seeks to “consolidate” wildfire programs and coordinate everything through the Department of the Interior. It places more of the burden on local and state governments to fight fires on public land. It prescribes the use of AI to help fight fires, targets regulations that may impede logging, and blames the regime’s perceived political foes as the direct cause of some fires.

There’s a great deal of scientific research that proves logging does not necessarily reduce the risk of forest fires. In fact, there is ample evidence to suggest that it can increase the risk or severity of forest fires. And while forest fires have existed for as long as forests have, two studies in 2008 and 2016 found that protected, unlogged forests do not burn more frequently than developed forest areas. 

60% of jurisdiction-crossing forest fires originated on privately property — with 28% on national forest land, according to 2022 Oregon State University study that included 11 states and 141 million acres.

Logging creates plenty of hazards, not the least of which is timber slag, or the debris left over from logging operations. Saw dust, wood chips, pine needles, twigs and more dry materials leftover create immense fuel for fire. Three studies 2014, 2018, and 2022 suggest that the increased exposure of logged forest to sun and wind will dry-out the remaining underbrush, creating more fuel. 

The trees that loggers don’t want and leave behind can create a homogenized forested area that increases susceptibility to fire. And logging, in-and-of-itself, creates more carbon pollution than wildfires do. The Blue Mountain Diversity Project has compiled this research, and helpfully points out that the majority of modern forest fires are caused by human activity.

The problem is not just that logging is being equated to wildfire mitigation — the problem is also that the federal government has taken a broadsword to the agencies that are most active in wildfire prevention and fighting.

In early 2025, the Department of the Interior cut 3,400 workers. By July, some 4,500 firefighter roles were still vacant. The Bureau of Land Management also works to prevent and fight forest fires — they lost 800 workers in early 2025. And the National Park Service, which educates and works to prevent forest fires cut 1,000 workers, but newer estimates place that number at 4,000. 

Regional Forest Service hubs — more capable of coordinating activity across multiple state and local jurisdictions — will be replaced with small state offices consisting of less than 10 people, overseen by a new Forest Service headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Quick side note: the drying of the Salt Lake is exposing that city to a toxic dust of lead, lithium, and arsenic that will likely make the entire area uninhabitable with the next decade. But I digress.

The bill even creates problems for itself. With a reduction in Forest Service workers, there will be fewer employees to assist HR.1 with its goal of selling-off huge amounts of timber. The recision of $267 million from the Park Service also impacted forestry, conservation, and environmental programs — including funding for a program that literally followed the President’s own notion of “combing the forest floor.” 

So, why is Bentz proud of this? I don’t think it’s because he received $8,500 from Weyerhaeuser’s Political Action Committee this last election cycle, versus the $2,400 from the cycle before. I don’t think it’s because the President himself purchased corporate bonds in Weyerhaeuser valued somewhere between $1 and $5 million. And it’s not because there is a critical, unmet demand for lumber. 

I think the push comes from an effort to save face. As writer Rich Friedman muses, it could be the regime’s way of “masking the consequences” of the increased cost of homebuilding as a result of the extreme (and illegal) tariffs imposed on Canadian timber.

If I were Cliff Bentz, I would be more proud that I worked across the aisle to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools Act, which helps offset the lost revenue from reduced logging that started in the 1990’s. 

Oregon has received $4 billion of this funding over the last 24 years. 165 of our state’s 197 school districts receive SRS funding. American rural schools educate 20% of all public school students, according to the National Education Association — 9.5 million children. This critical funding is used for roads as well.

But in order to celebrate that victory for vulnerable communities, Bentz would have to admit that a big dollop socialism was required to help his constituents. A scrappy effort of bicameral bipartisanship made the difference as to whether his constituents suffered or thrived. Cliff Bentz, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley worked to save schools from closing — schools that had been holding on for two years without their funding by a thread. Many other schools didn’t make it.

So why won’t Bentz tout the passage of the SRS? Because in many ways it confirms the overarching issue of increased logging: the extraction of value from local communities with little or no benefit to them. 

Local revenue from timber sales has historically been lower than the SRS funding, and local taxes can’t be levied on federal land. Logging operations can devastate a community’s ability to attract tourism dollars or other forms of investment, and they certainly don’t benefit to the degree that timber operations or the federal government does. 

In short, the SRS is the only thing that will keep these small communities alive, even with increased logging. Economic benefits downwind of logging must be measured against the externalized costs of pollution and environmental degradation. 

And of course, last but not least, forests pull carbon from the air. Reducing them on a massive scale means reducing the planet’s ability to endure climate change — and our access to clean air. 

Increased logging equals increased forest fires — especially where no roads have yet been made. And it’s coming — logging of mature and old-growth trees, logging of habitats belonging to endangered species, logging near streams or other bodies of water critical to all surrounding life. Fiery destruction is coming, and Cliff Bentz won’t say or do anything to stop it.