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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Friday, July 22, 2005

Gutting and Stuffing the Legislative Process 

...one almost has to feel sorry for Karen Minnis. It must be almost piercingly painful for her when she has to leave the comfortable confines of the State House to walk amongst us little people. She has to stand in line with the unwashed, taking her turn just like everybody else. The masses refuse to part to facilitate her passage. Her desires and her will are frequently dismissed and her word is not law. And somewhere out there, in the midst of the teeming throngs, there...may...be...homosexuals. This is a far cry from her circumstances in the State House, on whose floor the Civil Unions bill died yesterday solely because she said so. It doesn't matter that she's wrong about most of it, as are most opponents of SB1000, some of whom intentionally took pains to draw a distinction between marriage and civil unions during the Measure 36 campaign. Her word is law on the House floor, a power that is greater than whatever strength routine democratic processes may claim to possess. If she says a bill won't get a vote, not a single power or authority that we naive voters might assume actually exists in state government to uphold a properly functioning democracy can be brought to bear to make that happen. When it comes to civil unions, Minnis will see to it that there is no vote...

...the "gut and strip" action by the House State and Federal Affairs Committee yesterday was little more than belt and suspenders work, little more than corpse abuse intended to make sure that this particular piece of legislation was absolutely certifiably unquestionably dead. The will of the few won out over the rights of the many, but in no way does this bear even a passing resemblance to the power of the minority in a US Senate filibuster. In this case one person, the House Speaker, decided what she wanted, and there is no cloture vote to override her dicision. It's a peculiar tyrany of the majority, one that allows her to essentially hold a singular veto power over state business that otherwise is constitutionally reserved solely for the governor. The reasons for the exercise of this power is obvious, of course: Minnis and her few supporters are far to the right of common thought on this issue and they know it. Otherwise, it would be a simple task to rely on the Republican majority to vote the measure down and be done with it. In a fair up or down vote, though, that wasn't likely to happen. So, extraordinary times calling for extraordinary measures, they not only killed the bill but scattered the body parts around just to make sure. It would be foolish to predict what outcomes might stem from this episode, but maybe - just maybe - a few voters in Republican House districts next year will ponder this issue and the House's difficulty in finding the willingness to adequately fund our children's schools (or much of anything else) and maybe start considering that a leadership change would be a good thing...

...Preemptive Karma has some excellent observations about this situation...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:52 AM 0 comments

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Getting Spurred as We Come Out of the Chute 

...I'm not an economist. I don't even pretend to like the subject. I struggled through it in both high school and college and can offer as my only success in that subject field the fact that I never took a firearm to class. Oh, I never would have shot any living person, but the temptation to put a few rounds right into the x/y axis of one of those interminable graphs of which some of my instructors seemed so raptly fond is still, almost 30 years later, a powerful temptation. As a result of this fondly nurtured distaste and the simple dumb innocence that it spawns, I can only look at this sort of news and wonder just exactly who is screwing whom....

...so all I can gather is that this $2.50/gallon that I pay for gas in this uncivilized interior portion of the upper left hand corner of the country actually doesn't have anything to do with actual supply and demand, but is instead little more than profiteering by all those energy kingpins who don't have to have sleepovers in the Lincoln Room of the White House because they know they already have a much better thing goin' on. These outrageous fuel prices are supposed to be because of the tightness of the oil market raising market prices; the fact that oil companies are "wallowing" in profits certainly seems to suggest to my untamed mind that this isn't actually the case. Who's stepping up for the little guy? Well, actually, nobody, although my Democratic US Senator Ron Wyden did try last year to get to the bottom of this nonsense, to no particular edifying effect...

...maybe this all is a product of the Plame-gate/SCOTUS nomination effect. These issues, along with today's bombings in London, are consuming all the available oxygen in the media world, denying people the opportunity to find a reason to become really pissed off about what Big Oil, with the complete cooperation of the Bush administration, is actually doing to them. It's hard to escape the feeling that we are being handled, screwed, taken to the cleaners with simple sweet lies, cheap mixed whiskey drinks, and loud music by people whose faces transmorgrify into the learing monkey-esque visage of Gee Dub if we close our eyes for too long. Nothing is adding up here, the corporate backstories don't cover the facts, but nobody seems to be stepping up to the task of taking on Big Energy and making them explain just exactly how all these high fuel prices keep leading to historic profit levels rather that to a simple reliable supply of gasoline. I guess I should have paid more attention in Econ 101...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:56 PM 0 comments

Housing Bubble? What Housing Bubble? 

...in the part of Central Oregon that I call home, the best advice that a person can be given is to Keep Moving; don't stand still for more than a moment. If you're not careful, if you don't follow this advice and loiter in one place for more than the briefest period, somebody will try to build a house around you. Central Oregon, in particular Deschutes County, is the 40th fastest-growing county in the entire United States in terms of single-family home construction. Much of this growth is centered around Bend, the largest city and county seat, but it is also occurring in other communities and the sprawling unincorporated south-county area called La Pine, where I live. We're not talking featureless tract-housing in some latter-day Levitown fashion, either. Many of these homes in many of these developments are seriously upscale and pack pricetags that match; $200,000 to $300,000 is a common price and half a million dollars is by no means unheard of...

...when driving around the area and seeing all the newly completed, partially completed, and just started developments, one can't help but ask the question "who the hell are all these people? Where do they all come from?" Some are retired and have moved here for the generally nice weather (in Bend, at least) and the stunning number of area golf courses; others are moving here for the skiing, mountain biking, camping, boating, fishing, and other outdoor recreation. For others still, these homes are being purchased as a second home in the heart of recreation-crazy Central Oregon. In any case, scads of houses are being built and sold for prices that would have been inconceivable half a dozen years ago. And the effect is everywhere. In south county, one-acre lots that sold for $10,000 six years ago (after months and years on the market) are now going for $40 thousand in short order. The down-side of this boom is that a large percentage of the population of Deschutes County works in what could, in the broader sense, be called the service industry and are starting to be priced out of the market because of the upward pressure these new home prices are exerting on existing home values. There was a county-wide "Parade of Homes" open house put on over the last weekend by a number of builders that featured around a hundred new homes; only three of them cost less that two hundred thousand dollars, with the rest being substantially more. This has an effect on the guy down the street with the "house for sale" sign in his yard...

...of course, on the other hand, it is hard to keep focused on the housing problems of moderate-to-low income families while at the same time suppressing little squeals of delight as I watch the appreciation of my own home and acreage. Let's face it, there are built-in moral dilemmas for landed liberals caught in the middle of fast-rising home prices...

...in the meantime, new homes seem to be springing almost unbidden from the ground as the high desert and dry pine forests of Central Oregon are turned over to housing. The expansion doesn't seem to abate, despite the increasing chances that it just might be you on the evening news in the next report about people evacuation their homes in the face of a rapidly advancing wildfire or the occasional mountain lion found napping on your porch...right next to the slack dog chain attached to the empty collar that your little dog Toto was wearing when you let her out last night. It's not doing anything good for traffic or the quality of life, either, and each new development takes a little bite out of the reasons that this area has been thought of as a special place for so many years, but - still - it doesn't show any sign of letting up. We may be number 40 (with a bullet), but you won't find some people who remember what the place was like even 20 years ago high-fiving and Snoopy-dancing out in the parking lot. It's hard to say what, if anything, could actually burst this bubble: maybe some bizarre collapse in the tourism industry, possibly skyrocketing interest rates, perhaps a volcanic eruption (we do have several of them around here, and they're all looking kind of pent-up and foreboding, just in case you were considering moving here yourself). At any rate, Central Oregonians can look around themselves and see what it means to be number 40 and...above all else...keep moving. You never know what might happen otherwise...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:28 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

By Their Wingnuttedness, Ye Shall Know Them 

...there is a reason that the Republican Party is generally in decline in Oregon, but the folks in charge of the Republican Party don't get it. It was a monument to the particular weakness of the Democratic candidate for governer in the last election, Ted Kulongoski, that Republican Kevin Mannix actually came within a close enough margin of victory to give him sufficient hope that he has quit as head of the state Republican party to begin working on another run at it. In an effort to reaffirm the general assumption that there isn't any place in the party for a McCall, Hatfield, or Packwood these days, the party has elected Vance Day, a Salem lawyer, as the new party chairman, and he has wasted no time in identifying the core issues that will dominate the 2006 race for governor:

"You've got Neil Goldschmidt's protege in office right now. The governor's got a Goldschmidt tattoo on his left shoulder, as far as I'm concerned."

...there ya go. It's good to know that the Republican party in the State of Oregon isn't capable of straying far from the roots of their national party. It's comforting to see that the early campaign theme, which they presumably will intend to carry throughout 2006, is simply one of cheap worthless sleaze. An outsider who had been away from the state for a number of years would marvel at the campaign tactic of connnecting Kulongoski to Goldschmidt, given the electoral success that Goldschmidt had over the years as Portland Mayor and Governor. The backstory of this proposed Republican focus, of course, is Goldschmidt's ugly little affair while mayor with an underaged girl, the revelation of which caused a spectacular and rapid fall from public grace. Unfortunately, there isn't really any evidence that Kulongoski either had anything to do with Goldschmidt's actions or even knew about them, so making the obvious connection as Day is so anxious to do is little more than the mark of an amateurish attempt at the sort of tactics that the much discussed Karl Rove has mastered for George W. Bush. Unfortunately for Day, he apparently slept in and skipped class on the day where Professor Rove discussed the important value of not being seen playing the slime game. The fundamentalist winger branch of the Republican party will eat this stuff up, but...well, let's just say that there is a reason the Republicans lost the State Senate (all talk of Republican ascendency aside). Oregonians have always had an independent streak, and folks who move into the state tend to pick up on that particular freedom pretty quickly. Day and Mannix can talk all they want about the increasing numbers of registered Republicans (ALL of whom could be easily accounted for by all of those rich out-of-staters who have moved here to the Bend area and blown up local property values), but there is another group out there, and they call us the "independent" voters. All the talk about all but 10 counties being more Republican than Democrat miss the fundamental point that - in a statewide election - the presence of unaffiliated voters who don't like dirty games and the sort of cheap partisanship for which the Repubican party has become famous actually have a say, unlike in all the district-level voting...

...Vance Day can play this game if he wants to (and he apparently does). Unfortunately for him, there is going to be a record to answer to by both Kulongoski and whoever ends up being the Republican nominee. More unfortunately for him, there are going to be all those pictures, all those recollections of just exactly who demonstrated true patriotism when those flag-draped coffins brought home those Oregonians who gave that "last full measure" in honor to their orders and their country. There won't be much in the way of pictures of any Republican aspiring to the governorship at any of the memorial services. There are, on the other hand, any number of pictures of and references to the Governor at almost every one of those ceremonies. So, regardless of any actual political differences that Mannix or whoever becomes the Republican nominee wants to debate, and regardless of whether fringe players like Vance Day want to desperately try to smear Kulongoski with Neil Goldschmidt's problems, Ted Kulongoski has demonstrated at an almost orgainic level that he understands the basics. So Vance Day can bring it on; he can even talk about what he and Kevin Mannix did in the war, if they so choose. The fact is that Goldschmidt is old news and any effort to drag his sorry carcass into the 2006 governor's race indicates nothing so much as the fact that the Republican party in Oregon is bereft of new ideas, is bereft of any sense of a direction for the state, and is fundamentally bereft of any particular sense of integrity. If Vance Day can't come up with anything better that some smarmy Goldschmidt connect as a tool to attack Ted Kulongoski, he should probably make sure he nurtures his day job...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:48 PM 0 comments

Monday, July 18, 2005

Heating the House With Global Warming 

...not satisfied with simply denying the possibility of global warming or using some sort of climate-science version of the Tobacco Institute to crank out studies showing that furry little woodland creatures actually sleep better at night because of increased global temperatures, the folks who opposed taking measures to curb the causes of global warming have hit upon a new scheme: direct public intimidation. Congressman Joe Barton of Texas, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has decided - for the sake of science - to investigate three scientists who produced a paper documenting the dramatic rise of the earth's temperature over the last century. The hook he's using in this scheme is the federal funding that partially supported their research. In response, the Chairman of the House Science Committee, Sherwood L. Boehlert of New York, has sent a bit of flame-mail to Barton asking that he call off his "misguided and illegitimate investigation". Boehlert is getting pretty much the same response as Energy and Commerce Committee member Henry Waxman (who wrote a protest letter of his own), if statements by Barton's spokesman are any indication:

"Chairman Barton appreciates heated lectures from Representatives Boehlert and Waxman, two men who share a passion for global warming," committee spokesman Larry Neal said. "We regret that our little request for data has given them a chill. Seeking scientific truth is, indeed, too important to be imperiled by politics, and so we'll just continue to ask fair questions of honest people and see what they tell us. That's our job."

We can probably safely guess which Congressmen don't save seats for each other in the House Republican caucus meetings....

...it's not a terribly clever ploy, but it does have it's own sort of brutal elegance, as well as a supporting track record of similar behavior by the Bush Administration, which has an impressive history of twisting, perverting, or simply quashing scientific findings to acheive it's policy agenda, whether we be talking about salmon or clean air or a host of other issues. The sort of dry-gulching that Barton is trying to set up is the perfect approach to dealing with troublesome issues that could interfere with the business of making money with which his supporters and contributors are so enamored. Under the hot lights of the committee hearing room, he will attempt to force the authors to produce the evidence supporting their findings and then attempt to make them admit that there isn't an absolute iron-clad 100% certainty that global warming is the threat it's made out to be. While he's at it, he can trot out his two Canadian scientists who disagree with the findings as proof that the issue isn't settled, without dwelling on the knowledge or respect his dissenters have in the global climatology community (think Tobacco Institute). If he' really on his game, he might even be able to call into question the wisdom of even providing federal funding for such a Quixotic adventure as seeking evidence of global warming...

...it's all part of the game we play these days. It doesn't really matter how incontrovertable your evidence might be on a given scientific subject; as long as the opposition can dredge up some evidence to the contrary or, even better, a warm body that can clearly present that evidence and appear capable of dressing itself, the issue will never be settled. In this case, however, we have this added twist: the introduction of intimidation. Instead of the pitched court battles between warring parties, like we are accustomed to seeing, we witness the unlimbering of that big caliber congressional investigation cannon. It's a powerful weapon that you don't even necessarily need to shoot off very often to utilize it's deterrent potential. All you need to do, in this case, is to demonstrate that the use of Federal funds to produce findings that may be displeasing to elements of the ruling Federal class will get you hauled before a congressional committee. This approach isn't intended to assure better science, it's intended to introduce the opportunity for second thoughts to any lab-rat geek that might be tempted to use federal funds for climatological studies. While correspondents like Waxman and Boehlert and others are fighting the good fight as best they can (and exposing an interesting Republican rift at the same time), it's Barton's game and he's gonna play it by his rules to acheive his results. The handy thing is we know even before it starts who the losers are supposed to be...
Posted by: Jack K. / 3:07 PM 0 comments

Fighting Terror, Colorado-Style 

...courtesy of Rep. Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, we now have a new tool in the ol' terror-fighting toolbox. Rep. Tancredo has suggested that, in response to a nuclear terrorist attack on this country, we could deploy nuclear weapons against Mecca and other holy Islamic sites.

Yup! That oughta settle everybody down...

...Tancredo's spokesman, who apparently is a little faster on his feet than the Congressman, made haste to point out that this was merely a hypothetical musing. I'm sure that Muslims everywhere, including those who actually reside in Mecca, are comforted by the fact that he doesn't support actually threatening holy Islamic sites, you understand, but only spends the occasional idle moment hypothetically musing about the incineration of their holy site, not to mention their homes and families. I know I certainly sleep better with calm, level-headed policy-makers like this at the wheel...
Posted by: Jack K. / 11:03 AM 0 comments

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