Oregonian Editorial Board -- no problem changing the rules when it means hitting workers

The editorial board of the soon-to-extinct Oregonian recites the agreed dodge about why BP and RJ Reynolds should be allowed to keep hundreds of millions in unclaimed class action damages: because it's "changing the rules in midstream."

These are the folks who had no problem cutting pensions for already retired state workers.  Apparently, it's fine to rewrite pension rules decades after the workers chose to trade their labor for pension rights, but when it comes to corporations who rip off Oregonians, how dare the legislature interfere with the system that lets a wrongdoer keep a bunch of money simply because they ripped off a whole lot of people for a little bit each.

Disgusting. This is why few will shed any tears when the Oregonian finishes its disappearing act.

Voting against flawed class-action bill takes courage: Editorial
http://read.feedly.com/html?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oregonlive.com%2Fopinion%2Findex.ssf%2F2014%2F03%2Fvoting_against_class-action_bi.html&theme=white

----
Shared via my feedly reader

John Gear Law Office

A values-based Oregon law practice serving consumers, elders, employees, and nonprofits

503-339-7787
Typographical errors are all Siri's fault

Encore posting: McNary Field: Home of the Salem Cargo Cult

As Salem continues cutting services that benefit ordinary folks while shoveling money at developers and the well-connected, it's worth revisiting this old LoveSalem post:

 Wikipedia

If Salem needs cash so desperately, the place to find it is the airport, as in selling it to private investors for them to operate or put to other use, as conditions dicate.

The airport is currently a tax drain on the city and occupies good, centrally located and well drained land that gets plenty of sun (and, yes, rain) -- perfect for a group of investors to take over, continue to run as an private, civil aviation airport if desired and, more importantly, to start using all that safety-buffer space as farmland as well. 

Because the airline industry is cratering. The sooner Salem admits that there will never be scheduled commercial service to Salem again, the sooner the airport can be privatized and put on the tax rolls to become a tax generator instead of a tax drain. 

Between the price of jet fuel (kerosene, from oil) and the onset of prices on carbon emissions, the bottom line is that that air travel --- one of the most energy intensive human activities --- is going to be less and less a part of our lives in the years to come and it will certainly never be a mass activity for the middle class, as it was for a while. 

Salem's leadership seems to be either unaware or in denial about all of this, but the physical facts on the ground will trump any amount of psychological denial. The only question is how many planes will we attempt to build out of cedar planks before we give up our denial and admit that those years are over:

The most widely known period of cargo cult activity, however, was in the years during and after World War II. First, the Japanese arrived with a great deal of unknown equipment, and later, Allied forces also used the islands in the same way. The vast amounts of war materiel that were airdropped onto these islands during the Pacific campaign between the Allies and the Empire of Japan necessarily meant drastic changes to the lifestyle of the islanders, many of whom had never seen Westerners or Easterners before. Manufactured clothing, medicine, canned food, tents, weapons, and other useful goods arrived in vast quantities to equip soldiers. Some of it was shared with the islanders who were their guides and hosts. With the end of the war, the airbases were abandoned, and cargo was no longer dropped.

In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors, and airmen use. They carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses. The cult members thought that the foreigners had some special connection to the deities and ancestors of the natives, who were the only beings powerful enough to produce such riches.

In a form of sympathetic magic, many built life-size replicas of airplanes out of straw and created new military-style landing strips, hoping to attract more airplanes. Ultimately, although these practices did not bring about the return of the airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war, they did have the effect of eradicating most of the religious practices that had existed prior to the war.

Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay

Re: Our Oregon Capitol Update: Closing Time

Sen. Betsy Johnson claims she opposes HB 4143 because it changes the rules on corporations "in the middle"

That means she didn't support reducing PERS pensions for state workers, right???

Cause it would be wildly hypocritical to cut pensions for already- retired workers but then oppose making Wrongdoing corporations like BP pay the full amount of judgments because it's a "change" in midstream.

March 3, 2014     Legislators are headed into their final days of the 2014 session. They must adjourn by Sunday, and many speculate Sine Die will land closer to Wednesday or Thursday. Some big questions remain, including whether the Senate will pass the Legal Aid bill that corporations want so desperately to block.  Our Oregon's got you covered with the most important goings-on to start your week. Click the link to jump to the section you're most interested in. Or read 'em all and be the smartest person in the breakroom at lunch: Results from Last Week What's Happening This Week [Having trouble viewing this email? View it in your browser] Last Week ► Oregon House Republicans voted Monday evening to remove Rep. Julie Parrish (R-Tualatin/West Linn) from her leadership post as Deputy Leader for the House Republican caucus. Rep. John Davis (R-Wisonville) will take her place. Some have hinted that it was no surprise that Parrish was the only member of the Republican leadership to lose her seat (excepting Wally Hicks, who will retire this year.) Rumors in the building suggested that House Rs had plans to specifically target Parrish, though later chose to hold an election for all of the leadership positions instead. Rep. Dennis Richardson (R-Central Point) later stated that the election was a direct result of Parrish's primary recruitment efforts. ► Both the House and Senate have now passed SB 1524, which would create a study on the viability of providing free community college for all Oregon high school graduates. The bill is lauded as a smart first step to addressing the growing problem in Oregon, where soaring tuition has become a signficant barrier to higher education opportunities for many Oregonians.  This Week ► Economic fairness and consumer protection advocates are waiting to see if the Senate will pass HB 4143, which would direct uncollected proceeds from class action lawsuits to Legal Aid of Oregon. This would end Oregon's unfair practices that led corporations to underpay their legal settlements, and will instead provide legal representation for low-income Oregonians. Unsurprisingly, powerful interests have responded by trying to shut down support for the bill and Republicans are paying heed.  The Senate will hold its third hearing and likely vote on the issue tomorrow (Tuesday.)  Get involved here, by signing the petition calling on the Oregon Senate to support the bill. ► The Senate will also vote on HB 4054, which would fix the driver card ballot measure title by providing a more accurate description of what the law would do. These efforts are backed by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, so that voters have a clear understanding of what the law would do. The bill has already passed the House. ► The Oregon House has stalled on SB 1531. The original bill proposed to provide local governments with specific regulations over medical marijuana operations in their own jurisdiction, while still preserving protections for patient access. Now, proposed amendments would let local governments ban medical dispensaries in their area, causing concerns about patients' access. House leaders fear that the amended language goes too far, and would not pass the Senate when it went back for review.  ► A bill to improve the integrity of Oregon's initiative system heads to the Governor's desk, after being passed in the House this morning. The bill (SB 1504) expands restrictions on petition circulators, adding election violations to the list of factors that prohibits one from working as a paid petition circulator in Oregon. OUR OREGON  |  info@ouroregon.org  |  503.239.8029   Breaking News Outside the Legislature, policy changes through the ballot have been underway for months. Today, two attacks on working people - Initiative Petitions 1 and 9 - were withdrawn from the ballot by chief petitioners. This is great news for Oregon workers, who will not have to face a major, multi-million dollar attack from out-of-state corporate interests. While the Koch Brothers and ALEC are moving these anti-worker laws around the country, Oregonians won't have to face that threat this year. Read more...   Must Reads Rival Oregon tax and union ballot measures won't go forward, Gov. John Kitzhaber announces (via the Oregonian) Oregon's Senate Republicans can't deal with progress or innovation (via the Oregonian) Final week agenda thinning (via the Register Guard)   Our Oregon is Oregon's progressive coalition, working for social and economic justice and fighting to protect Oregon's priorities. Read More.

Ohio 8-year-old boy fatally shot by brother who thought gun wasn't real [feedly]

Again, what we need is mandatory firearms insurance.

http://prorev.com/idguns.htm

Ohio 8-year-old boy fatally shot by brother who thought gun wasn't real
// Latest from Crooks and Liars

An 8-year-old boy in Ohio died over the weekend after being shot by his older brother who found a loaded handgun, but thought it was a BB gun.

According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati Police Department officials determined that the boys were visiting their uncle on Saturday when the shooting occurred.

"We walked in through the front door here that's in to the kitchen area and the child was laying on his back with a gunshot wound to the chest. He was conscious and alert at that time," Cincinnati police Sgt. Jim Perkins told WXIX.

The gunshot victim died shortly after being rushed to a nearby hospital.

Lt. Don Luck recalled that one sibling "kept telling the story of how it happened, over and over again."

"It's so sad," Luck said.

The shooting has been classified as a homicide, but authorities said that they believed it was an accident. An investigation was ongoing.

"I think everyone is pretty much upset considering the circumstances and at this point we don't know where the adult was inside the house and that's why we're conducting the investigation at this time," Perkins pointed out.

Steve Duin: Oregon's Senate Republicans can't deal with progress or innovation | OregonLive.com

Call your state senator and tell them not to come home without passing this first.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf/2014/03/steve_duin_oregons_senate_repu.html#incart_river_default

Steve Duin: Oregon's Senate Republicans can't deal with progress or innovation

The best bill of the 2014 legislative session -- House Bill 4143 -- transforms the uncollected straw from class-action lawsuits into a gold mine for Legal Aid.  And if it disappears down the mine shaft, we will chew once again on the familiar dilemmas of state politics:

 * Can Oregon Democrats close the deal on anything that matters?

 * Do Oregon Republicans cash those fat checks from Big Oil at Umpqua Bank or Wells Fargo?

This failure will loom much darker than that, however.  The inability of the Legislature to memorialize this creative problem-solving will stand as a chilling reminder of how dramatically the world is changing and how insufficient our antiquated political system is to maintain order.  

Although this rescue op for Legal Aid was drafted by two House Democrats, Reps. Jennifer Williamson and Tobias Read, it isn't a partisan issue.  "There was a time when plenty of Republicans were outspoken proponents of legal services,"  Portland city Commissioner Nick Fish said.  "The whole idea originated under Richard Nixon, for God's sake."

And when Republican Gordon Smith and Democrat Ron Wyden served together in the U.S. Senate, they petitioned appropriation leaders with equal passion on the need to provide additional funding for Legal Aid.

That makes sense:  The need for legal services -- and the incidence of poverty, domestic violence and landlord-tenant disputes -- does not break down on partisan lines.

But House Bill 4143 broke that way when Senate Republicans and corporate lobbyists realized they finally had use for one another.

The GOP's conservative base is increasingly marginalized. On a national level, Republicans are backing down on the immigration issue and looking increasingly ridiculous in their denial of climate change.

Gay marriage?  Arizona may be the Republicans' Armageddon on that front.  "What Arizona proved, as much as any other (development) in recent American politics," Politico notes, "is that there's currently no more powerful constituency for gay rights than the Fortune 500 list."

In Oregon, Republicans can't even pull off a Dorchester Conference.  The decision by the social-issue misfits to host an alternative luncheon at the Monarch Hotel invites a visit from The Daily Show's Samantha Bee.

For the sake of its 2014 fundraising campaign, then, the Senate Republican caucus is happy, even desperate, to carry water for BP, which lost its legal argument in January about over-charging customers who used debit cards.

By law, BP is allowed to keep the damages that go uncollected.  House Bill 4143 would redirect those millions to essential legal services for the poor, which blows the mind of industry lobbyists.

"In the frenzy of a short session, you can kill a bill pretty quickly by saying it's too complicated," said Williamson, who endured a hug Friday from a BP lobbyist who assured her the execution was almost complete.

"The path of least resistance is saying, 'We'll look at it in the interim.' The problem with that is people have been working on this since 1991.  There's no question about the process.  It's been vetted.  It's a very simple bill."

To recap:  Oregon would join 48 other states that refuse to return unclaimed damages to the sullen losers in class-action suits. It would, at long last, provide stable funding for legal-aid services.

The only folks who can't keep up are the 14 Senate Republicans and Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose.

Politics as usual?  Yes and no.  Senate Republicans want the business lobby to owe them a favor.  Johnson enjoys attention.  We've passed this way before.

But Adam Davis at DHM Research, who has tracked and polled Northwest politics for more than 30 years, believes this is an especially odious turn.

Davis argues that he's never seen the electorate so negative about "government." Voters increasingly don't differentiate between politics and policy, he said, or the state and federal conflagrations.

Combine that with the disinformation industry and the "increasing ignorance" about how government works, Davis says, and he's "seeing a storm related to the public-opinion climate like I've never seen before.

"It's sheer creepiness out there right now."

Voter anger was once focused almost exclusively to government waste and inefficiency, much of that tied to public-employee compensation, Davis says.  That has evolved over the last decade:  The electorate is increasingly frustrated by the lack of progress and innovation.

"So, here was an idea that addressed why people are feeling negative about politics," Davis says.  "And it went nowhere.  That's not only testimony to our system, but it fuels the negativity about not getting anything done."

House Bill 4143 is the best idea to come out of the Legislature in recent memory. It remedies a flaw in class-action law and funds a legal-aid system that can't provide the poorest Oregonians with the help they need.

But the bill is being chewed up in a political system that is designed to be adversarial, not productive, and one that celebrates, year after dreary year, all that is stubborn and self-serving and dull. 

-- Steve Duin   

Why do huge boondoggles get going?

How systems work 

Systemantics

Feb 25, 2014 01:00 am

Originally published as Systemantics, the pun in the title carries the important message that systems have "antics" — they act up, misbehave, and have their own mind. The author is having fun with a serious subject, deciding rightly that a sense of humor and paradox are the only means to approach complexity. His insights come in the form of marvelously succinct rules of thumb, in the spirit of Murphy's Law and the Peter Principle. This book made me 1) not worry about understanding a colossal system — you can't, 2) realize I can change a system — by starting a new one, and 3) avoid starting new systems — they don't go away.

The lesson is that whatever complexity you are creating or have to work with — a website, a company, a robot, a tribe, a platform — is a system that will over time exhibit its own agenda. You need to understand the basic laws of systems, which this perennial book (now in its third edition) will cheerily instruct you.

-- KK

The Systems Bible
(3rd Edition of Systemantics)
2003, 316 pages
$7, Kindle
$18+ (used), paperback

Available from Amazon

Sample Excerpts:

*

*

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The parallel proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.

*

We begin at the beginning, with the Fundamental Theorem: New systems mean new problems.

*

The system always kicks back — Systems get in the way — or, in slightly more elegant language: Systems tend to oppose their own proper functions.

*

Systems tend to malfunction conspicuously just after their greatest triumph. Toynbee explains this effect by pointing out the strong tendency to apply a previously successful strategy to the new challenge. The army is now fully prepared to fight the previous war

Undernews: Recovered history: Louis Armstrong and the civil rights movement

http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2014/02/recovered-history-louis-armstrong-and.html

Recovered history: Louis Armstrong and the civil rights movement

Sam Smith - Louis Armstrong, given his great popularity among whites, would, from time to time, come under criticism for not doing more for civil rights. Ben Schwartz in the New Yorker sheds some interesting light on this in a new article, including Armstrong's response for not having taken part in a protest march: 

"My life is my music. They would beat me on the mouth if I marched, and without my mouth I wouldn't be able to blow my horn … They would beat Jesus if he was black and marched."

In fact, musicians vary markedly in their activism and often express it in their own most familiar language: music. For example, Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit, a song about lynching,  became popular more than a decade before the modern civil rights movement. And we forget that musicians on the road in integrated bands were among those who ran most directly into the walls of segregation. It was, for example, one reason Armstrong didn't return to New Orleans for years. 

And then there are the stories, that get missed, like this one in Schwartz' article: 

One example, of too many, came when Armstrong was arrested by the Memphis Police Department in 1931. His crime? He sat next to his manager's wife, a white woman, on a bus. Armstrong and his band were thrown in jail as policemen shouted that they needed cotton pickers in the area. Armstrong's manager got him out in time to play his show the next evening. When he did play, Armstrong dedicated a song to the local constabulary, several of whom were in the room, then cued the band to play "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Old Rascal You." The band stiffened, expecting another night in jail, or worse. Instead, he scatted so artfully that, afterward, the cops on duty actually thanked him. Armstrong most likely never quit smiling that night. His subversive joke was not understood by anyone except the African-Americans in his band.

Schwartz also writes: 

Armstrong chose his battles carefully. In September, 1957, seven months after the bombing attempt in Knoxville, he grew strident when President Eisenhower did not compel Arkansas to allow nine students to attend Little Rock Central High School. As [Terry] Teachout recounts in "Pops," here Armstrong had leverage, and spoke out. Armstrong was then an unofficial goodwill ambassador for the State Department. Armstrong stated publicly that Eisenhower was "two-faced" and had "no guts." He told one reporter, "It's getting almost so bad a colored man hasn't got any country." His comments made network newscasts and front pages, and the A.P. reported that State Department officials had conceded that "Soviet propagandists would undoubtedly seize on Mr. Armstrong's words."....

When Eisenhower did force the schools to integrate, Armstrong's tone was friendlier. "Daddy," he telegrammed the President, "You have a good heart."

Unmentioned by Schwartz is an example of Armstrong, like Holiday and other musicians, helping to frame an issue well before political activists. Here are the lyrics to "Black and Blue," written by Fats Waller in 1929 and later an Armstrong standard: 

Cold empty bed, springs hard as lead
Feels like ol' Ned wished I was dead
What did I do to be so black and blue 

Even the mouse ran from my house
They laugh at you and scorn you too
What did I do to be so black and blue 

I'm white inside but that don't help my case
'Cause I can't hide what is in my face 

How would it end, ain't got a friend
My only sin is in my skin
What did I do to be so black and blue 

How would it end, ain't got a friend
My only sin is in my skin
What did I do to be so black and blue

It was a song, incidentally, that helped turn me, then a young white high school student in the segregationist 1950s, not only on to jazz, but towards the civil rights movement when it arrived a few years later. 

Music can work like that

Re: Article in Bloomberg on Shale Oil

Yes, this is why rising traffic projections are unadulterated BS.  Oil has to be over $100 bbl for the producers to make any money.  At the prices needed, the US economy crumples like a beer can hit with a hammer.  Thus, monstrous highway projects are self defeating, because highway spending only increases productivity in poorly connected countries.  In the US, already way overpaved, highway spending is just zero sum, spending to please group A, taken out of the hides of groups B, C, and D, which pushes them backwards economically, increasing inequality and further contracting the money available for things like auto travel.

The bottom line is that we have to stop moving around so much.  Period.  Less driving, more walking.  Little to no flying. All attempts to deny that reality will only hasten it even more.

Read this article and thought of you:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-27/dream-of-u-s-oil-independence-slams-against-shale-costs.html?cmpid=yhoo

Schrader against raising the minimum wage

Insanity. This guy needs a strong primary opponent badly.

This week, the Huffington Post reported [1] that a handful of Congressional Democrats are joining with Republicans to oppose an increase in the federal minimum wage. Oregon's own Rep. Kurt Schrader is one of those Democrats.

Congressional supporters of a higher minimum wage just announced their intention to make a rare procedural maneuver by filing a "petition to discharge" aimed at bypassing John Boehner's roadblock on raising the minimum wage. [2] If a majority of the House of Representatives sign this petition the Fair Minimum Wage Act will be given a vote, no matter what the Tea Party opposition wants. However, but this petition will not be successful Rep. Schrader's support.

Tell Rep. Schrader to stop siding with the Tea Party and John Boehner. Tell him to support the Fair Minimum Wage Act.

Some of Oregon's largest concentrations of people living in poverty are in Rep. Schrader's very own district, [3] so why is he giving political cover to Tea Party Republicans and Speaker John Boehner by opposing something that would help his very own constituents?

Momentum is building all over the county to raise the minimum wage, and we need  Democrats like Schrader to listen to the 71% of Americans (including 52% of Republicans!) who support a raise to the minimum wage. [4]

Tell Rep. Schrader to support an increase to the federal minimum wage.

Thanks for all you do,

Steve Hughes
State Director, Oregon Working Families

Sources:

1.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/25/house-democrats-minimum-wage_n_4855940.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

2.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/02/26/democrats-plan-rare-legislative-maneuver-to-force-vote-on-minimum-wage-will-it-work/

3. http://projects.oregonlive.com/maps/foodstamps/

4. http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-and-centers/polling-institute/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=1993

SJ lies about CRoCk up in Portland, the even-bigger-Bridgeasaurus Boondogglus

It's harsh to say that an editorial board is lying about something, but that's all you can conclude about this pile of disinformation about the gigantic pile of pork and graft being sold up in Portland.

Not only are the bridgespans NOT the problem up there, but the federal high-capacity-transit money could just as easily go to support bus rapid transit as light rail.  That would have the additional benefit of allowing a new bridge to be high enough to avoid interference with river shipping (the reason that the proposed form of the CRoCk --- "Columbia River Crossing" -- is too low to allow all current shipping to pass is that light rail can't climb for squat, so the proposal is to buy off the existing upriver shippers whose shipments would be impeded).

I'm not a light-rail basher; for years I've supported good light rail projects in appropriate settings. But the cross-river proposal on offer up there is simply a civilian form of contractor-capture of the proposal of Pentagon-esque proportions.

There's a common-sense alternative proposal that makes a TON of sense for dealing with the Portland-Vancouver link.  Of course, it doesn't cost nearly enough to excite the contractors pulling for the Full Monty Bridgeasaurus.

No surprise to see the SJ pimping the CRoCk though -- they've gone all in for the absurd "Salem River Crossing" and the last thing they want is for ODOT to start making decisions based on logic and reason instead of political pull.