OlsonOnline

Public elections, public safety, and cynical blogs

Local celebrity blogger Jack Bogdanski has threatened that the city's plan for publicly financed elections is "going down."  And all the sycophants and cynics who hang out at his cyberbar are cheering him on. 

Well, we'll see.  Two letters in today's Tribune take the opposite view.  The first is from Rita Fawcett:

"Phil Stanford notwithstanding, our City Council should be applauded for taking a courageous stand on opening up elections to a diverse community of candidates (When Bix bites, some will bite back, On the Town, May 10).

"Hooray for them for standing up for the common man, and shame on Stanford for making fun of this process."

Apparently Rita doesn't read Jack's blog or she probably would have included him in her scolding, along with Jack's pal Phil Stanford.

Speaking of the Tribune columnist, Jack has posted a couple of pieces defending Stanford's Francke obsession.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that Stanford "left" the Oregonian after writing a column or two about some burglary caper involving the police that was pretty much, well... made up!

Back to publicly funded elections.  Here's the second letter from Marian Drake:

"I’m thrilled for Portland to have 'voter-owned elections.'

"In the past, a small number of well-financed candidates dominated elections. Public financing allows candidates to enter the game with a greater variety of viewpoints and messages.

"To open the field in this way took real guts on the part of the commissioners who voted 4-1 in favor of voter-owned elections.

"City Council support for this ordinance was built on months of deliberation and thousands of comments from constituents.
   
"Reasoning and study do not always prevail in politics, so another reason the commissioners are gutsy is that they, as incumbents, will face candidates with a real chance of getting their message to voters in the next election. Public funding erases the unfair fundraising advantage that incumbents currently have.
   
"The money doesn’t come for free. Mayoral candidates have to show that they have earned a spot on the ballot by collecting more than 1,500 $5 contributions, and candidates for commissioner and auditor have to collect 1,000 $5 contributions.
   
"I’m proud that the City Council is making history as it is enacts a first-in-the-nation system of full public funding for city election campaigns."

There's two signatures that Jack's referendum petition won't get.  Three, counting mine.

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Another favorite target of Professor Bogdanski is Diane Linn.  And now my former neighbor is in the news again about a political squabble with fellow Multnomah County Commissioners over jail funding.  And that brings me to another letter that appeared in today's Trib, and last week (in different form) in the Oregonian.  The gist of it is that jails aren't the only providers of public safety.  Here's the key passage from Kathleen Pequeno's letter to the O:

"Most people locked up in jail (and prison) are addicted to drugs or alcohol. Treatment, youth employment and community college all make my neighborhood safer. They are meaningful interventions that give people pride and tools to succeed. The county needs to fund these programs to protect public safety."

Since my wife works at the downtown Justice Center as an RN, I know (and have written) that the shortage of jail beds has as much to do with police priorities-- keeping homeless alcoholics off the streets-- as it does with jail funding.  The lack of alternatives for dealing with alcoholics, drug addicts and the mentally ill have turned our jails into defacto treatment centers, not places to house truly dangerous criminals. 

What it comes down to is the lack of public resources -- taxes-- to fund treatment and other alternatives to jail.  Is it Diane Linn's fault?  Well, she hasn't been very adept at chairing the County Commission.  And if she has a halfway credible opponent in the next election, I'll vote against her.

But the real rogues in this scenario are the anti-tax and anti-government cheapshot artists whose voices are heard too loudly in the local blogosphere.

Demographics

Today's Portland Tribune feature on the Rose Festival court illustrates quite dramatically the changing ethnic make-up of Portland area schools.  The fourteen girls representing high schools in the city of Portland are as racially diverse as any I can remember.

Four of the fourteen Ambasadors, as they're now called, are Asian.  Three are African-American.  Three are Hispanic.  And four are white.  The demographic make-up of the court is almost identical to the demographic profiles of some of the North Portland schools recently closed by the school board, like Applegate  or Kenton.

The court is not emblematic, unfortunately, of the Portland School Board, which remains 70% white and relatively wealthy.  The newly elected members have actually made the board less diverse, replacing one white and  two Black members with two whites and one Black.

On policy issues, it's more of the same.  The winning candidates-- Dan Ryan, Trudy Sargent, and Sonja Henning-- have pledged financial accountbility and closing the achievement gap as their highest priorities.  The "achievement gap", as the newly elected board members may or may not know, is both defined and measured by student performance on standardized achievement tests.  And, as I have pointed out countless times before, test performance is highly correlated to student demographics.

Of course, none of the three new board members has a background in public education.  So they're likely to buy into the myth of testing as a means of holding schools accountable, and thereby improving them.  But as Rick Stiggins, who does know something about education, writes in this Kappan article, testing does more harm than good:

"If we are finally to connect assessment to school improvement in meaningful ways, we must come to see assessment through new eyes. Our failure to find a potent connection has resulted in a deep and intensifying crisis in assessment in American education. Few elected officials are aware of this crisis, and almost no school officials know how to address it. Our current assessment systems are harming huge numbers of students for reasons that few understand. And that harm arises directly from our failure to balance our use of standardized tests and classroom assessments in the service of school improvement. When it comes to assessment, we have been trying to find answers to the wrong questions."

Perhaps the newly constituted board will surprise me.  But I'm not holding my breath.

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The board did do something good, by the way, in authorizing a new school in the rebuilt Columbia Villa housing development in North Portland.  The best part of the plan, as described in today's Tribune article, is combining the resources of the district, a non-profit (the Boys and Girls Club) and the city to create a true community and neighborhood resource.

I've long advocated that sort of innovative and cooperative approach to maximizing the use of too often overlapping resources.

 

Become an activist- sign the letter demanding answers about the Downing Street Memo!

Talk show host Joe Madison told a group of Democrats holding a hearing on freedom of the press what they needed to do to get adequate press coverage of the Downing Street memo:

"March down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Washington Post and demand a meeting.  They're not going to turn members of Congress away."

Well, now you as citizens can do someting about it too.

Here's the letter Rep. John Conyers sent to George W. Bush asking for a response to the now infamous "Downing Street Memo".  To date, the President has not replied.

Add your voice as a citizen by clicking the following link.  Follow the directions and send  this citizen's letter to the White House:

Letter to Pres Bush Concerning "Downing Street Memo"

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The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005

Dear Mr. President:

We the undersigned write to you because of our concern regarding recent disclosures of a Downing Street Memo in the London Times, comprising the minutes of a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers. These minutes indicate that the United States and Great Britain agreed, by the summer of 2002, to attack Iraq, well before the invasion and before you even sought Congressional authority to engage in military action, and that U.S. officials were deliberately manipulating intelligence to justify the war.

Among other things, the British government document quotes a high-ranking British official as stating that by July, 2002, Bush had made up his mind to take military action. Yet, a month later, you stated you were still willing to "look at all options" and that there was "no timetable" for war. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, flatly stated that "[t]he president has made no such determination that we should go to war with Iraq."

In addition, the origins of the false contention that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction remains a serious and lingering question about the lead up to the war. There is an ongoing debate about whether this was the result of a "massive intelligence failure," in other words a mistake, or the result of intentional and deliberate manipulation of intelligence to justify the case for war. The memo appears to resolve that debate as well, quoting the head of British intelligence as indicating that in the United States "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

As a result of these concerns, we would ask that you respond to the following questions:
1)Do you or anyone in your administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document?
2) Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization to go to war? Did you or anyone in your Administration obtain Britain's commitment to invade prior to this time?
3) Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate?
4) At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq?
5) Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy as the leaked document states?

These are the same questions 89 Members of Congress, led by Rep. John Conyers, Jr., submitted to you on May 5, 2005. As citizens and taxpayers, we believe it is imperative that our people be able to trust our government and our commander in chief when you make representations and statements regarding our nation engaging in war. As a result, we would ask that you publicly respond to these questions as promptly as possible.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Name:

Street Address:

City, State:

Zip Code:

Email Address:

The British memo and the media blackout

Even the good guys like E.J. Dionne are more concerned with the Newsweek non-story about "flushing" the Koran than the real news revealed in the Downing Street memo about cooking up intelligence to justify a pre-ordained invasion of Iraq.

Maybe I'm biased.  I dislike war, and I especially dislike the carnage visited unnecessarily on Iraq.  But war is news, big news, especially when U.S. soldiers are still dropping like flies in a country half a world away.  So why aren't the lies that led us into Iraq big news worthy of big coverage in all the nation's leading news outlets?

What's been called the "smoking gun" of Bush and neocon duplicity is being kept alive almost single-handedly by John Conyers, one of the few politicians with the cajones and principled outrage to do so.  In this piece for the Huffington Post, he takes dead aim at the media which has elevated stories about Michael Jackson and the "runaway bride" to national consciousness while burying --ignoring, really-- the British memo story:

"What about the botched intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction? For the past year and half, allegations have persisted that the Bush Administration pressured intelligence analysts to reach foreordained conclusions and massaged raw data to make the case for war. Here, the memo speaks loudly. According to the British Government, with respect to the American government's efforts to justify the war "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

"Didn't know about that?

"Here's why: according to a Congressional Research Service analysis(pdf), you would not have seen it on the cable news networks. Because these two stories 'broke' within a day of each other, I asked CRS to analyze how often each was covered during prime time in a three day period soon thereafter. The Jennifer Wilbanks, 'Runaway Bride,' story was covered eleven times, eight as the lead story. The story about the classified British minutes was not mentioned once. Since then, the minutes have garnered only brief mentions."

Conyers is the Congressman who wrote a letter to the President, signed by 88 fellow House members, demanding an explanation.  So far, no response.

Robert Parry calls the lack of media coverage "cowardice":

"This journalistic fear has lessened somewhat since the discovery by Bush’s own investigators that the U.S. claims about Iraq’s WMD were 'dead wrong,' but the residual intimidation remains.  News executives still realize it’s safer for their careers to downplay stories that cast a harsh light on Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq.

"So, in May 2005, when the British press disclosed a secret government memo from July 2002 stating that everyone knew the Iraq WMD evidence was 'thin' but that Bush had decided to go to war anyway – months earlier than the official story – these revelations were treated as old news in the U.S. press."

But there's still hope.  The DesMoines Register has called for a full-fledged investigation of the memo.  And a coalition of progressive groups has asked "... Congress to file a Resolution of Inquiry, the first necessary legal step to determine whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses... ."

So justice may yet prevail.

Save the blastocysts, ... er, embryos!

You may have seen the photo-op of Bush holding a baby born of a donated in vitro embryo, but you probably missed the one of him cradling the body of a soldier killed in Iraq.

I did too.  I couldn't find it anywhere. 

The irony of Bush threatening to veto a bill that threatens the "lives" of "pre-born" children while U.S. soldiers die daily in Iraq didn't escape the discerning eye of New York Times columnist Bob Herbert:

"Warfare, when absolutely unavoidable, is one thing. But it's a little difficult to understand how these kinds of profoundly dehumanizing practices - not to mention the physical torture we've heard so much about - could be enthusiastically embraced by a government headed by men who think all life is sacred. Either I'm missing something, or President Bush, Tom DeLay and their ilk are fashioning whole new zones of hypocrisy for Americans to inhabit."

The Times has been front and center in its coverage of this latest salvo in the "culture of life" wars.  An editorial in today's edition calls into question the President's stem cell "theology":

"These blastocysts, as they are called, bear none of the attributes we associate with humanity and, sitting outside the womb, have no chance of developing into babies. Some people consider them clumps of cells no different than other biological research materials. Others would grant them special respect but still make them available for worthy research. But Mr. Bush is imposing his different moral code on both, thereby slowing research that most consider potentially beneficial."

The newspaper also presents Bush's remarks as he attempts to defend his threatened veto-- and pander to his right-wing religious base:

"Today the House of Representatives is considering a bill that violates the clear standard I set four years ago. This bill would take us across a critical ethical line by creating new incentives for the ongoing destruction of emerging human life. Crossing this line would be a great mistake."

In the audience were representatives of Nightlight Christian Adoptions and Snowflakes Frozen Embryo Adoption Program.   Perhaps Snowflakes ought to change its name to "Blastocyst Adoption Program."

In the meantime Sen. Sam Brownback has threatened to filibuster the bill in the Senate.  On ethical grounds, of course:

" 'I have conveyed to Senate leadership that we must do everything we can procedurally to stop unethical embryonic stem cell research in the Senate, and I will work to do just that,' Mr. Brownback said in a statement released Tuesday night. 'We simply should not go down the road of using taxpayer dollars to kill young humans.' "

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Fortunately, Arianna Huffington is keeping the heat on Bush about the disaster in Iraq.  Here's what she says in her latest column:

"The report was published on Tuesday - another day of murder and mayhem in Iraq, with 'more than 100 Iraqis...killed or injured in a wave of bombings since Monday morning.' Fifty-eight Americans and over 500 Iraqis have been killed since April 28, when the new Iraqi government was installed.

"Yes, it's great that the Democrats staved off the nuclear option. But the reason the nuclear option was even a possibility in the first place is because they have ceded the foreign policy battlefront to a majority party that doesn't represent the majority on the crucial foreign policy issue of Iraq. When will Democrats realize that they will remain a minority party so long as they only dare to take on Bush and the Republicans on domestic issues?"

Arianna Huffington has established herself as the voice of the progressive movement.  Not bad for a woman who a few short years ago was actually a Republican.

Outrage lives in the PRP; Paul Krugman on the way out?

Here in the People's Republic, and I use that term approvingly, unlike certain other local bloggers who shall go unnamed, the British memo implicating Bush in lies about the invasion of Iraq is kept alive by letter writers like Patricia Langdon:

"Regarding David Sarasohn's column, 'Smoking gun still sending smoke signals' (May 18), President Bush at least owes Americans an explanation regarding the leaked Downing Street memo written in July 2002. He owes the representatives in Congress an answer to their letter on the same subject.

"If the memo accurately describes Bush's direction to fix the intelligence and facts to support his desire to go to war because the case against Iraq was 'thin' -- Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran -- then he owes us an apology and a resignation."

Granted, Sarasohn did write about the memo, but I prefer Langdon's blunt (yet articulate) demand for a media response to the memo.  Sarasohn's sly, understated, ironic style typically fails to create any ripples at all.

I also prefer outspoken defense of progressive principles to mealy-mouthed moderation.  And Green Party stalwart Xander Patterson clearly exemplifies the former.  Here's the first part of his letter to the O on taxes:

"It was odd to read your editorial calling for local budget cuts, funding '(s)chools, safety and jobs first. Everything else should be a distant second' ('A tax that even Portlanders hate,' May 19).

"I have counted at least a half dozen editorials in the last six months calling for more or better services (more spending) on everything from 'preventing foster teens from becoming homeless teens' to the Buckman pool.

"I don't recall a single editorial identifying a program that you would cut. You, too, expect everything from government to be free?"

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Paul Krugman of the New York Times is also outspoken on progressive issues, a trait that may get him fired, acording to this analysis from Z-Net's Edward Herman:

"But Krugman blossomed, and became a liberal-left critic of broad scope and exceptional intellectual force. It would have been hard to fire him, so one compromise solution was to add the rightwing David Brooks as an offsetting regular and perhaps hope that Krugman would some day make an error that might justify termination. He hasn't done that yet, but (Public Editor Daniel) Okrent's smear may be an early step in a termination process."

What's Okrent's beef?

"Krugman, he says, 'has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults.' He is also 'ideological' and 'unfair.' "

As Herman points out, Okrent fails to provide any examples of "Krugman's abusive use of statistics".  In fact, Krugman is a pillar of journalistic integrity when compared to fellow columnist Thomas Friedman:

"This is in contrast with a columnist like Thomas Friedman, obviously highly ideological, but whose ideology-to-fact ratio is vastly greater than Krugman's. Friedman is not listed in Okrent's 13-apparently his ideology is OK, and his regular call for the United States to commit war crimes doesn't bother Okrent either... ."

I hope Herman's prediction is wrong.  I love Paul Krugman.  Thomas Friedman, on the other hand, makes me ill. 

Senate Dems, maybe you've been had!

Why do I have the sinking feeling that all is not as it seems with the Senate filibuster "compromise"?

It's not just the fact that the Dems are forced to accept the nominations of three of the most radically conservative (and in the case of Janice Rogers Brown, incompetent) appeals court judges imaginable.  Nor is it the shaky nature of the filibuster guarantee. 

No, there's something more. 

I think the whole "nuclear option" threat was an elaborate con job.  And the con was worked on the Democrats by the conniving right wing cabal that pretty much runs the government. 

I mean, who won?  The New York Times declares the compromise a "modest victory for  Bush".   And who lost?  Not Bill Frist, who is able to deny any part in the compromise.  James Dobson in his statement decrying the agreement actually congratulates Frist on sticking to his guns:

"We are grateful to Majority Leader Frist for courageously fighting to defend the vital principle of basic fairness."

I'm not the only lefty who thinks that bad things happen when you compromise your principles.  Here's Sen. Russ Feingold, for example:

"This is not a good deal for the U.S. Senate or for the American people. Democrats should have stood together firmly against the bullying tactics of the Republican leadership abusing their power as they control both houses of Congress and the White House."

And then there's Joshua Zeitz (a lecturer at Cambridge University) writing in the Huffington Post:

"And If the Democratic party cannot or will not safeguard the integrity of the courts, the separation of powers, and the key components of the New Deal and Great Society, then what use does it serve?"

And TalkLeft:

"All this did was pass the buck to the next congress - yet Democrats are stuck with 3 judges we could have filibustered if we held out."

And locally, a couple of bloggers agree that this is really a lose-lose situation.  Read their comments here and here.

But I do seem to be the only one who sees dirty tricksterism in this whole event.

 

History's verdict is already in: George W.Bush IS the worst President ever!

I've written on several occasions that Bush is the worst environmental President ever, but I was never convinced that he ranked at the absolute bottom in the all- around worst President category.

Now I am convinced, especially after reading Stephen Pizzo's article.  And his follow-up citing the verdict of historians in a History News Network poll.

Here are the graphic results:

"A recent informal, unscientific survey of historians conducted at my suggestion by George Mason University’s History News Network found that eight in ten historians responding rate the current presidency an overall failure."

"Of 415 historians who expressed a view of President Bush’s administration to this point as a success or failure, 338 classified it as a failure and 77 as a success. (Moreover, it seems likely that at least eight of those who said it is a success were being sarcastic, since seven said Bush’s presidency is only the best since Clinton’s and one named Millard Fillmore.) Twelve percent of all the historians who responded rate the current presidency the worst in all of American history, not too far behind the 19 percent who see it at this point as an overall success."

Now this is all legit.  Stephen Pizzo is a serious journalist with a sense of humor.  He even wrote a book that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.  And the History News Network is at George Mason University, not at some crackpot school like Bob Jones U.

Of course I think Bush's behavior in office, especially his mendacity, should get him impeached.  The British memo that I've written about several times proves beyond a doubt that Bush lied to get us into an illegal and unnecessary war.  But for some reason the American media isn't interested in covering the story. 

Why?  Robert Dreyfuss blames the Democrats:

"First, most distressingly, the media is following the lead of the Democrats. True, John Conyers and 88 other members of the U.S. House of Representatives wrote a letter asking the White House about the memo, but by and large the Democrats took a pass. That's in keeping with the party's decision in 2004, during the election campaign, not to raise the issue of the Pentagon's Feith-based Office of Special Plans and the widespread reports that the intelligence on Iraq was falsified. During the campaign, John Kerry barely touched on the issue, and in the Senate, West Virginia's Jay Rockefeller--the ranking Dem on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence--decided not to make a fuss over it. Rockefeller agreed to postpone an investigation into the political use of Iraq intelligence--a code word for an inquiry into whether it was faked--until after the election in November 2004. Then, inexplicably, Rocky let Sen. Pat Roberts get away with a decision to renege on the promised investigation. So the Senate plans to do nothing."

That's inexplicable and unforgivable.  But it's also a byproduct of the Dems nominating a man who supported the invasion of Iraq, rather than someone like Dean or Kucinich.

Dreyfuss is appalled at the "... stunning lack of editorial comment on the Downing Street memo":

"It isn't like this scandal involves something small, as if it were one more peccadillo to be added to the list of Tom DeLay's complicated transgressions. This is a basic issue of life and death, of war and peace. Upwards of 100,000 people have died because George W. Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, and $200 billion has been funneled down that black hole."

So I ask one more time:  Where's the outrage?

 

 

UPDATES: Stem cell brouhaha; PGE idiocy

The scheduled vote on a Republican-sponsored bill allowing stem cell research on human embryos created in vitro has split the House Republican caucus like a dropped watermelon:

"A rare split appeared in the House GOP caucus when Weldon and others said some sponsors of the Castle-DeGette bill helped finance a poll by the Winston Group in the districts of fellow Republicans showing that opposing the bill might prove unpopular back home.

"The survey of 1,300 registered voters-- about 100 in each if 13 districts-- asked respondents for their views on embryonic stem cell research, according to the firm's spokeswoman, Amy Hopcian. Of those polled, 66 percent favored stem cell research, 27 percent opposed it and the rest were undecided.

"The bill's opponents and GOP leaders criticized the polling during two meetings on Wednesday, according to lawmakers and aides. The resentment even spilled onto the House floor, where Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., who opposes the bill, and Rep. Mark S. Kirk, R-Ill., who supports it, got into an argument."

It's all politics of course.  The extreme right wing of the Republican Party has to hold on to its religious-conservative base or its toast in the next election.  The extremists include the ethically-challenged Tom Delay and a small group of right-to-life doctors.
According to an article in The Hill, opponents of the bill are pulling out all the stops:

"DeLay said, 'I am adamantly opposed to the Castle bill. Every doctor we have on our side [of the aisle] is opposing the bill.'

"However, that is not true. Freshman Rep. Joe Schwarz (R-Mich.), a doctor, is one of the bill's most vocal proponents. His support illustrates the difficulties facing Republican backers of the Castle legislation.

"Schwarz, who represents a staunchly Republican district, faced stiff competition from five anti-abortion candidates during last summer's Republican primary. Right to Life, Club for Growth and the Chamber of Commerce each endorsed a different candidate, splintering the field and helping Schwarz win the nomination with 28 percent of the vote."

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Back to PGE and the Boyle/Oregonian attack on the Portland City Council for daring to upset the private enterprise status quo. 

Yesterday's editorial foolishly (and erroneously) linked the city council with the underfunded Portland Public Schools.  Everybody knows (or should know) that the school district is a separate political entity from the city, and has no statutory responsibility for funding schools.   Despite that, the city has, wisely, sent some money the school district's way.  And I've argued that the city and the district should work more cooperatively in the use of facilities, much like the county has with its health clinics and SUN schools program. 

But that has nothing to do with PGE.  As a matter of fact, since the schools use electricity too, the public takeover of PGE would be a financial boon to the school  district in the form of lower rates.

In an on-line commentary this morning, John DesCamp continues the misleading (and ignorant) "city responsible for schools" argument against the city takeover of PGE:

"Police, fire, roads, schools, adequate jail space, helping the less fortunate: these are all matters that desperately need the focused attention by the City of Portland."

And then this:

"When the City of Portland has shown that it can do a first-rate job of delivering...  effective and cost-efficient schools,... then it will be time to think about a city-operated electric utility."

Boyle's Oregonian

Apparently it's not enough that the Oregonian featured Tim Boyle's intemperate remarks in  a front page news story.  Today's edition includes an editorial attack on the City Council for its supposed "anti-business" agenda.

Forgive my incomprehension, but how is a plan to lower electrical rates for both residential and business customers anti-business?  And please explain to me why no major business organization, like the Portland Business Alliance where Boyle delivered his speech, has officially opposed the city's takeover of PGE.      

I guess that the fat cats who run PGE are opposed to public ownership.  After all, Peggy Fowler has benefited handsomely as CEO of the privately owned utility.  In 2003, when Enron owned the state's largest electrical utility, she probably made something in excess of a million dollars.   And the other executives who worked with Fowler made out like thieves too. 

Under public ownership, that's likely to change.  Unless of course the Oregonian manages to convince the public that their ownership and control of the electricity they're now forced to buy from a private monopoly, which disburses a large chunk of the money collected to out-of-state investors, is somehow not in their best interest.

The biggest beneficiaries of the lower rates that would accompany public ownership of PGE are the biggest industrial users of electricity, which just happen to be the biggest employers and taxpayers in the region.  I speak of course of Intel and the other high tech companies of the Silicon Forest. 

Does the Oregonian think that's bad business policy?  Or is it simply bad ideology?