Oregon AFL-CIO head honcho (and Blue Oregon columnist) Tim Nesbitt was nothing less than scintillating on this morning's Al Franken Show in Portland. He recounted the labor-led initiative to raise Oregon's minimum wage in 2002, and then decisively debunked Bush's Social Security reform scheme with an authoritative and data rich analysis of how the SS trust fund will continue to accumulate huge surpluses until 2017.
Or it would have if Bush hadn't looted the fund to pay for other federal "priorities", like massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. What's left, according to Bush, are a pile of worthless IOU's, also known as Treasury Bonds, which as Nesbitt pointed out are backed by the "full faith and credit" of the U.S. government. In a brilliant theatrical gesture, he actually pulled a T- Bill out and read, verbatim, its guarantee.
I said in an earlier post that most initiative measures passed in Oregon have negative effects, like Measure 5, or Measure 37. I forgot about the minimum wage initiative, and for that I apologize.
Speaking of Measure 5, Willamette Week's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Nigel Jaquiss was also on the show. He did well in describing the legacy of Neil Goldschmidt as Portland Mayor, Oregon Governor, and all around power broker. That legacy played a large role in luring Jaquiss here from the East Coast.
He was less forthcoming, however, about Willamette Week's role in the passage of Measure 5, which Jaquiss blamed, in response to Franken's question, for the state's inability to adequately fund public education. Willamette Week, remember, endorsed Measure 5, a fact Jaquiss has to be well aware of, even if he wasn't on the editorial board making the endorsement.
He was on the e-board that endorsed an anti-tax, anti-public school candidate for school board back in 2003. I know, because I was there.
Ironically, given that Jaquiss won his Pulitzer for outing Goldschmidt, the endorsement article he had a hand in writing said this about the field of 22 candidates running for school board:
"Frankly, the roster of 22 candidates for the four vacant school-board seats is pretty minor-league. With this rare opportunity to reshape the seven-member nonpartisan board, we hoped for more talent. In fact, when the process began, there were hopes that the field of candidates would include two former governors (Barbara Roberts and Neil Goldschmidt) and a former president of Reed College (Paul Bragdon)."
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