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Naked bikers and other tales from the city

I kind of like the new Oregonian weekly magazine, In Portland.  Where else are you going to find stories about naked bike protesters, the planned completion of the Springwater Corridor bike trail, and tales of the good, the bad, and the ugly in Portland's "infill" residential development?  Fascinating stuff.  But I hope it didn't keep anyone from reading Steve Duin's equally fascinating column about the abysmal failure of the state legislature to pass any legislation of significance.

All four stories are related.  Let me explain how.  First, remember that back in June, Portland became the first municipality in the country to achieve a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, the main culprit in global warming.  I attributed that remarkable achievement to Portland's "visionary transportation policies" and its insistance on smart growth.  Smart growth encourages people to live near their places of work which, in turn, allows people to leave  their cars at home. 

At the same time, Portland has taken steps to become perhaps the most bicycle friendly city in the nation.  Unlike cars,  bicycles emit no carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gas.  I suspect that the connection of the Springwater Corridor to Milwaukie and points east to Gresham will further encourage people to bike to work.

Meanwhile, Duin's column spotlighted the apparent "prohibition" by the legislature of "spending any money to adopt tougher auto emission standards."  And the blame for that folly crosses party lines:

"The House Republicans fight for all the wrong things. The Senate Democrats fight for nothing. And the governor, more often than not, watches helplessly from the bleachers as the Legislature grows increasingly comfortable with its collective incompetence and its inability to pass anything of significance except a budget.

"While the Legislature's ineptitude is familiar, this display of willful negligence is remarkable. Vehicles produce one-third of the greenhouse emissions in Oregon, according to the Governor's Advisory Group on Global Warming, and those emissions pose an increasingly severe threat to the environment and the economy."

And what about those naked bikers?  They were protesting the Oregon Department of Transportation's refusal to provide a bike lane -- or wider sidewalk-- on the St. Johns Bridge.  ODOT is state agency.

That'll probably give Dwight Jaynes a chuckle. 

 

When will they ever learn?

As I've said, there is no military solution to the so-called "War on Terror."  Now, according to the New York Times, the military itself is beginning to say the same thing:

"But the Americans concede the growing sophistication of insurgent attacks and the insurgents' ability to replenish their ranks as fast as they are killed.

" 'We are capturing or killing a lot of insurgents,' said a senior Army intelligence officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make his assessments public. 'But they're being replaced quicker than we can interdict their operations. There is always another insurgent ready to step up and take charge.' "

And that's the problem with the "military solution" in a nutshell.  We can't kill 'em fast enough to weaken the insurgency.  So what are we doing there?  We should have learned the lessons of the limits of military power in Vietnam, but apparently George W. Bush wasn't paying much attention. 

Bob Herbert drives that point home in a recent column:

"I've always urged politicians to be careful what they wish for. The president got the war he wanted so badly. But he never understood an essential fact that Georges Clemenceau learned nearly a century ago - that 'it is easier to make war than to make peace.'

"So where are we, now that the real world has intervened? The military is spinning its wheels in the tragic and expensive quagmire of Iraq and there is no end to the conflict in sight."

Is Bush a "fascist'? Well, consider the evidence.

My passing reference to WalMart and "Bush-style fascism" in yesterday's post, based on my understanding of fascism as "the merger of government and corporate interests", drew a mild rebuke from a fellow blogger (see comments).

Was I out of line?  Am I just a wild-eyed, name-calling lefty?  I don't think so. Here's evidence in support of my contention from both the right and the left, from the past and the present.

In 1944, Vice-President Henry Wallace (a lefty) wrote this piece for the New York Times in which he defined a fascist as

"...one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends."

He went on to define an American fascist as

"...one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings."

I think a fair-minded person could quite easily describe both George W. Bush and the corporate juggernaut WalMart in those very terms.

Even anti-war conservatives see a rising threat of American fascism in the events since 9/11.  In his piece for the American Conservative, Scott McConnell cites Hoover Institute fellow Paul Craig Roberts, who warned of the “ 'brownshirting' of American conservatism", and libertarian Lew Rockwell, who wrote an article entitled  “The Reality of Red State Fascism":

"It is the dramatic shift of the red-state bourgeoisie from leave-us-alone libertarianism, manifested in the Congressional elections of 1994, to almost totalitarian statist nationalism. Whereas the conservative middle class once cheered the circumscribing of the federal government, it now celebrates power and adores the central state, particularly its military wing.”

And finally, although I could go on, the 14 characteristics common to fascist regimes from the Project for the Old American Century (a left-leaning site.)  Here are a few of the key characteristics, which bear striking resemblance to what's going on with the Bush Administration:

1. Powerful and continuing nationalism

    4.  Supremacy of the military

    6.  Controlled mass media  (thank God for the internet)

    7.  Obsession with national security

    9.  Corporate power is protected  (read WalMart!)

So am I wild-eyed and reckless?  You decide.

P.S.  Part of the problem with the use of fascist as a "pejorative" is the tendency to use the term loosely and imprecisely, as in "racist thug dictator",  or "Hitler", neither of which are apt characterizations of Bush and friends.  Although, ...

 

WalMart, fascism, and the next general meeting in Sellwood

"Just last month, the Supreme Court helped the company clear a hurdle that might have gotten in the way of that growth by ruling that the government can take your property to make way for a new Wal-Mart or Home Depot. Some conservative commentators tried to paint the court's action as a 'liberal' decision. The hell it is. It is a pro-corporate decision. It benefits big business. And just in case you haven't been paying attention, big business and big government have merged under President Bush."

That's from an article about WalMart entitled "Arkansas' Real Welfare Queen" and a clever way to remind all you neighborhood activists that the next general meeting of Neighbors Against Sellwood/Ardenwald Walmart is this Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m. at the SMILE station located just south of Tacoma on 13th Avenue in Sellwood.

That quote from the article reeks of Bush-style fascism (the perfect merger of government and business) but the real thrust of the article is about WalMart sponging off public health programs because its employee health care benefits are so lousy.  It's  especially bad in Georgia, where WalMart has "... 93 Wal-Mart Supercenters, 19 regular-sized Wal-Marts, 21 Sam's Clubs and nine distribution centers."

Nobody (well virtually nobody) in Sellwood, Ardenwald, Brooklyn, Woodstock, and even Eastmoreland wants a WalMart down on McLoughlin.  The effort to stop it is well under way, but we can use all the help we can get.  WalMart, after all, is the biggest corporation in the world, and has lots and lots of money.  And power.

Dwight Jaynes IS an idiot!

I once called Dwight Jaynes an idiot (and a fool).  Today's sports column by the "Executive Editor" of the Tribune convinces me I was right. 

Here's a guy who is an unabashed fan of professional wrestling, hates soccer, loves professional hockey (it allows fighting), disdains Olympic hockey (it doesn't), and has repeatedly called Portland a "bush league" town because it doesn't have a professional baseball team.  That same guy today questions whether cycling is really a "sport":

"Speaking of such things, I’m not even sure cycling is a sport — it’s simply the way Portlanders travel to work. And, of course, it’s also the reason a lot of our streets in Portland are two lanes wide instead of four lanes wide."

Dwight Jaynes IS an idiot!

It pains me to say it because Dwight Jaynes is the product of the same public high school --Cleveland High -- that I attended.  And my two kids attended.  And my two brothers and sister.  In fact, he was in the same class as my younger brother, a year behind me. 

I probably would blow off Jaynes' misguided opinions about sports-- I'm a sports fan, he's a sports fan, we disagree about which sports are worth watching, yadda, yaddda, yadda -- if he would stick to sports,  and not insist on using his column as a political soapbox to  criticize local social policies and take cheap shots at Portland's civic leaders (kind of like Blogger Jack, but without the humor and sophistication.)

Today's column (bicycle lanes) is a case in point. Here's an example from an earlier post (scroll down):

"This is the second column Dwight Jaynes has written in the last week showcasing the supposed 'idiocy' of local political leaders for considering converting the Coliseum into what he called, in last week's column,  a 'recreation center on steroids':

" 'This whole concept is so typically Portland. This is what passes for 'vision' here — the tunnel vision that comes from being naive enough to think that to foster business is to do something evil. Instead, we build a cool esplanade, but I have to watch a punk stick a needle in his arm as I walk along it near the Steel Bridge. We build a waterfront park and then let the homeless use it as a public bedroom and bathroom.' "

And another example in which Jaynes blithely advocates casino gambling in Portland as a tradeoff for a baseball stadium:

"I forgot to mention that Jaynes also castigated our local pols for not accepting a Native American gambling casino in exchange for a new baseball stadium.  ...  Talk about selling your soul to the devil. I've known many people with gambling addictions, and it's not a pretty sight. State sponsored gambling -- the Oregon Lottery-- is an invisible tax on, mainly, the poor. Indian gambling is worse. None of the money those casinos make is returned to the state as tax revenue."

Steve Duin started as sports columnist over at the O.  Now he writes political columns,  usually thoughtful and well-researched. 

Maybe Jaynes should consider a similar path.  Then we'd see if he could back up his cheap bluster with some substance.

Read carefully

If you carefully read the NewYork Times story on the latest in the Valerie Plame leak investigation (carried on the second page of the Oregonian yesterday), one fact clearly stands out:  Karl Rove, the political advisor to the President, had a hand in crafting CIA Director George Tenet's explanation/apology to the American people for allowing Bush to utter the "sixteen infamous words" in his State of the Union speech about Saddam Hussein's attempt to obtain uranium "yellowcake" from Niger.

How can that possibly be?  Didn't George W. Bush claim that the war in Iraq was about national security?  And isn't Karl Rove, as political advisor, paid to help George W. Bush win elections?  Or has Karl Rove been elevated to a position in which he advises the President on national security matters?

If the answer to the first two questions is yes, and the answer to the last is no, then the only logical conclusion, assuming the veracity of the Times story, is this:  the national security of the United States is dependent on the continued Presidency of George W. Bush.  In other words, national security equals the political security of the President. 

It's no surprise to critics of the Bush Presidency that politics, meaning the relection of the President and like-minded Republicans, trumps everything else, including the well-being of the average American citizen.  What is surprising is that Bush and friends have been able to get away with it, despite continual  revelations of politics driving  every administration policy, from the war in Iraq to global warming.  If the Downing Street Memo hasn't been accepted as the "smoking gun" of Bush mendacity in the run-up to the war in Iraq, and if news stories about campaign contributers to Bush  writing environmental regulations hasn't captured the attention of voters, then maybe this Times story about political hack Karl Rove telling George Tenet what to say will convince Americans to scream, finally, "Enough is enough!"

This occurred to me before I read Josh Marshall's post on the same topic.  Although Josh Marshall chooses his word more carefully than I do, he reaches substantially the same conclusion:

"This tells us a few things. 

"One, the seamless (or perhaps 'seamy', take your pick) integration of the political and national security staffs at the White House in organizing the push back against Joe Wilson and the controversy he'd ignited about the White House's use of phoney intelligence about an Iraqi nuclear weapons program."

The evidence continues to mount against the integrity and honesty of Bush.   I fear, however, that it will take more than a few "voices in the wilderness" ( meaning bloggers) to drive that home to the American people.

 

 

Consider the source

Blogger Jack must be positively giddy with schadenfreude that Enron has spoiled "Opie's" --that's Erik Sten in Jackspeak-- grand plans for a public power coup here in the People's Republic of Portland.  That, and the recent rankings from Money Magazine and Forbes/CNN that make Portland seem about as desirable a place to live as Bakersfield, and more overpriced than San Francisco.

Jack's not alone.  The lesser known Bailie, a frequent commenter on blogs and Blue Oregon, is undoubtedly thrilled to find more evidence that we live in an overtaxed, overgoverned,  and underserved community.  In her most recent comment on Blue Oregon, Bailie claimed that the Clinton economic boom, hailed by liberals for creating jobs and budget surpluses, was really the "greatest bubble in the economic history of the world".  The bubble and its underlying causes (high taxes, I'm guessing)  brought the country perilously close to "imminent meltdown."  Fortunately, Bush came along to save the day with his "necessary" tax cuts.

I frankly put little stock in these ubiquitous magazine rankings, especially from magazines like Money and Forbes with their built-in pro-business, anti-tax, and generally anti government biases.  As for Enron stiffing Portland, what do you expect from a corporation built on fraud, theft, and corruption?

Before you get too carried away, Jack and Bailie, consider the source. 

Gun nuts storm Blue Oregon

Head on over to Blue Oregon-- a purportedly progressive website-- and listen in to the comments on Steve Bucknum's post about the Democratic Party of Oregon officially becoming a staunch second amendment party by adopting a pro-gun platform.  If you're like me, the post and the comments may well turn you "Green" with nausea.

The DPO has jumped gleefully into the arms of the "Guns and Ammo" crowd by passing a resolution to "recognize and support the right to keep and bear arms."  The Democratic Party, in other words, has officially accepted the gun lobby's interpretation of the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a similar provision in Oregon's Constitution.  As a result, says Bucknum, no more false anti-gun labels will be hung on Democrats running for office in rural Oregon.  And just maybe, those  "few individual Democrats who speak for themselves and not the Party that say all kinds of crazy things...", like Ginny Burdick who doesn't want concealed weapons on school property, will decide not to run again.

For the record, the second amendment says this (with syntax adjusted for the modern reader):

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed [because] a well regulated militia [is] necessary to the security of a free state." 

Court battles over whether that translates to an individual right have gone on for a century and a half.  Although the gun lobby's "individual right" interpretation may currently be in the legal ascendence, there should be no argument about whether any such rights are inviolable.  As the writer of the website "A Case for Gun Control" points out,

"First, it important to note that no right is absolute, even those supposedly granted by God and guaranteed in the Bill of Rights." .....

"If the right to own a gun interferes with public safety, that right can morally be abridged, in order to protect public safety."

I'm a registered Democrat who believes that guns are manufactured for one purpose - to kill other living creatures. I don't hunt, and I don't oppose hunting on moral grounds, but I am a firm proponent of gun control for weapons that aren't normally used for hunting.  That would include handguns.  Handguns are manufactured for the express purpose of killing other human beings.  I believe that the sale and manufacture of handguns in this country should be outlawed.  To those who argue that handguns can be used for recreational target practice, I ask: Practice for what? 

The epidemic use and ownership of handguns in America is a clear threat to public safety.  If "bearing" handguns is indeed a Constitutional right (by my reading of the second amendment, it is not), it is certainly a right that can be "abridged" to promote the safety and welfare of American citizens.

If that positon makes me an anti-gun Democrat, so be it.  Hell, I voted Green in 2000, and I can vote Green again.

Is Grover Norquist the true architect of the war in Iraq?

When I wrote in my last post that the feds are wasting billions of dollars on huge defense outlays, including an unnecessary (and ineffective) war in Iraq, I hadn't come across this report from the Congressional Budget Office by way of the San Francisco Chronicle.  It makes me look prescient.

It predicts that the cost of the war in Iraq may exceed the cost of the war in Vietnam.  Yes, you read that correctly.  The Vietnam War cost about $600 billion in today's  dollars.  The cost of the war in Iraq alone could exceed $700 billion. In other words, since we're paying for the war with borrowed money, Bush's misguided adventure in Iraq could bankrupt the country. 

The only person who might be pleased with that prospect is Grover Norquist, the unofficial ultra-conservative advisor to the Bush Administration who famously said that he wants to shrink government to a size small enough to "drown in a bathtub."  The reckless deficit spending required to support the war effort, in combination with massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, will cripple the ability of the federal government to deal with much else.   Government functions may indeed shrink as a result.

According to the article, conservatives, libertarians, moderate Republicans, and pro-war Democrats are alarmed at the rapidly escalating costs of the war.  So is former CIA agent and author Michael Scheuer:

" 'Osama (bin Laden) doesn't have to win; he will just bleed us to death,' said Michael Scheuer, a former counterterrorism official at the CIA who led the pursuit of bin Laden and recently retired after writing two books critical of the Clinton and Bush administrations. 'He's well on his way to doing it.' "

James Jay Carafano of the Heritage Institute, the conservative think tank that supports all things Bush, seems to agree:

"He added that the war itself increasingly looks like a bad investment: 'I think there is a point of diminishing returns in Iraq. There is a point where you're just throwing money at the problem. Quite frankly, I think we're at the tipping point.' "

There's always the posibility that this is the ultimate Bush scam:  If we bankrupt the government, the only alternative is to privatize all government functions.  And isn't this what the Bush Administration is really all about?

Somebody ought to check the White House phone and e-mail records to see how much influence Grover Norquist actually does have in formulating government policy.

Shaming teachers

That's how Joe Rodriguez, my former principal in Hillsboro (and former district superintendent), responds to the "sensational" Oregonian piece on teacher benefits and their deleterious effects on public school funding:

"This simplistic chastisement masks the real culprit that severely limits school districts' ability to reduce class sizes and maintain art, music and other programs."

The "real culprit" is inadequate state funding.  As a former superintendent, he's in a position to know.  He points out that PERS benefits are only part of the problem, one that's already been substantially dealt with:

"... the increase of employer costs to 17 percent applies only to Tiers 1 and 2 PERS members who represent older employees who will become a smaller percentage of the workforce over the years ahead. Tier 3 employees and all new hires will soon become the majority of employees and their cost to employers will remain fixed at 8 percent. Also, many school districts have bonded to 'buy down' the PERS rate increase, thereby reducing some, but not all of the increase."

He also spotlights rising health care costs.  As I have said, those costs, if not contained, will eventually dwarf  pension benefits as the real obstacle to adequately funding public education.

Joe Rodriguez advocates a statewide healthcare pool to lower rates.  There we disagree.  The only real solution to the health care problem is national single-payer insurance.  Why?  It's pretty clear, except to those blinded by free market ideology.

First, our current employer-based system is hit and miss.  Over 40 million Americans have  no health insurance whatsoever, and millions of others are grossly uninsured.

Second, the polyglot for-profit system of private insurance companies, HMOs, and hospital-based care is both confusing and needlessly expensive.  The administrative overhead of Medicare runs about five percent. The administrative expenses of private health care plans are three to five times as great. 

Third, the federal government wastes hundreds of billions of dollars on unnecessary military programs and unnecessary wars.  We should put that money to good use insuring the health and welfare of American citizens. 

Lastly, health care is a basic right.  So says the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 25

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

The first necessary step in implementing national health care is ridding the nation of the ideologues in the White House.  Hopefully that process will start in 2006.