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Oregon should regain its maximum minimum wage

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I don’t know about you, but it goads me that Washington state’s minimum wage is always a few cents higher than ours in Oregon. Every year, we of the Upper Left Edge offer Americans the highest of the lowest wages, but we’ve been second every year since 2001.

That’s not how it was supposed to be. After all, we got there first. In 1996, Oregon voters passed Measure 36, raising our minimum wage (over three years) to $6.50.

When civilization did not collapse beneath them, Washington followed our (ahem) lead in 1998 with Initiative 688, which increased their minimum wage to $6.50 over two years, but also added a cost-of-living adjustment based on the federal Consumer Price Index.

Not to be outdone, Oregon followed in 2002 with another ballot initiative, Measure 25, which decreed another statewide increase — this time to $6.90 and yes, indexed to the Consumer Price Index for every year after 2003.

But by then it was too late. Our $6.90 in 2003 was bettered by Washington’s inflation-adjusted $7.01. In 2015, Washington pays a minimum of $9.47, compared to our minimum of $9.25. That gap will only widen with time, so something must be done.

Unions and activists are pushing cities toward $15. It rolls off the tongue and fits on a bumper sticker. President Obama has attached his influence to $10.10, but Rahm Emanuel can tell you from personal experience that the president of the United States wields less power on matters such as these than most big city mayors. Mayor Emanuel has raised Chicago’s minimum to $10, on its way to $13 by 2019.

Democratic legislators in Salem seem to like $13.50, but others find something around $12 to be more palatable. Every Democrat seems able to agree that the minimum wage should be more. How much more and how quickly we get there are the only points of debate.

I don’t trust the folks who tell us $15 is correct, because I have an innate suspicion of round numbers. To me they convey a casual attitude — especially about money — that is unbecoming when mixed with police powers. Give me a number that uses all the available digits if you want me to believe you paid attention to details.

Besides, the $15 figure came from our maximum-minimum competitors to the north. After an attempt to unionize airline workers was foiled at Seattle’s Sea-Tac airport, activists put the $15 minimum on the ballot in the airport’s host city. It was easy to remember, the initiative passed, and the number stuck.

Now it’s become shorthand for the preferred remedy for income inequality. Democrats are promising it will become a central plank in their presidential platform. It won’t go away unless something better comes along.

The United States Census Bureau calculates the federal poverty level every year. Its figures are used for federal budgets, block grants, and a host of other initiatives, both public and private. They calculate that an American family of four living on $24,250 or less is officially poor. As an hourly wage, that comes to $11.66.

We want our minimum to be above any line labeled as poverty, so let’s add 10 percent to declare a non-poor minimum wage of $12.82 for 2015. That’s not a bumper sticker number; it’s a “we did our homework” number.

Now how do we get there from Oregon’s current rate of $9.25? Slowly, but certainly. Good business owners can adapt to almost any change, if they have time to make adjustments.

The safest way to bring Oregon’s minimum up to 110 percent of the national poverty level would be to double or triple the CPI cost-of-living increases every year until we reach it. But the shrewdest way would be to increase the minimum wage at the same rate each year as the nation’s top earners.

If business owners and their peers are seeing their wages increase by double digits each year, it will be difficult for them to insist their lowest paid workers shouldn’t see their benefits increase at the same rate. Quickly and quietly, Oregon can become first again.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.


Overcloud Economy May Explain Political Campaign

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We’re all familiar with the underground economy. Favors or services are exchanged without money or formal records, skirting taxes or other liabilities. There’s another hidden economy operating above us, where favors are swapped but tracks are not left. Just for symmetry’s sake, let’s call it the overcloud economy.

You wouldn’t believe how often the overcloud economy shapes seating charts at Washington’s elite events. A ticket to a presidential inauguration cannot be bought, but the best seats are being procured using this invisible economy. You want a front-row seat for a Supreme Court session or a private nighttime tour of the Capitol building? You need somebody there who owes you a favor.

This better than anything else may explain why Lane County Commissioner Faye Stewart has agreed to run for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Ron Wyden. Nobody expects Stewart to beat Oregon’s senior senator, but that may not be the goal.

The 2016 election could harness a wave of voter discontent that leaves no incumbent safe, but even Stewart himself doesn’t consider that scenario very likely. Wyden has made a name for himself by crossing the partisan aisle and crafting innovative solutions. His support is anchored in Portland, where Stewart is almost entirely unknown.

An outsized ego can sometimes lure a politician into a delusional campaign, but anyone who has ever spent five minutes with Stewart knows he doesn’t fit that profile. And anyone who’s ever spent five minutes with Wyden knows that he won’t go down without a fight. So what’s in it for Stewart? Nobody knows, but I can make some guesses.

U.S. Rep. Greg Walden is charged with recruiting Republicans across the country to run and raise money, so he may have called in a favor from Stewart.

We know Stewart cares about his community. He has seen first hand what the declining timber payments have wrought over the last decade. Walden may have promised some Republican-sponsored legislation that will help balance the county’s books in some more sustainable fashion than Democrats have been able to offer.

Let’s stop for a moment and remind ourselves of a new but increasingly self-evident truth. Elections — especially in presidential election years — have become a pursuit of dollars as much as votes. Dollars are not contained into their states or Congressional districts of origin. Money is fungible, but still limited.

Every dollar Wyden raises to keep his seat is one less dollar that can be spent on more competitive races. Remember how the Oregon Ducks often used De’Anthony Thomas as a decoy to frustrate opposing defenses? The best defender would cover him, while the Ducks attacked the other ten players on the other side of the field.

In the same way, Stewart can earn favors from the Republican party simply by forcing Wyden’s campaign to raise and spend money that could otherwise have been directed elsewhere.

If a Republican wins the White House, that brings with it hundreds of political appointments. These are virtual chits in the overcloud economy. Stewart wouldn’t enjoy being the ambassador to Morocco, but he might covet a position with the U.S. Forestry Dept. or the Bureau of Land Management, where he could help shape a new national timber policy.

Oregon roots don’t go deeper than Stewart’s, so you can bet any favors he’s earning will be cashed close to home. Whatever future political ambitions he may have will be made easier if he has statewide name recognition and essential Portland fundraising connections. Walden can make those important introductions.

Stewart and dozens of others are wondering how much longer U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio will continue to endure the nation’s longest business commute. When he retires, there will be a scramble in both parties for what will certainly be a competitive race.

Anyone who has run a statewide campaign will have some advantages when that moment comes. That will give Stewart more stature, even if he has to lose a race to get it.

You never can be sure how much anything is really worth in the overcloud economy, but I’ve heard the nighttime Capitol tour is really cool.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

Round Numbers Make Bad Public Policy

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Liberal politicians locally and across the country are racing to hike their minimum wage to $15. Oregon requires all employers to pay the second highest minimum wage in the country, but the same law prohibits any Oregon county or city from setting its own minimum wage above the state’s current $9.25.

Determined to join the Fight for 15 movement, Eugene City Council is considering a $15 minimum for all its own employees and for the employees of any vendor doing business with the city. A state initiative is getting organized to hike Oregon’s minimum to $15.

Fifteen is not the correct number and I’ll tell you why.

Round numbers convey a casual attitude about money that is unbecoming when mixed with police powers. If you’re opening a classy restaurant, you can tell your customers that you don’t care about pennies by pricing your entrees at whole-dollar amounts.

The biggest difference between “$20” and “$19.99” is not the penny — it’s the attitude. Wal-Mart won price-conscious shoppers’ allegiance by breaking from retailers’ 99-cent convention and using every digit. A price like $8.74 connotes that they are saving every penny they can on their customers’ behalf — $9.00 does the opposite.

Fifteen-zero-zero succeeds as a slogan for the same reason it fails as public policy. It’s too simple. Give me a number that uses all available digits if you want me to believe you paid attention to details.

Besides, the $15 figure came from our maximum-minimum competitors to the north. After an attempt to unionize airline support vendors was foiled at Seattle’s Sea-Tac airport, activists put the $15 minimum on the ballot in the airport’s host city. It was easy to remember, the initiative passed, and the number stuck.

I don’t know about you, but it goads me that Washington state’s minimum wage is always a few cents higher than ours in Oregon. Every year, we of the Upper Left Edge offer Americans the highest of lowest wages, but we’ve been second every year since 2001.

That’s not how it was supposed to be. After all, we got there first.

In 1996, Oregon voters passed Measure 36, raising our minimum wage (over three years) to $6.50. When our northern neighbors saw that civilization did not collapse beneath them, Washington followed our (ahem) lead in 1998 with Initiative 688, which increased their minimum wage to $6.50 over two years, but also added a cost-of-living adjustment based on the federal Consumer Price Index.

Not to be outdone, Oregon followed in 2002 with another ballot initiative, Measure 25, which decreed another statewide increase — this time to $6.90 and yes, this new minimum was indexed to the Consumer Price Index for every year after 2003.

But by then it was too late. Our $6.90 in 2003 was bettered by Washington’s inflation-adjusted $7.01. In 2015, Washington pays a minimum of $9.47, compared to our paltry minimum of $9.25. That gap will only widen with time, so something must be done if we want our state’s economic ladder to reclaim the nation’s highest lowest rung.

Oregon can show the nation a better way, and Eugene City Council can nudge Salem legislators in the right direction by using a number that has been shaping public policy for decades. We want every member of our full-time workforce to be not-poor, so we should simply use the numbers that are already available.

The United States Census Bureau calculates the federal poverty level every September for the next calendar year. Its figures are used for federal budgets, block grants, and a host of other initiatives, both public and private. It calculates that an American family of four living for a year on $24,250 or less is officially poor. As an hourly wage, that comes to $11.66.

We want our minimum to be above any line labeled as poverty, so let’s add 20 percent. Consider it like a fair restaurant tip. Eugene, and then Oregon, can declare the current non-poor minimum hourly wage to be $13.99. That’s not a bumper sticker number. It’s a “we did our homework” number.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

Explaining Oregon

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We all have friends who don’t understand Oregon. Most of us know lots of people who have never been to Oregon. Many have to use a process of elimination to find Oregon on a map. (“Oregon — it’s that space between California and Washington!”)

We’re not complaining. Part of the Oregon Mystique can only be attributed to being left alone by the rest of the country. Except for those traveling longitudinally — birds, mostly — we’re happy not being on the way to wherever it is they’re going.

Look at the interstate highway map. Once you get to junctions in Denver, Salt Lake City, or Butte, Montana, the system will point you south to Sacramento or north to Seattle. Only I-84 brings hurried easterners just barely into Oregon, skirting the state’s northern edge.

To the 45 states that don’t touch the Pacific Ocean, we’re the “you can’t get there from here” state. Good for us.

Unlike Iowa and New Hampshire, we have no interest in national election headlines. Oregon’s primary won’t be until May 17, but even then, television networks won’t send their camera crews here.

What would be they show on the news? People mailing letters that may or may not include their ballots? Couples sitting in their kitchens looking for blue or black pens? (“Honey, did you check the drawer near where there used to be a phone? And sweetheart, did you notice there’s a cameraman in our bushes?”)

No, we don’t work at getting the nation’s attention. People don’t know what to think about us, so usually they think nothing at all about us — and we’re fine with that.

But our invisibility cloak has been slipping lately.

Skip the mass shooting headlines. Those can happen anywhere — and, unfortunately, they do. Thurston in 1998, Roseburg in 2015 — maybe it was just our turn again. Those weren’t Oregon stories. They were gun stories.

But seeing a bunch of publicity-seeking ranchers commandeer a couple of buildings in the middle of sagebrush country south of Burns, that has Oregon written all over it.

We can tell people that the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is nowhere near Rancho Rajneesh, but all they’ll hear is “nowhere near,” because that’s what Oregon means to them.

The last time Oregon led the nightly news with anything that wasn’t a natural disaster, it was in the mid-1980s, when the Rajneeshees, a religious cult terrorized eastern Oregon by plotting assassinations, poisoning salad bars, and even running for city council seats.

People who move past the headlines know the Bundy-Hammond cabal are not Oregonians, but those Marlboro Country vistas they keep showing on the news — those are unmistakably Oregon. People watching can only assume from what they see that we tolerate crazy here because there’s plenty of room to stay out of its way.

Yes, but!

There’s dissonance, cognitive or otherwise., to be addressed. Last night began the sixth season of IFC’s cult-cable hit “Portlandia,” featuring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, playing a cast of idiosyncratic urban characters.

So, “Which is the real Oregon?” America wants to know. The answer is important. Both.

There are not two Oregons. There’s only one Oregon. It contains urban and rural and very little in between. Other places allow them to melt from one to the other, separated by the shapeless liquid of suburbia.

Not here. We roll with full-scale rural, until we don’t — then it’s urban. We build cities that don’t peter out — they stop, wherever the line was drawn. Country mice and city mice are neighbors here, cheek to jowl.

Ranchers who look just like the Bundys keep a list of things they need and make regular provision runs into the nearest city. (Real Oregonians don’t plead for French vanilla creamer on Youtube.)

Hipsters cavort across our cities, just like on “Portlandia” — until they’ve had enough of people just like them and they need some time away. Then they grab a tent and head for the hills.

Each group crosses paths with the other. They might smile and nod as they pass one another, knowing we’ve got something here that no one else understands.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

Does Kitzhaber Like Trump’s Approach?

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Now that former Oregon governor John Kitzhaber has ended his self-imposed exile from public life, I wonder what he thinks about Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. It’s a serious question.

Kitzhaber told Oregon Public Broadcasting last week, “I am looking for a way to contribute. I’m also trying to figure out what my career path from a financial standpoint is going to be. And as I said, I do think that will involve some consulting.”

As political consultants go, few have done as much or pondered as deeply how politics is currently practiced. Kitzhaber found plenty not to like about modern American politics. He might appreciate certain ways that the Republican frontrunner has defied conventional wisdom.

As a lifelong Democratic policy wonk, Kitzhaber probably abhors Trump’s position on almost every issue. But Trump’s refusal to churn out position papers might be useful to Kitzhaber’s nascent consultancy business.

When Kitzhaber left politics the first time in 2003, he despaired publicly that Oregon had become ungovernable. But he went on to explain why and how governance had become difficult, if not impossible. Those observations during his hiatus from elected office deserve attention today.

Here’s how he put it in a mid-2008 blog posting: “We cannot solve complex problems like the crisis in the U.S. health care system through the kind of polarized ‘transactional’ politics which dominate our current political system. These problems are about us and they cannot be solved unless we do it together; unless we can create new tools and a new space in which we can engage one another as citizens, in which we can agree on how to move forward as a community.”

His musings often came back to that word, “transactional.” As a doctor-turned-politician, he may have been the first to accurately diagnose the fever that has been rampaging through our body politic. Maybe that fever is about to break.

American poet Robert Frost despaired for culture at the dawn of the television age when he wrote, “Anymore, people don’t think; they vote.” If poet-philosopher Kitzhaber wanted a brochure headline for his consultancy business, he could update Frost’s thinking for the post-television age: “Anymore, people don’t vote; they shop.”

Voters go to the polls to get what they believe is — or should be — theirs. They don’t concern themselves with what might help others, or how to move forward as a community. They want to claim their piece — not of the puzzle, but of the pie.

Politicians used to travel with a copy of the Constitution in their pockets, a reminder of their pledge to guard the greater good. Today they may as well carry around a shopping list of government goodies that voters can enjoy but somehow not pay for.

Election campaigns focus more and more heavily on the specific benefits to be delivered to a carefully defined audience. Free college is highlighted for one group, protected Medicare to another, better jobs or more affordable housing to others. What other exercise of salesmanship can tailor its pitch and tabulate its results with such precision?

Kitzhaber believed not very long ago — and maybe he still does — that political leadership cannot be reduced to consumer concierge. An effective campaign that doesn’t offer endless promises sets the stage for a governing politic that can be less transactional.

Content and character notwithstanding, Trump’s campaign seems to be accomplishing some of that. He runs his campaign rallies with the tone and tempo of a faith healer, except the benefits he offers in return for devotion are purposely vague. Yes, there’s a wall, but it’s not like he’s promising his supporters’ names engraved on each brick.

Whatever Trump is offering his followers, it’s more abstract than the transactional politics that otherwise dominates the scene. Trump proves you can win votes with few tangible promises.

If bigotry and xenophobia can be inflamed among the electorate, why not bravery and comity? Those traits may not be gurgling just below the surface of our citizenry, but they’re in there somewhere.

Freed from transactional politics, a good leader could tap that well of our better selves, coached by a good consultant.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

Pranking the Polls

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Published in the Register-Guard on April 1, 2016

You may have read recently about long lines of people waiting to vote. It strikes us in Oregon as unthinkable, both morally and logically, to wait in line for five hours to cast our yeas and nays. That was the price of citizenship some paid last month during Arizona’s presidential primary.

Voting is important, but it needn’t be arduous. Oregon voters proved that in 1998, when we passed a ballot measure directing all elections to be conducted by mail. We’re leading the way again this year, with the nation’s first motor-voter law. Oregon became the first state in the nation to implement automatic voter registration at the DMV.

Oregon is a respected leader in expanding access to voting. Unfortunately, many states are moving in the opposite direction. Poll taxes and literacy tests are no longer legal, but new barriers to voting are being dreamed up to take their place.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 21 states have put new voting restrictions into place since the 2010 election. These include strict new voter ID requirements, shortened early voting periods, the elimination of same-day registration, and fewer polling stations. In almost every instance, the new rules were enacted by Republican legislative majorities and/or Republican governors.

In Oregon, we can sit idly by and watch, waiting for our ballots to arrive in the mail so we can fulfill our civic duty without taking off our slippers. But today is April Fools’ Day and we have another reputation to protect. How might Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters have reacted to these anti-democratic initiatives in other states?

Celebrating April Fools’ Day during an election year poses special challenges. Making crank phone calls to strangers, posting embarrassing messages on neighbors’ front lawns, or ringing doorbells and running — these forms of childish mischief could be mistaken for political campaigning.

I needed help. So I called my favorite juggler and street performer to hatch a swing-state prank for November. Rhys Thomas lives in Portland now, but he grew up in Crow. His stepfather was a chief firefighter in rural Lane County. Thomas returns to the Willamette Valley often to visit cousins or to perform his Jugglemania act at the Oregon Country Fair.

Looking those long lines of voters in Arizona, Thomas saw two things. “It’s a farce,” Thomas told me, “and I know something about farces.” But then he saw something else, something more enticing — a captive audience.

Could Oregon export a small army of buskers to key precincts in swing states, where voting might require standing around for hours? We couldn’t make their lines move faster, but we could make the wait more enjoyable! What if clowns could make those long lines into impromptu street parties?

It would attract TV cameras, quickly becoming the talk of the town. A few extra people might show up to vote, with many fewer leaving in frustration. That, in turn, would make some powerful people very unhappy, which is exactly what a good prank should do.

Political speech is strictly forbidden near polling places, but that won’t be a problem. In fact, it could make it all the more fun. “I have a bit that involves a combover,” Thomas offered. “Would that be political speech?” Watching the regulators trying to regulate could easily become part of the show. Can you find the clown in this picture?

“People appreciate having someone to laugh with, instead of just at. A larger audience has a more participatory dynamic,” according to Thomas — it’s just more fun for everyone.

Thomas estimated he could round up several dozen performers. All we need is an eccentric billionaire with a SuperPAC, who would be willing to underwrite travel expenses. A quick trip in November to mostly southern states, performing for people who are stuck in line for hours on end — that doesn’t sound like a tough sell. “Would it be a problem if some of the performers were from Canada?” Thomas asked.

Then he answered his own question, “Nah, that might be good. Depending on how the election turns out, people might be glad to know somebody in Canada.”

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

Do We Elect Trustees or Delegates?

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Republican delegates sent from Oregon to the national party’s summer convention in Cleveland will have less flexibility than most of their colleagues. Those arriving from Pennsylvania will have the most. Looking closely at how the states’ delegate rules differ opens a window into their histories.

Most delegates in Cleveland are bound by their state to honor their pledge on the first ballot. If they were sent by the people to vote for Trump, that obligation usually expires after the first ballots are counted. After that, they can vote for anyone they choose.

Delegates sent from Oregon are bound to their pledge for longer — until the third ballot. Pennsylvanians are barely bound at all. This distinction echoes a controversy that began in Philadelphia in 1787 at the beginning of the Constitutional Convention.

The first question debated inside the Pennsylvania State House was whether its 55 participants should consider themselves delegates or trustees. Some believed themselves to be trustees, bound by honor to vote in every matter as the majority of their constituents would vote.

John Adams in particular insisted this was not only unworkable, but also dishonorable. The trust of the people is essential for governance, but it couldn’t be separated from an additional trust. The trust between representatives would be built over time. And often, over beer. The constituents would have their opportunity to voice their displeasure at the next election. But during deliberations with legislating colleagues, each leader should be allowed — even encouraged — to follow their conscience.

A close reading of the United States Constitution reveals a deep skepticism about “the turbulence and follies of democracy.” Only white, male landowners were given the vote. Their votes were counted directly only for the House of Representatives. The Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court were each given insulation from the will of the people.

Once the Constitution was completed and signed, a woman at the door asked Benjamin Franklin what sort of government he and his colleagues had given the young country. Franklin responded, “A republic, ma’am, if you can keep it.” (Franklin had not yet reached the City Tavern across the street, so he may have betrayed a particular impatience.)

Keeping a republic has not been easy. Secession has been contemplated. Civil war has been endured. But the republic’s greatest threat may be the one most vividly imagined at its start. The final disunity of the states of America may come from direct democracy.

Over the years, America has become more democratic, but with less of the original worries that democratic innovation could go too far. The last peep of that concern may have come a century ago, when a New Yorker visited Oregon.

After losing a race for governor, Frederick M. Davenport took time off from pursuing political office to travel to Oregon, which by that time had gained a reputation as an incubator for direct democracy. He described Oregon as “the native haunt of direct democracy” for the weekly New York magazine “The Outlook” in 1915. He went on:

“A genuine and efficient democracy must have two elements: responsible and representative leadership and the final lodgment of control over that leadership in the instinct, the common sense, and the conscience of the whole people. The perplexities of government and progress should be worked out by responsible representatives.

The characteristic of direct democracy is its deep-seated distrust of representative leadership, and its superior confidence in the instinct, the common sense, and the conscience of the mass of the people. There is no State which I visited in which this modern political tendency can be traced to its conclusion and partial confusion better than in the State of Oregon.”

Since then, Oregon’s citizens have voted on more initiatives and referenda than any other state. Eugene voters must first approve many major highway projects before they can be built. Certain tax incentives and transportation projects have been modified or terminated because of popular votes. Some believe Eugene’s city hall or a railroad quiet zone merit a citywide vote before progressing.

Oregon delegates are first trustees. We place superior confidence in the instinct of the people, for better or for worse.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

Oregon Could Revive Localism With IP 28

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Chances are very good Oregonians will be voting in November whether to assess a gross receipts tax on businesses with sales that exceed $25 million annually. Once all the shouting begins, the subtleties of history will be lost in the background noise. So let’s chat today about business efficiencies, sun-ripened tomatoes, and a pamphlet written in 1837.

Rowland Hill argued in an 1837 tract that guaranteed delivery of any letter between two points for the same prepaid price would increase its popularity. He envisioned a world made smaller and a society joined tighter. He won the argument and England instituted the Penny Post in 1840.

Single price postage didn’t appear in America until after the railroads reached the west coast. Before 1863, letters traveling less than 300 miles could be sent for half price. But since then, we’ve lived in Hill’s world where distance doesn’t matter.

What does this piece of arcane history have to do with Oregon’s proposed business tax? Well, nothing really — at least not directly. That’s why we can think about it only before the din of rhetoric drowns out every tangental detail.

Our “any distance for a single price” mentality made the world feel smaller and more accessible. We can all agree that we’ve now accomplished that. If anything, we may have done it too well.

The United States Postal Service wants to centralize its mail-sorting operation in Portland, trucking every letter sent from Eugene 100 miles north. A letter you write will take two or three days to reach your neighbor, instead of one. But hey — it’s more efficient.

Our produce aisles have zucchini from Morocco, limes from Brazil, and maple syrup from Canada — year round. Amazon will bring almost anything you can imagine to your door in two days. Desktop email replaced mailed letters, until instant messages began appearing on the phones in our pockets.

The world has gotten very small, indeed. Distance doesn’t matter — until it does.

Local companies have gained global access, but also global competition. Whittier Wood Furniture can be sold nationwide, giving good jobs to local people working with wood and wood products that grew in the ground beneath our feet.

But local farmers cannot compete with grocery store prices for sun-ripened tomatoes, even when supply levels slide from abundance to onslaught. Never mind the better taste, or the local roots — the “efficiencies” of factory farming and our sesquicentennial habit of ignoring distance leave us with cheap, tasteless tomatoes. We feed our table-mates but not our neighbors.

That’s where Oregon’s Initiative Petition 28 may represent a tide we can turn. Economic analyses have speculated that its high floor of $25 million in Oregon sales will exempt all but about a thousand corporations from paying the tax. Half of the $3 billion in projected state revenues will come from just 50 mega-firms.

Yes, some prices will be increased to compensate, and some jobs will be automated or eliminated to compensate for lost profits. But when it comes to tomatoes, we’ll all be better off if the wares offered at our farmers’ markets can be priced more competitively.

Legislators say they’ll consider a pre-emptive move that will put in place something smaller than what IP28 has proposed. I don’t believe they will, because Democrats will benefit greatly from having a measure that Bernie Sanders would love on the November ballot. That will get more liberals to vote.

I hope what legislators are really working on is a bill that binds them to devote a third of the revenue from IP 28, if it passes, to local business development initiatives.

IP 28 can revive localism, which is what we’ve lost in Hill’s mechanized, centralized, efficient-but-tasteless world. Will Apple charge a few dollars more for iPads sold in Oregon, to compensate for the tax? Probably not, but boy, if they did, what a great deal that would be for our state.

Imagine every national Apple promotion that mentions price having to add, “except in Oregon.” I’d pay extra for license plates that included those three words as our new state slogan — wouldn’t you?

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.


No Safe States in 2016

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We tell ourselves that Oregon is a “safe state,” so we can vote for president based on our conscience. A certain perverse complacency lulls us, reasoning that our state’s seven electoral votes will certainly fall into the Democratic column, as they have in every presidential election since 1988. If the outcome is certain, then our choices won’t matter.

But that reasoning assumes that everything ends on Tuesday night. It fails to consider what might happen the next day, or 72 days after that, or a thousand days from now. All could be influenced by the vote tallies from Tuesday.

For the first time in our lifetimes, a major party presidential candidate is reserving his right to question those vote tallies. If one candidate wins fair and square, that’s not a guarantee that Wednesday morning will bring a peaceful resolution of this campaign.

On some level, this presidential campaign has become a referendum on the American model of democracy. Do we want our current system to continue? Unfortunately, votes for all other candidates will be counted by some as “Nay.” The closer the contest, the more likely the outcome will be contested.

Inauguration Day will be January 20, 2017. Whether any candidate can claim a mandate will in part depend on vote totals from everywhere, all at once. If one candidate secures a strong majority, exceeding expectations everywhere, that candidate will have a better chance of governing with legitimacy.

We didn’t used to worry about legitimacy of our elections or their outcomes, but skeptical voices — inside government and all around it — have been getting steadily louder over the past decade and a half. We’re now to the point where some wonder whether anyone can successfully navigate our check-and-balance system.

Sadly, President Obama contributed to this skepticism when he campaigned against his political opponents by reminding everyone that he had “a pen and a phone.” He could change public policies, whether Congress cooperated or not. His challenge was technically sound, but also an admission that our systems are breaking down.

It’s no wonder that one of our candidates has made extravagant promises about what he expects to accomplish “very, very quickly” once he takes office. Wars will be resolved, terrorism expunged, health care expenses contained, political adversaries jailed. Many voters seem more than willing to hand authority to somebody who will use more than a pen and a phone to exert and expand his political power.

We can hope that our balance of powers will protect us from the worst possible outcomes, but that hope would not be based on recent history. We’ve been allowing more and more power to accrue to the White House for decades. Executive orders, administrative rules, secret signing statements — all of these tools are being used more and more.

What makes us so sure those powers won’t eventually end up in the hands of somebody who doesn’t deserve our trust? Both of our major party candidates have already fallen below that threshold, as many would measure it. But that’s not an assurance that things can’t get worse.

Donald Trump has been a better version of Sarah Palin, but who will step up in 2019 and be a better version of Donald Trump? Will America swoon to the voice of demagoguery on Tuesday? If not, we don’t dare let it be close. Because if we do, there will be somebody else suiting up to out-Trump Trump in 2020.

Maybe that will be Trump again, or his daughter, or some other TV personality who knows the powers of persuasion.

The game plan is clear for all to see. Start with celebrity. Add plenty of simple solutions and blame-shifting between ethnic groups. If that formula got somebody close to the White House, what will happen if they are able to add message and campaign discipline?

The Republican Party leadership was not able to stop Donald Trump’s candidacy. Our best opportunity to dissuade a future candidate that improves on his formula will be in the next few days. That message must come from each and all of us. This year, there are no safe states.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs

Endorsing Endorsements

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A funny thing happened to me a few weeks ago at the United States Supreme Court. I didn’t laugh out loud, but almost. And as I have reflected on it, it points to an important experiment we’re all performing on each other. What the experiment proves definitely will be no laughing matter.

I make it a point to watch the opening session of each Supreme Court term. Some people circle their calendars for Opening Day of their favorite baseball team. I do that for the first Monday in October each year. It’s an unusual hobby, but I’m not alone. Graham Blackman-Harris has been doing this for 25 years. The task involves waiting in line beginning before dawn.

This year, those of us who were first in line were directed to take the worst seats on the edge of the audience gallery, behind a marble pillar that blocked our view of more than half the justices.

“It’s not right,” pleaded Blackman-Harris, “We’ve been standing in line since 4:30 this morning. I want to speak to your supervisor.” When it became clear that pursuing his objection could get him ejected from the courtroom, Blackman-Harris backed down. Seeing three justices was better than seeing none.

The woman seated in front of me and behind the same pillar, who also began standing in line before sunrise, leaned back and whispered to me, “This is SO going in my Yelp review!”

Why was her quip so funny to us? Because we are stuck between two models of maintaining social order. One is fading fast, but the other hasn’t yet taken hold. Blackman-Harris instinctively pursued the legacy model of top-down authority. The woman’s joke alluded to the crowdsourcing model of customer reviews that may someday take its place.

There are no Yelp reviews of the United States Supreme Court. Or of presidential candidates. Yet. We’re closer than you may think. Polling doesn’t differ all that much from the star ratings we give to movies and restaurants.

Everybody has an opinion about everything, and they are no longer as private as they once were. That may have been part of the reason that The (Portland) Oregonian did not endorse a presidential candidate this year.

“Our goal as an editorial board is to have an impact in our community,” wrote editorial board member Laura Gunderson “And we don’t think an endorsement for president would move the needle.”

I’m sure Gunderson knows there are no needles involved, moving or otherwise. Elections are described with these terms all the time, but the metaphor sums the awesome complexity of human interactions that shape a community.

Is Gunderson arguing that not a single conversation would be altered or enhanced by their newspaper’s articulated reasoning for backing one candidate over others? Is she saying those conversations will fail to change a single person’s behavior?

A newspaper’s endorsement may not change the electoral outcome, but their’ influence cannot be limited to final vote tallies. Civic leadership must not be reduced to tallies, gauges and needles — especially this year.

Newspapers across the country are abandoning this year’s Republican nominee, some for the first time in more than a century. Others are endorsing a candidate for the first time ever. The Atlantic magazine made only its third presidential endorsement since before the Civil War.

Donald Trump points to these endorsements as proof that the news media have conspired against him, and to some degree they have. The upheaval of social order he contemplates would threaten how political power is used and transferred in America.

The Oregonian also noted that they were granted no special access to the national candidates. Readers have the same information as the editors. True enough, but when information is practically limitless, the judgement of those who have the time and skill to sift through it all becomes more valuable, not less.

Newspaper endorsements and Yelp reviews are in this way similar. We’re all better off when they are used to begin and deepen conversations between friends and neighbors. If and when they shut off or replace those conversations, our real troubles will have begun.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

Oregon Health Plan’s Future is Suddenly Uncertain

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Does the Oregon Health Plan have a price on its head? If the incoming administration’s pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services is approved, the OHP may have the boot of Rep. Tom Price on its neck. The Georgia congressman has hated Obamacare since the beginning. He may come to Oregon looking for a refund of the $1.9 billion the feds granted the state in 2012.

Oregon’s reputation for health care reform is unmatched. We chose an emergency room physician as our governor four times. During John Kitzhaber’s eight-year hiatus from the governor’s mansion, he continued thinking deeply about health care issues, building on the reforms he first championed when he was a state senator.

When Barack Obama was swept into the White House in 2009, many expected Kitzhaber to be tapped as some sort of health care czar. Obama had different ideas, and so did the former and future governor.

Where the Bush presidency used so-called policy czars to muscle changes on Capitol Hill, Obama preferred using states as incubators for innovation. The best and highest use of the federal government, Obama reasoned, was to define the metrics for success and provide resources for experimentation. States would then naturally learn from one another.

Once it was clear that Obama would make a priority of health care reform, Kitzhaber launched his campaign for a third term as governor. As a seasoned politician steeped in health care reform, his stature put Oregon at the front of the line. Oregon received nearly $2 billion from the feds to design Coordinated Care Organizations across the state.

Kitzhaber in 2012 called it the “final building block to creating a better model of care, and Oregon is ready to demonstrate how local communities can lead the nation in keeping people healthier over the long term in a more effective way.”

Obama’s White House coined a term for these innovation prizes given to states. “Race to the top” represented a deliberate rebuke to blind pursuit of economic efficiency. Who wants to be at the bottom so badly that they’ll race to get there?

But now that race may be canceled in the middle of the event, rained out by a new president who has his own affinity for czars. Will Oregon have to repay any of its Obamacare innovation funding? It’s too soon to know what will happen. But Oregon had better be ready for the worst.

Kitzhaber has returned to private life, for which he may be feel suddenly grateful. What comes next for the neediest among us could be heart-rending for the first responders.

It’s time to return to first principles. That may help move the conversation forward. Embedded in Obama’s “race to the top” model is a fundamental truth: Not every social problem can be solved by unfettered economics. Capitalism has its limits, and health care is where many of us meet them.

Capitalism posits that supply and demand self-regulate when pricing interference is removed. If supply is limited, the price will rise and demand will fall until a natural equilibrium is reached. But that “invisible hand” achieves no such balance when the demand is for a life-saving drug or dialysis treatments. Life itself is not a commodity in that way. Demand for it is limitless, so pricing must be controlled in other ways.

Price controls are inevitable. So are supply limits. “Death panels” notwithstanding, government cannot provide every drug and every procedure to every patient. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” fails here, too. Decisions must be made. The best we can hope is for rationing to be rational.

The Oregon Health Plan’s first and most profound innovation was to limit procedures with low success rates or for patients with other complications — including old age.

Rationing is being debated because universal access to health care is not. President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neil settled that issue when they crafted the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) in 1986. Hospitals that accept any federal funds are not allowed to turn away patients.

As local civic leader Terry MacDonald once told me, “Until Americans are willing to step over the dead and dying on their sidewalks, we will always have some version of universal health care.” People go to the emergency room to get the care they need, which may be where physician Kitzhaber first thought, “There’s gotta be a better way.”

Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a weekly column for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

Egan Shows What Eugene is Made Of

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I used to tell people if they had only one hour in Eugene, they should attend the Eugene Celebration parade. In 60 minutes, anyone could see how this city moves through the issues that animate its people.

Time marches on, even if the Eugene Celebration parade no longer does. Some of us are moving a little more slowly now, especially when a walk to the mailbox begins to look like a failed audition for the Ice Capades. Thanks in part to our early spate of brutal winter nights, I have a new introductory Eugene hour to recommend.

If you want to know what this city is made of, volunteer at any of the nine Thomas Egan Warming Centers. In one hour, you’ll come to know the place and its people. Unlike the parade, the Egan Warming Centers are not set up for passive observers. You’ll have to apply to volunteer at www.eganwarmingcenter.com, attend a short training session, and sign up for a shift. Each step is necessary and worth the trouble.

The centers are spread around the city, mostly in churches, including two in Springfield. If you sign up for the site closest to your home, chances are you’ll see some of your neighbors working in the kitchen, folding blankets, tending to sore feet, or chatting with guests. Think of the guests as your neighbors without addresses.

There is so much to love about Egan, beginning with the name. Maj. Thomas Egan died on the street here eight years ago. His tragedy mobilized a community response. Our brains are not wired to focus on trends or statistics. Particulars focus our attention and strengthen our resolve. Tom Egan is the name we’ve given that commitment. We have former mayors who haven’t been honored as deeply.

Egan Warming Centers activate when overnight temperatures are expected to fall below 30 degrees. We’ve activated already this season as many nights as some entire winters. Each night of activation requires a small army of volunteers. The smallest site has space for 40 guests, requiring nearly as many volunteers.

The program could have been designed to use fewer volunteers, but the surplus is strategic. There’s time to chat during most three-hour shifts, and almost no concern that anyone will finish their turn feeling overwhelmed or dispirited. Even if only for a few hours, you can feel the tide of homeless suffering receding.

Many sites have exactly zero paid staff on the premises. Volunteer leaders have emerged. The egalitarian spirit shapes the mood of the room. Some guests come in from the cold feeling angry at the world and the systems that run it. It helps when nobody in the room has been forced to be there. “The Man” is nowhere to be found.

One young man told me I must be brave, if I was heading out in the morning with only my two layers and a scarf. I told him I had only a few blocks to walk. We laughed for a moment that guests and volunteers look alike, but that’s exactly as it should be. His buddy shook his head, then nodded, “We’re all God’s children.” I couldn’t have said it better.

The need is always great but the work is often easy. I’ve asked a dozen volunteers how they got involved. Most were invited or enticed by a friend. Someone they knew was already involved or interested, and so they followed.

There’s nothing surprising about that. We’re social creatures. Here is where we can build on the success we’re already enjoying. By simply “buddying up” we can double the effectiveness of the Egan Warming Center’s outreach.

If you’re already a volunteer, think about who you can invite to give it a try. If you’ve been thinking about doing the training, mention it to somebody you don’t see often enough and ask them to join you. Next time you’ve served a shift and enjoyed getting to know another volunteer, conspire to work together again.

The work we do takes us to who we become. As people and as a city, nobody travels in this parade alone. We’re all God’s children.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

We May Need the Beast to Escape the PERS Hole

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The chronically underfunded Public Employees Retirement System has been in the news again, so I returned to my muse on the subject. I last visited Gil Farsnow almost two years ago, but nothing had changed — same dank basement apartment, same ragged furniture, same quick mind being put to almost no good use.

Farsnow’s sweatshirt had a ketchup stain that looked all the world to me like Nelson Mandela, but that may show only how desperate we are for a profile in courage on the topic of PERS reform. Phil Keisling, former Oregon Secretary of State and current director of Portland State University’s Center for Public Service, published a new study last month that sounded the alarm yet again.

Farsnow was taking my measure while I was taking Mandela’s. “You come see me only when you’re stuck,” he said, motioning me to a futon that I really didn’t want to touch.

I started at the most recent beginning. “Phil Keisling’s study says the cliff could be only five years away. Retirement expenses keep rising faster than state revenues.” I was pleading for some new ideas. “He says the state may soon have no money to do anything except fulfill its public pension obligations. What are we gonna do?”

“First thing, don’t cure cancer,” he said.

“Wait. What?” Was Farsnow changing the conversation to a brighter subject — like cancer?

He popped open a can of something I’d never seen before. Its fizz sounded more like a squeak. He didn’t offer me one and I was glad. “Legislators made some mistakes in the 1980s, but it was the actuaries who really got it wrong.”

He took a swig, then smirked as my whole body must have conveyed confusion. “Look at us. Nobody’s eating red meat, processed sugars, trans-fats. We avoid the stuff that was killing us. And it’s killing us.”

I objected, “Actuaries didn’t bring us Whole Foods.“ I expected Farsnow to cut me off, but he was reading the label on the can. “Did they?”

“Actuaries screwed up!” He jutted his chin far enough forward to drool his beverage past his sweatshirt and onto the shag carpet. “Their job is to estimate how long we’ll live. They guessed low.”

“People are living longer. Who’s unhappy about that?” I replied, not understanding his point.

“You’re not understanding my point,” he said. “You’re unhappy about it.”

“PERS recipients are living longer,” I was trying to catch up.

“Look at the hole.”

I checked the futon. I wasn’t catching up. “What hole?”

“The state’s.” He paused for another swig. “It’s deeper than anyone thought, because PERS retirees are being paid their defined benefits for longer than the actuaries estimated.”

I could finally catch my breath. The cliff had become a hole. Was this any better? “So the actuaries failed to tell us how deep the hole would be?”

“Yep.”

Information is easy. Action is hard. “How do we get out of the hole?” I demanded.

“You’re not gonna like it,” he promised.

It couldn’t be worse than the futon.

“Inflation.” He took a scolding tone. “Carter-era, ‘misery index’ stuff! Sky-high interest rates. Terrible for anyone building a business, buying a house or car. It would fatten PERS investments and cheapen the payouts.”

“PERS benefits are defined in dollars, not purchasing power. Goose inflation to five or seven percent for a few years, those dollars will be worth a lot less. Wages go up, but only for those who are working.

“We can’t pay our legacy obligations unless we make the money itself worth less. It’s painful to think about it like that, but it would work.

“Only problem is we don’t know how to slow down runaway inflation. Nobody does. You can’t tame the beast, so you don’t approach it. At some point, the hole’s so deep, only the beast can maybe get you out.”

I left exhausted, not wanting to think about the cliff, the hole, or the beast — focused instead on that ketchup stain and hoping for the best.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com. Kahle’s previous encounters with Farsnow can be read here: http://www.dksez.com/pers-retirement-funding-prompts-creative-solutions/ and http://www.dksez.com/kesey-could-be-square-around-here/

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Who Needs High Crimes? We Have Misdemeanors

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“High crimes and misdemeanors.” It practically rolls off the tongue these days, as the talk intensifies about ending this chapter of our political history ahead of schedule. What did the president do or say or know and when did he do or say or know it?

Reporters and investigators and politicians and publishers are hot on the trail. Everyone is searching for a smoking gun — some act of treason, some dastardly deed that was done or ordered from the Oval Office.

Now that the Justice Department has appointed Robert Mueller as a special counsel to investigate possible coordination between President Trump’s associates and Russian officials, we can be sure that talk will intensify quickly.

Mueller makes two former FBI directors with no allegiance to this president who know where the bodies get buried. James Comey was fired by Trump last week, but fired in a way that had to add insult to injury. He learned about it when a television report appeared on a television screen behind him.

The official letter was delivered by Trump’s personal bodyguard. This is the equivalent of two security guards appearing at a worker’s desk with a couple of cardboard boxes and a stopwatch, giving them ten minutes to hand over their keys, empty their desk, and vacate the premises.

So you may as well get used to hearing that phrase — “high crimes and misdemeanors” — often in the months ahead. Trump insists the investigation will prove that his campaign and staff never colluded with the Russians. And that may be true, but it’s not the end of the phrase, much less the end of the story.

Why is everybody working so hard? The easier case to be made is the second condition provided in the Constitution. Today we define “misdemeanors” as minor crimes — shoplifting or jaywalking. That couldn’t be what the framers had in mind. To the Colonial ear, a misdemeanor meant an absence of necessary action — failure to act or protect.

It meant neglect — not showing up for work, not doing the job. The framers included it to say the chief executive could be impeached for what he has done, and also for what he has left undone. Abdication of duty was on the minds of the framers. They knew that there may be times when the nation cannot afford to wait for something bad to happen.

We could make a long list of tasks we expect our president to do that haven’t been done or done well these past four months. Couldn’t a list of these “sins of omission” make a more compelling case for the man’s removal than any of the so-called “high crimes” he may have committed — or worse, that he may yet commit?

If the situation is as perilous as many believe it to be, we may not be afforded the luxury of waiting until a deed has occurred that demonstrates Donald Trump as unfit for the office. That deed may put us over some as-yet undefined edge. Reclaiming our society and our government may by then be out of reach.

Indeed, one red button — with its top-secret authorization code — could bring the end of much more than this presidency. If there’s nobody left to talk about it, there will be no shame in being the last president of the United States. That’s the worst possible outcome and our protections are very thin.

Our society may end, in Robert Frost’s terms, “not with a bang, but a whimper.”

Large swaths of government are being enfeebled — by leaving positions vacant or filling top positions with people who have wished the department they now lead could be abolished. We have a term for those people who push beyond “small government” into the territory of “no government.”

They are called anarchists, and we shouldn’t allow their suits and ties to distract us from their goal. If their goal is to abolish the government, the Constitution provides a remedy to foil their attempt before they commit any high crimes. Their misdemeanors will suffice.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) blogs at www.dksez.com. He first became politically active after reading Jonathan Schell’s “The Fate of the Earth” in 1982.

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Are You in the Path of Total Eclipse Hype?

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Amid all the hype about Monday’s solar eclipse, only one aspect of the event has not been thoroughly and relentlessly examined — the hype itself. Why is a celestial event that could have been predicted by Galileo attracted so much attention? I have collected six theories to explain.

1. 1979 was a long time ago

We’ve had 38 years of pent-up demand for looking at the sky with cardboard sunglasses. We remember 1979 as a more innocent time, for those of us who can remember it at all. A solar eclipse to cut across the United States again in 2024, but it’s easy to make the mistake that we’ll have to wait another 38 years for the next one. We think of anything that happens over our heads as happening on a strict schedule of non-random repetitions.

2. This eclipse is all ours

We’ve had eclipses before, but each one in our lifetimes has also crossed through parts of Mexico or Canada. This eclipse will be draped across our nation like a beauty pageant sash. American supremacy has been in the news a lot lately, so it’s good to see the heavens literally lining up with those talking points. If an eclipse wanted to “see the real America” for a few hours, it couldn’t have chosen a better path. It will miss the power centers of New York and California, but those places’ radio signals can be found literally anywhere in our solar system. (“I Love Lucy” is currently under “new releases” on Netflix Uranus.)

3. We’re all media moguls now

Nothing screams “selfie” like an non-recurring event — especially one you can plan for and then look back on. Since each of us has friends who live elsewhere, we’ll want to digitally gloat about what the sky looks like over our heads. We can be sure they will follow our FaceBook feed with envy, unless they are among the million people who are jumping into planes and rental cars to witness the traffic jams that will keep them — and many of us — from witnessing the event.

4. Let’s spend some money

It’s probably the prejudice of place, but it sure seems like Oregon is getting more than its fair share of attention surrounding this eclipse. Maybe it’s because we’ll be first to see it. Or maybe shows like “Portlandia” and fawning press reports have deposited Oregon into many people’s bucket lists. People have money in their pockets and time on their hands. What they don’t have is any good ideas about what they could be doing with either. It’s been so long since we had anything to spare, we’ve forgotten how to handle such an excess. A trip to Oregon (or someplace else) for a three-minute show somehow seems like a good idea.

5. It’ll be an adventure

Thanks in part to the Great Recession, many Americans in their 50s or 60s left the workforce before they may have intended. We’ve never had more active seniors looking for an adventure. Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail is not for everyone. Nor is driving a camper around and visiting all 48 contiguous states. Thousands of people are looking for a way to get out of the house, but not too far out. An adventure that involves going outside and looking up — that sounds perfect!

6. Things are looking up

The Aztecs may have taken an eclipse as a bad omen, but we can’t be anything but grateful for even a small modicum of normality or predictability in the world around us. Global climate disruption, Korean missile threats, or just one more day of too-hot weather — we haven’t had many opportunities lately to look to the sky and feel anything other than dread.

Hype or no hype, I’m planning to stay put Monday morning, and here’s why. Somebody in 2024 might ask me where I was when the last eclipse favored the United States, and I don’t want to tell them I was stuck on a road outside Harrisburg. I want to say I was under Eugene’s 98 percent obscurance, where good enough is a way of life.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

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Reflections at the Electoral Equinox

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We passed the electoral equinox this week. The 2016 election is now further removed than is the 2018 election ahead of us. This is a good time to survey lessons learned that can shape the 51 1/2 weeks ahead.

First, it’s now clear that Trump, like Obama before him, is his own brand. Those who campaign on the promise that they’ll be just like Trump cannot make those claims sound believable. Only Trump is just like Trump, and him we already got. Whatever mix of brash and bravado voters found attractive in him is not transferable in contested general elections, which will be plentiful in 2018.

There’s a problem with being perceived as the greatest. When you’re The One, there’s no room at your side. Your coattails are no help if the aspiring candidate is stuck behind you. When you campaign holding outsized coattails, you are obscured from view.

The second insight follows the first. The latest tell-all political memoir, cynically scheduled for release on Election Day, details how the Democrats were forced to heel to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s fundraising prowess. The deals that were struck obscured what would have otherwise have been obvious. Both political parties are weaker than they have been in generations.

While an ex-Democrat was negotiating a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party could have — maybe should have — handed its brand to a democratic socialist. Without the Clinton legacy, we could have seen a quadrennial autumn that had almost nothing to do with conventional Republican or Democratic presidential candidates.

We knew why, but we’re only learning now how much — voters were in no mood for incremental change. Fewer voters than ever were motivated by anything that looked like “more of the same.” Candidates who didn’t offer wholesale change failed to get out the vote.

Donald Trump got roughly the same number of votes as Mitt Romney got four years earlier. The biggest difference in 2016 was that those votes were enough.

Finally, big ideas drive national elections, because they get national news outlets talking. Do Democrats have any big ideas that can enhance their political fortunes in the years ahead? So far, no. But those ideas are out there, ready to be kindled into a political firestorm.

If Democrats want to storm the Capitol in 2018, we’ve already seen a storm they can use. Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico six weeks ago, and the relief efforts have not made America proud. With heart-wrenching HDTV detail, we can see now that Puerto Rico’s second-class citizenship is ready to be second-guessed. Guam and a scattering of ocean islands face similar perils.

So-called “territories” are no longer viable for America. It’s past time to offer them statehood or sovereignty. The same must be said for Washington, DC, home to more Americans than Vermont or Wyoming.

This gives Democrats an issue that is both compassionate and expansionist. For those Americans who feel we are in decline, they may be feeling a stasis that is real. The middle initial in USA has always been expanding. America steadily added more States to its Union.

Why did that stop in 1960? It’s been 58 years since we added any stars to our spangle — longer than any stretch in our history. Once the Democrats say they want to expand the Union, the other side will be left to defend the status quo, which is what no politician wants to be stuck doing these days.

But they would have no choice. Each of these stepchildren states votes overwhelmingly Democratic. Adding just a handful of new senators would upset the power calculus in Washington.

For reasons that have never been well explained, liberals like ocean views and conservatives are afraid of heights. Most election maps show our country as a sea of red with blue edges, but what if the results could be shown by elevation? The country’s ground floor residents are mostly Republicans, but those who use elevators daily vote Democratic in overwhelmingly numbers.

It must be those ocean breezes.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) blogs.

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It’s Time for the West Coast to Unite

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We all know that the West Coast is different from the rest of the country. We’re now in a position to make that obvious. If we could pick up our dirt and move it, which direction would we go? The long answer would be, “Farther west, because the Pacific Ocean defines us.” (The short answer is, “Duh.”)

Oregon, Washington and California now share a unique political unanimity. Thanks to Democrat Manka Dhingra’s recent election to the Washington state Senate, Democrats now control all three governorships and a majority in each state legislature.

Substantial issues are already being addressed that Democrats care about. Governors Kate Brown, Jerry Brown, and Jay Inslee each have signed on to the U.S. Climate Alliance, pledging to uphold the Paris Accord on climate change. All three states are at the vanguard for higher minimum wages.

Those pledges and policies are substantial and important, but they won’t attract much attention from the rest of the country. Here’s one that would.

All three states should stop observing Daylight Saving Time. Nevada could join our non-movement, completing a Pacific Standard Time sweep, but that would require cooperation from Nevada’s Republican Governor Brian Sandoval.

From March until November each year, our clocks would be four hours behind the East Coast instead of three. We would be aligned for those months with Alaska’s mainland, and we’d be one hour closer to Hawaii, where they have always refused the clock-setting charade.

A unified front against Daylight Saving Time would expose the silliness for what it is. The time change was first proposed as a way to help farmers. Then it was sold as a way to save energy. Most recently, it was something we did for the sake of the children, as if morning school busses and evening Halloween festivities cannot function in the dark.

Each of these so-called solutions has failed to find a problem. Farmers have headlights on tractors when they need them, and farm animals don’t “spring forward” or “fall back” very well. Experts have studied the energy savings and it’s never more than a rounding error. Children are kept safe by parents and other adults, not by the sun.

In fact, science has lately lined up against the random clock turning tradition. Traffic hazards and heart attacks spike each spring. There must be an abundance of sleep-deprived drivers who adapt about as well as farm animals.

Think of the move as secession-lite. We’re not leaving the rest of the country behind. Instead, we’d be the ones being left behind, every spring: “You go right on springing ahead. We’ll be here when you fall back.”

Washington and California have already broached the subject in their state houses. Rep. Elizabeth Scott filed a Washington House bill to end DST in Washington, but a companion bill languished in the Republican-controlled state Senate in 2015. Last February, California Assembly member Kansen Chu introduced a bill to eliminate DST in that state.

Nevada has recently moved in the opposite direction. In 2015, the state petitioned the U.S. Congress to allow them to remain on DST throughout the year. Changing time zones or extending DST year round requires federal approval, but choosing whether or not to observe Daylight Saving Time is made at the state level.

Unlike the states’ minimum wages or climate response strategies, this is the sort of change that regular people around the country would be forced to recognize at the only time when most of them are paying attention — when they are watching television.

Network television is no longer the dominant and unifying force it once was, but wouldn’t it be worthwhile for our start times to be noted on every fall premiere promo? The biggest burden would be borne by summer sports teams and their fans.

If you had a choice between following your favorite baseball team when they are playing a prime-time night game on the opposite coast from where you live, would you rather tune in the game at 4 PM or midnight? I think the answer is obvious. Or, to offer the short answer, “Duh.”

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

The post It’s Time for the West Coast to Unite appeared first on dkSez : : : : : : Don Kahle's blog.

Affordable Housing Strategy: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

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There have been homosexuals in the military as long as there have been homosexuals and militaries, but only in the last 30 years has the issue become a social movement. Recruiters and field commanders articulated the irrelevance of sexual preferences to their line of work years ago — “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Generals had a different view, based on the findings of generals and strategists before them. The top-level view was that mixed sexual preferences could hamper combat readiness — even though mixing genders and mixing races had both been more successful than not. Generals adapt slowly — they learn from previous mistakes, but that often leaves them fighting the last war.

I’ll come back to DADT in a little bit, but my topic today has nothing to do with soldiers or sex. It’s about that shed in your backyard, or that garbage disposal you installed 20 years ago, or the sleeping loft you use when grandkids come to visit.

Somebody once asked Ken Kesey why he still lived in Oregon, when his career allowed him to live anywhere. “In Oregon,” he replied with his trademark readiness, “I can still build a 12-by-16 shed and not ask anyone’s permission.” He was right about that, but not if you want a light inside that shed, or a sink, or if it’s too close to your neighbor’s property, or if it’s taller than a certain height.

Even so, Kesey was only technically incorrect. I bought a house with a little shed out back. A previous owner had lived in that space — with an illegal wood stove — when his marriage was coming undone. When my own marriage unraveled, I was offered a sleeping space that was similar — and also unpermitted — at a friend’s house.

We all know stories like these. A converted garage, a loft space where we “store” a spare mattress, utility rooms with more utility than we’ve admitted to the powers that be. You probably didn’t know that installing a garbage disposal may have required a permit and an inspection. We all use the wink and nod system.

And so we are like the soldiers and field commanders who codified their neglect of one of the rules that the generals kept insisting couldn’t be changed. We don’t make a big deal out of it, hoping that the higher-ups will do the same.

But there’s a social movement afoot that soon will demand that we confront it. Gay soldiers and those who supported them came to resent how shadows were being used to protect them when life experience was demonstrating that no protection — and so, no shadows — should be necessary.

Oregon is facing a housing crisis. Rents have become so high that people who work every day sometimes have no safe place to sleep. From my own tiny sliver of experience at the Egan Warming Center, I’m seeing at least twice as many guests leaving before breakfast is served “because they have to get to work.”

If we haven’t passed the tipping point, we’re fast approaching it. Soon, most of us will know somebody who has been unhoused in Oregon, at least for a little while.

Something will change when it feels to most people like something has to change. Leaders at the city, county, and state levels are watching this closely, but they may not be sure how best to respond. They might follow President Clinton’s example and embrace the solution that’s already being used.

Clinton’s announcement capitalized on the relevant experience. He capitalized their phrase and made it his administration’s policy: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It was meant as a bridge — a temporary policy. Once shadows and shame were removed from the situation, the best solutions would be brought to the light.

Local activists for the homeless are asking the legislature to direct the Oregon Building Codes Division to allow local building code inspectors to suspend certain building code enforcement for tiny houses for a few years. If we can trade enforcement for education during that time, important lessons for affordable housing may reveal themselves.

Staying out of sight only affirms those who are still fighting the last war.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) blogs at www.dksez.com.

The post Affordable Housing Strategy: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell appeared first on dkSez : : : : : : Don Kahle's blog.

Invite Amazon to Build Near the Eugene Airport

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Oregon did not make Amazon’s list of a dozen finalists for its proposed second headquarters. Portland offered a 32-acre parcel near the former Pearl District Post Office that is ripe for redevelopment, but Amazon’s attention has landed in big cities farther from Seattle. It’s not known if any other Oregon cities were among the 238 proposals Amazon received, but none made the cut.

Amazon says it will now work collaboratively with the finalist cities to develop an urban campus that could eventually bring 50,000 jobs to whichever city is selected. “Work collaboratively” is polite mega corporation-speak for “squeeze them for every tax incentive they can imagine offering.”

Imagine how Eugene Mayor Lucy Vinis would respond if Amazon’s Jeff Bezos called and offered a city of workers roughly the size of Springfield or Corvallis. That would be enough to get any mayor’s attention. Who could count how much hoop jumping there will be between now and the end of the year, when Amazon says it intends to choose a winner?

While this high profile audition is attracting everyone else’s attention, the city of Eugene should send Amazon a proposal that would be far less sexy, but still very substantial for Oregon — and also extremely well timed.

Amazon should be shown why land near the Eugene Airport would be the perfect place to build a regional distribution center. Land near the airport has just been added to Eugene’s urban growth boundary, the airport has just completed a substantial expansion itself, and our location is ideal for quick deliveries across the southern half of the Pacific Northwest region.

Bezos and his company are famously obsessed with logistics. Next-day delivery has been proven to increase sales in virtually every product category. Short turnaround times will become even more important as Amazon uses Whole Foods to expand its reach into organic foods and groceries. Rumors are now pointing to Amazon’s interest in selling and delivering prescription drugs.

Customers will want their drugs and groceries to be delivered faster than their new table lamp or yoga mat. Same day delivery for more items is already on Amazon’s horizon.

If you were a short-haul trucker with a full load bound for Portland or Bend, would you rather deal with the traffic leaving Seattle or Eugene? Likewise, pilots will appreciate not having to jockey for an available runway when flying in or out of the Eugene Airport. And the distribution center’s workers will love the housing and commerce that is near our airport, especially if a sudden employment boost resuscitates the city’s confidence in an airport bus route.

Eugene’s planners understand that our best regional economic driver is our airport. Under Airport Director Tim Doll’s leadership, air traffic has grown steadily, recently surpassing a million passengers for the first time. This growth has been accomplished without accompanying strides in the airport’s package-delivery sector. Freight moves best at night, when the airport is mostly idle.

It’s easy to forget when we are standing in a TSA line that the airport’s capacity is vastly underutilized. Its runway can accommodate any commercial airplane, up to and including Air Force One, the President’s Boeing 747. In fact, it has.

The land around the airport is begging for a boost. Twice the city has requested proposals for an airport hotel, and twice the responses have not met expectations. Lane Transit District tried running a bus to the airport, but didn’t find the strong demand that flows most reliably from regular work schedules.

The airport’s best path forward may not be more incremental growth. If we want an airport hotel and reliable public transportation to and from the airport, a sudden boost would make those amenities necessary and sustainable. Other national delivery services like UPS or FedEx may find Eugene to be an attractive hub, but none would generate as much buzz for the region and its future as Amazon.

Pick up the phone, Mayor Vinis and Director Doll. While other cities are competing for HQ2, show Amazon how Eugene can improve the company’s delivery logistics and be part of the city’s next big leap forward.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

The post Invite Amazon to Build Near the Eugene Airport appeared first on dkSez : : : : : : Don Kahle's blog.

Collide With Your Daily Newspaper

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You may have seen this quote from an executive in Tuesday’s paper this week: “Politicians should not use taxpayer dollars to impose ideological litmus tests and punish organizations that express views that politicians dislike.” Or maybe you didn’t see it. It’s why you should read the print publication or its electronic facsimile.

Tuesday’s paper had two different stories — in two different sections — about politicians using their state’s economic muscle to punish policies they dislike. The first was on the front page, reporting that Oregon legislators in Salem have a plan to preserve “net neutrality” despite the FCC’s recent decision to no longer require it.

Lawmakers have proposed to forbid state and local government procurement contracts with communications firms that abandon net neutrality. Oregon will spend its money whenever possible with those companies who maintain a level playing field for all Internet traffic. That may be a shrewd strategy in pursuit of online equality. Or not.

That quote in the first graf did not come from a disgruntled Oregon business executive or a Republican in Salem. It came from ACLU of Georgia Executive Director Andrea Young. It appeared at the end of a business section article about responses to boycotts of the NRA and companies’ support of its members.

Delta Airlines announced that it would no longer offer discounts to NRA members. That drew the ire of Republican lawmakers in Georgia, where Delta has its headquarters. The state’s lieutenant governor threatened to hold up legislation that would have exempted airlines from paying fuel taxes. That could cost Delta $50 million a year — more than any other commercial carrier.

Are Georgia’s legislators doing the right thing by appealing to a business’s economic self-interest? Or should they “not use taxpayer dollars to … punish … views that [they] dislike”? How about in Oregon? Should the same standards be applied here?

There’s an argument to be made in both directions. I’m not making those arguments here, much less favoring one over others. Both sides of the political divide are using similar tactics, but this isn’t about them. It’s about you. You may not have known about one story or the other if you get all your news from the Internet.

And yet, there they were, on your doorstep, just a few pages away from each another. Editors assemble a newspaper every night, mixing what you want to know with what you need to know. It’s a different reading experience than when you scan website headlines, no matter how balanced or centrist the site aims to be. You’re looking for what interests you.

Americans are getting dangerously good at insulating themselves from opinions and people they may not like or agree with. Author Bill Bishop called this trend “The Big Sort” in 2008. His book’s subtitle deserves your attention: “Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart.”

Bishop describes the trend in great detail but doesn’t offer many solutions that you and I can do immediately. But here’s one: Read a daily newspaper. Look at every page. Make it a point to read at least one article every day that you don’t think you’ll care about. Every time surprised that you were wrong about that, your world will get a bit bigger — and better.

Social engineers have begun studying the power of little surprises like that. They call them “collisions” — they make people think more creatively. Bumping into unexpected surprises and unplanned complications is a key accelerant that fuels social vibrancy. That same dynamic can be replicated in the pages of a newspaper.

It’s not a kitchen table argument between people who love each other but vehemently disagree, but it’s the closest many of us will get to it. We should welcome and recognize points of view that don’t fit our “ideological litmus tests.”

It won’t often change our mind about any particular issue. The more likely outcome is additional empathy about how that issue appears to those who don’t see it our way. What may seem like a brilliant move in Salem may lose a little luster when the same tactic is used for a different purpose in Atlanta.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs at www.dksez.com.

The post Collide With Your Daily Newspaper appeared first on dkSez : : : : : : Don Kahle's blog.

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