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KevinV's comments:
on Independent in Oregon
Independent (?) Party of Oregon
I refused to vote online in IPO's "election," simply because of the reasons Penny from Eugene stated. First off, before I get the announcement postcard that there is going to be an online-election, I get some sort of warning or advisory mailer from Candidate Kitzhaber. That was an immediate turnoff as much to Kitzhaber as it was to the online election. Was that Kitzhaber's real goal -- to derail the online election? Let Kitzhaber know that I didn't read his mailer, just as I read no candidates fluffy mailer or endorsement mailer: it went in the recycling bin torn in two.
The the election postcard notice shows up, disclosing to anyone who might see it my "registration number." Let's say that this card got waylaid or swiped on its way to me. Anyone with that card and the registration number now has my name, address, an election authorization PIN.
Screw that!
No way am I going to jump on this sort of band-wagon. Wave of the future? If that's the case, count me out.
When I pulled away from the Democratic party 6 years after moving to Oregon from Central California, I had long since given up on the state of party politics. I had worked for the CA Secretary of State and had grown fed up with redistricting shenanigans there, a tradition nearly as old as the state itself. It isn't much better here in this Great State of Oregon; the near-stasis in Salem shows that much.
When I went Independent, I meant independent. I had no intent of throwing my hat in the ring of another muddy organization with unclear intentions other than becoming a political split party. The IPO has a lot of work to do to convince me that staying allied with them is worthwhile.
My ultimate goal as a voter is to freely choose any and all candidates from an entirely open slate of candidates in primaries and final elections regardless of their party affiliation. No more, no less.
posted 2 years, 10 months ago
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on Getting Back to Work
Good show this morning, even if it was a "redux" version. I'm surviving (only just) these last two years by being self-employed using old hobby skills and a short list of regular and a few new customers who like my work - highly detailed and painted scale model trains for the collector.
I have searched TOL here to try and find the link to one of your Back to Work interviewees - I think the name of his/their small business was Beeker Boots? I just couldn't find it and it doesn't Google. Is there a URL for that business?
Keep it up guys!
~KV
posted 2 years, 11 months ago
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on High Speed Possibilities
Your comments sound exactly like what any number of Californians said between 1950 and 1990. Then Amtrak California -- a dedicated agency -- was formed and funded, with incremental service upgrades to existing weak intercity passenger rail services. New rail cars were gradually built and put in service. Suddenly -- as in within 2 to 3 years -- there were trains connecting San Jose-Oakland/San Francisco-Sacramento and San Jose-Oakland/San Francisco and san Joaquin Valley cities and throusands of passengers used those trains. They are still using those trains and the pasenger counts and return on investment is *huge.*
Get stuck in traffic or bad weather on the freeway in your car and watch a fast passenger train full of people whip past on its way between Seattle and Portland or Eugene and those people paid under $50 round trip, had meals on board, good drinks -- yes, alcohol -- if they liked. They had their laptops plugged in at their seats or were watching a movie from their seat.
How will you feel then, not being one of them?
posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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on High Speed Possibilities
Yours is a good question. The big problem is the railroad itself. Right now Amtrak must interface and depend upon commerical freight railroads. Yes, there are tracks already between Portland and Madras/Redmond/Bend but by established Amtrak and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (which owns that route) operating contracts, those tracks are freight-only. Too, those tracks form a giant out-of-the-way "C" of travel: they are quite indirect and even if available for regular passenger trains, the distance would make a slow trip that would have to go through southern Washington along the Columbia River before tucking back into Portland.
An ideal soultion -- for now and some time in the future -- would be to put in regular connecting Amtrak Northwest buses to serve Bend/Madras and in-between communities connecting with more frequent 'Amtrak Cascades' intercity trains serving the Willamette Valley and Washington/British Columbia.
There may come a day when adequate capital -- and it would be a great amount of money -- will be there for full-rail service to oregon's east side, but it's not there now. Passsenger-quality track is expensive -- even for fast (not high-) speed trains, on the order of $2.5+Million per mile; a modern passenger rail coach costs no less than $3M each and that's without a locomotive which is substantially more.
posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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on High Speed Possibilities
Buses can be seen as "green" and efficient, yes, but they lack a certain service flexibility that modern trains -- even fast (not high-) speed passenger rail gives: capacity and all-weather safety and service. If a bus gets trapped in accident or weather-related freeway closures -- a typical Pacific Northwest winter seasonal problem -- what good are buses? If it takes one driver for every busload (perhaps 60, tops) of passengers -- a given -- but one engineer can operate a train of up to 100 to 400 passengers in all seasons and weather, what's the greener, more environmentally sound option? Too, one modern fuel-efficient diesel electric locomotive pulling three or more passenger coaches carrying hundreds of passengers frequently will beat any bus in providing the most efficient service.
Buses make excellent adjuncts to regular fast trains. Buses can provide remote towns parallel to or diagonally away from the rail corridor with cheaper, convenient connections, but buses should not become the system backbone.
posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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on Sam Scandal
I do not care a whit about Sam Adams' sexuality -- I'm gay myself -- but I do care that he lied and compounded the lie by asking others to lie on his behalf. This is not about sexuality, either, regardless of the genders or ages involved at the time the alleged incident(s) took place. It completely matters that the issue means that Sam Adams denied a toxic event(s) in his life in order to gain the City of Portland's most powerful public office, which suggests an immature ruthlessness of character. That the mayor claims he's shamed and embarrassed at this point is not enough.
He has cost this city money it doesn't have available and the investigation will further cost the state, county and city more money and precious time that should be used for programs in a terrible fiscal period.
Yes, Sam should voluntarily step down, immediately.
~Kevin Bunker, North Portland
posted 4 years, 4 months ago
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on Age Old Question
I grew up with and am writing a history of a now-gone major California redwood lumber company, Union Lumber Company of Fort Bragg, which got is start in the 1880s and set its sights early-on as a sustainable harvest, growth management outfit. This worked well until they could no longer compete against the mega-mills, the conglomerates like Boise-Cascade, Georgia Pacific and Louisiana Pacific. Indeed, Union Lumber was owned by a small family with few stockholders, never went public, and held its own with large second growth and early third growth forest reserves (with staggered plantings in all) until 1969 when Boise-Cascade bought them out. Almost immediately B-C got into clear-cutting the immature second growth, and went nuts working through the remaining old growth redwood and Douglas fir. The federal government forced B-C to divest Union Lumber properties in an Sherman anti-trust act and Georgia Pacific/Louisiana Pacific took over. It ended badly with LP closing its plywood and small stuff mill first and GP finally shut and dismantled the large log mill that had run consistently since 1906 (and earlier if you don't count an interruption from a certain major earthquake).
So, old growth forests matter whether we're talking timber with minimal human contact or thriving, tax and employment-producing lumber mill properties. In terms of redwood, old growth has to be more than 80% heartwood and this takes more than 80 years to achieve assuming the tree is in a mixed-age stand and has ideal growing conditions. As commercial lumber redwood sapwood, the pale near white immature fibers, will quickly rot. Sadly, more recently milled redwood is hardly mature, full of sapwood and it's mostly a waste of the buyer's money. In North Coastal California forests, Douglas fir is the secondary tree, was often seen as junk and stove wood (until the mid-20th century) and seldom achieved the large size of old growth Oregon or Washington fir.
Now that I have established myself as an Oregonian I try to promote the concept of sustainable harvest logging and timber management to those who will listen. So many won't even pay attention, especially those with no interest in history and no investment in our past. There were horrible mistakes made here as anywhere between San Francisco and Seattle in the timber industry. But there were timber firms that cared, and those provided jobs and tax revenue where it counted most. If Canadian lumber hadn't become so inexpensive in the last 25 or so years, and had environmental legislation become so much the chokehold it has become, we might not be having some of the socio-economic problems we see today. While the timber industry was full of booms and busts I still think a modestly regulated revived version is possible.
But we aren't likely to ever see true old growth fir, spruce or redwood in our lifetimes or in the lifetimes of the next two generations. And unless we find a way to make law work both to the good of forests and the good of society in balance, all we will see is more of the same mess we've been watching since the late 1970s. This has to stop.
posted 4 years, 7 months ago
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on Political Hangover Wednesday
posted 5 years, 4 months ago
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