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I would like to see a show about the pay raises that are being proposed for elected officials and executive state employees. Examples:

Governor Kulongoski, despite the economic downturn, is getting a proposed pay raise of over 30%, even though he already gets free housing and meals, a monthly stipend of 1,000 dollars a month, plus per diem payments.

John Kroger, DA candidate, (despite being my overall favorite candidate this election season) is also getting an undeserved pay raise of almost 30%, before he even steps foot in office.

The main justification that the Public Pay Commission is offering is that 'we need to get the most qualified people to be writing our laws'. The problem with that is EVERY person that is getting a raise was elected at the current pay scales. So it begs the question 'either these people are not the most qualified people for the job, and don't deserve raises, or we do have the best people writing our laws already, and don't need to raise the pay.' Either way you look at it, in addition to the OBVIOUS economic downturn, these raises are a slap in the face to even the most liberal Oregonian.

There are also pay raises in place for the top executive state employees, totalling 33% percent for each person from 2007-2009. Average Oregonian state employees get 4%, if anything at all. A lot of people are getting layed off or their salaries frozen due to the economic situation we are in. The same is true in the private sector These are positions that pay as much as 170,000 a year already, why do they need more???

I think this would be an excellent topic to do a show on, as it affects ALL Oregonians and is guaranteed to start a great academic conversation. I am an expert on Oregon public compensation and am willing to provide more information if needed.

posted 4 years, 8 months ago
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I gotta agree with tpohara's comments.

On a side note, I think it would be interesting to have a show on children of teen parents. I think their perspective on abortion, teen pregnancy, etc., would be a great conversation topic and might lead to some insight that most people never think about. My mom was 13 when she became pregnant with me, and it has shaped my views on abortion, teen pregnancy, teen parenting, social services, etc. Just a thought.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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By no means am I saying that it's right that such things are banned. I don't feel strongly either way. I am just merely pointing out why it is the way that it is. I agree that we have to make some hard choices to succeed, but more then that, we need a tremendous amount of financial influence if we want to succeed. Things should be done because they are 'right' but we don't live in a perfect world by any stretch of the imagination, and money rules everything in public policy.

I'm not saying that the government is not going to allow this to happen because we can't turn a profit. I'm saying that it's impossible to tax a black market, and if it were made legal, you would now have a legal black market with no way to regulate it. At least if the government keeps it illegal, they can still regulate it in the form of reprimands. The market will always be there for prostitution and drugs, but if it were legal, then there would be no way to regulate it, taxing or otherwise. That is why the government won't step up. It is only magnified by the fact that the alcohol industry is lobbying with large sums of cash.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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I don't think drugs will ever be legalized in the US. Not due to policy issues, or something of that nature. I think it will be because of economic reasons. The alcohol industry fights legalization more then politicians or law enforcement due to the fact that they would lose billions of dollars in revenue if people were intoxicating themselves in other ways. Also, there would be a largely unregulated market for narcotics, which the government wouldn't be able to tax due to logistical reasons. Although law enforcement and conservative politicians are enemies of legalization, there are a lot of greed issues fighting legalization as well. I can't apply that to prostitution yet, but I guarantee there is someone that is protecting their economic interest by keeping prostitution illegal.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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If anything should get more funding from lottery dollars, it should be gambling addiction services. I sure hope if this passes that no money is allocated to the Silverton Police Department. They already have more cops then a 9,000 people town should ever have, and horrible cops at that. I hope this bill dies. As for facts and figures, look at all of the school districts that are on the verge of collapse due to financial woes.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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I absolutely refused to go into debt for college. Rather then go straight after high school, I took six years off to save up enough money to pay my entire two years at community college. From there I had established my own small business that allowed me to have a flexible schedule to go to a state university, which was paid by a full academic scholarship. I have two terms left, Fall and Winter, at which point I will have a Bachelor's and two Associate's and zero debt. People may try to downplay a state university degree as opposed to a private university degree, but the earning potential for private college degrees versus a public degree is marginal at best. I know plenty of private graduates, and even two ivy league graduates, that earn barely enough to cover their loan payment the size of a mortgage. I have been offered several jobs paying a mean of 50k a year, and with no debt, I feel that I am better off then my private university counterparts hands down. Moral of the story, save hard, work hard, study hard, and you can get all of your college paid for, and the money that you would have been paying on a student loan, save and put into an IRA, and by the end of your 20 year reunion, you will be better off then all of those private school graduates, guranteed.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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My mother was 13 when she became pregnant, 14 when I was born. I think a lot of the time people forget about the children of teen parents and focus a lot on the parents of the teens and the teens themselves. I still to this day have never heard of a scholarship for a child of a teen parent for instance, but there is an enormous amount for the teen parents themselves (not to detract from teen parent scholarships, which are worthwhile for sure). I am almost done with college so I could care less about getting something like that for myself, but I think it would be a great thing for future teen-parented children. That is just one of many examples of the children of teen parents 'falling through the cracks'.

As for my mom, she decided to go to high school and graduated. She currently works for the State of Oregon as a Human Resources Manager. By all accounts she is successful. I can not begin to describe the sacrifices she had to make to not only get her where she is today, but to also get me to where I am today. While other teen mothers where dropping out of school and going on welfare, my mom stuck to her studies and basically sacrificed all social activities to work at night. She truly is amazing.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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Oh definitely, the doctor is a must. He is actually in touch with his doctor probably more then any other person in his life. And yes, he is quite strong, and extremely agile for his size. That is what made me the most upset about him getting passed up for the biggest loser, and it's whats going to make our movie entertaining. He has a bachelor's degree in health (ironic, I know) and he has a tumbling routine that he had to compile as part of his degree. It should be video gold.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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My best friend is 6ft 550 lbs. He is 28 years old, and I have had to take him to the emergency room 5 times since high school because he thought he was having a heart attack. Ironically, I had to take him even though I thought it was impossible for a 20 year old man to have a heart attack (well not impossible, but not probable) because he was so overweight. In 1998, he weighed 290 and considered himself to be morbidly obese at that weight. Now he struggles with all kinds of issues because he is approaching twice his old weight.

I paid for his bus ticket to try out for the biggest loser season 3 (he weighed in at 448 back then) but they turned him down in the last cut before final rosters for the show. He has tried the subway diet, low carb diet, liquid diet, just about everything there is.

My plan now is to make a movie about him called 'Un-Super Size Me'. We are going to put him out in the middle of nowhere with a trainer/nurse with nothing but a weeks worth of food at a time. There will be no entertainment, just a clock with a paper on either side, one paper with a list of workouts and times and the other paper with what to eat at what time. His largest excuse for not losing weight is life. So we take everything away and he will have no excuses. The only thing he has to think about everyday is losing weight. I will go out and film him doing his workouts every sunday and bring him his next weeks worth of food.

We figure either he will eat me when I go out there, he will die from a heart attack, or he will indeed lose weight over the course of three months that we are filming. However it turns out, it should make for a pretty interesting documentary.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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Art lovers are a minority of the Oregon population. When you take into account how many people that work in government agencies (and are therefore the only people that see the art), it's an even smaller minority. I understand that public art is for the majority of the public to enjoy, but the majority of the Oregon public doesn't enjoy art (at least not to the extent that they must see it in public). I do certainly believe that we can spend tax dollars on art classes for grade schoolers, but once they graduate they have to get 'real' jobs, in art or otherwise. If they want to go into art, by all means do so, and understand that it's not the most lucrative money making job you can pursue. Just because artists struggle to sell their work (whether their art is good or bad) doesn't mean that the government should subsidize their labor by buying their artwork to display at government agencies. Like I said earlier, if people feel so strongly that we should subsidize artists why not subsidize public music at government agencies as well? There are many more people that like music in Oregon than paintings, why don't we have musicians being paid to play the piano in agency cafeterias? Because it doesn't make sense. It's a luxury to have musicians playing for you at a government agency, just like art is a luxury. Luxury items should not be paid for by government tax dollars. I don't believe that all public displayed art could (or should) be paid for privately, I think it has no place in government operations at all. If wealthy art collectors want to donate it, then fine, if not, that's fine too, it doesn't affect the efficiency of government agencies either way. I agree that music, dance, performing arts, and theater all enjoy public funding, and that should continue along with visual art, but if you're going to put it on public display, either put it all on public display at government agencies expense or none of it. I vote none, because they are all luxury items. I think that having art programs in school is vital to kid's development and the money is better spent in the classroom where it gets more utility return. There's minimal utility return for public displayed art, and in some cases, no utility return except to the artist that sold their work. And if their work was good, it would be bought in the private market. The fact that it is bought by the public market only suggests that it was not good enough to be bought in the private market.

posted 5 years ago
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Tax dollars should be used in a creative and innovative way to benefit all Oregonians, not a minority population of art lovers. There needs to be a pecking order of priorities for tax dollars, and art would be well behind on that list. Until the most urgent and vital programs are well funded and on track, no tax dollars should be spent on art for public display. I'M NOT SAYING TO ABOLISH ART FUNDING FOR SCHOOLS OR SCHOLARSHIPS, I'm saying when it comes to art to be displayed in public buildings or places, especially when there's donated art that can be displayed, spending money on it is wasteful. Put that money into the classroom. As far as the war, I agree that is a huge waste of money, but it is also low on the pecking list along with public art and neither of them should be getting our tax dollars. I'm not arguing against artists, or them making money, or whether or not public art is good or bad, I'm arguing that tax dollars should not be buying the end products. Private buyers should be in the art buying business, not the state.

posted 5 years ago
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Regardless if artwork is bad or not (I couldn't tell you the difference), the state should not buy it. Even if it's the greatest art in the history of the world, tax dollars should go into underfunded programs that are vital to the operation of this state. This doesn't include art. Art is a luxury item. If all the donated artwork were deemed bad, then don't have it at all, although I think that there is tons of art that was all donated to universities that could be used at state agencies that is of the same quality as what is now on display (and was paid for). I AM NOT SAYING THAT ART SHOULD NOT EXIST, OR THAT ARTISTS SHOULD NOT MAKE MONEY FOR WHAT THEY DO, what I am saying is that the state should not be the ones paying for the art pieces. I disagree that the art scene is Oregon's most important asset. Agriculture, human capital, and many other things are way more important assets to this state. I AM NOT ARGUING WHETHER OR NOT THE PUBLIC ART IN OREGON IS TASTEFUL OR NEEDS TO BE IMPROVED, I am arguing that the state should not be in the art buying business. Private entities and parties should be in the art buying business, which if it's as booming as bloggers are indicating, should result in artists doing just fine without the help of government agencies.

posted 5 years ago
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If art is 'good', then the artists should be paid for their time, I couldn't agree more. But they shouldn't be paid by the state, they should be paid by a private entity. I recognize that art is a legitimate field of study and profession. So is music, does that mean that we should have musicians playing in state buildings in the cafeterias, paid for with state dollars? No field of study or profession should have tax dollars spent to display items at state buildings, art, music, or anything. That's a waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere. Like I said in my previous posting, why not put that money into the education system, in an art class. All that art does at state buildings is collect dust. I'm willing to concede that a very, very small minority of state workers get pleasure from the artwork, but no more then they would if the art was donated. And even then, being that it's such a small minority of workers, more satisfaction would be derived from those tax dollars if it were used in a different manner. I know dozens of art students that would donate their art in a heartbeat if the state wanted to display it at agency buildings, especially if it resulted in more art supplies for schools as opposed to money being spent on art to hang on agency walls.

posted 5 years ago
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President - Obama wins 60% to 40%
Senate - Jeff Merkley winner with 41% of the vote
5th D - Marks by 5 percentage point spread
5th R - Erickson 55% to the real Predator's 45%
Attorney General - Kroger wins 55% to 45%
Secretary of State - Kate Brown with 42% of the vote
Portland Mayor - who knows, I don't live in Portland

These are numbers generated by polling political science students at Western Oregon University between 2:00 and 3:00 pm today.

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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The election issue that has caught my attention the most is not a candidate, but a bond measure. Here in Salem, we are voting for a bond that would benefit Chemeketa Community College. I voted no for the bond. I am a Chemeketa graduate with two degrees from there, and I have seen first hand the gross mismanagement of funds at that school. I think it would be ridiculous to give a school more money when they do an extremely poor job of maximizing the funds they already have.

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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I am a current student at Western Oregon University. Up until a few years ago, the City of Monmouth was a dry town (couldn't sell alcohol), which pretty much made this a dry university, and a strict enforcer of alcohol on campus. Things have changed recently as far as allowing alcohol sales in Monmouth, but the campus security is still very active in enforcing alcohol consumption on campus. It is easier for them to do so because it is a smaller school (compared to OSU or UO).

As far as drugs go, I have not seen too much on campus. I'm not ignorant, I have to assume that it is going on, but it's not overt or blatant around campus. It seems to me that there is a lot to do around campus (tons of activities and recreation for students almost everyday), and that keeps kids busy and away from drugs and alcohol, at least more so than other universities. I think that it has to do a lot with where we are located as well. We are close enough to Salem and Corvallis that kids are not bored out of their minds with nothing to do but consume drugs, yet far enough that drugs are not as readily available as they would be in say Eugene or Portland.

I went to Chemeketa Community College in Salem, and drug and alcohol use was much more prevelant. This may be due to the fact that there's more students there, that it's a Community College and kids are less focused, or that it's in an area that drugs are readily available.

As far as what is the best approach to curbing alcohol and drug use amongst college students, I think that is extremely hard to determine. I know students that have had great success after finishing rehab, while I also know about the same amount of students that it had little to know effect on. Education works for some students by basically scaring them into not participating, yet I see a lot of those students coming to college, getting a small taste of it, then going off the deep end into addiction because that were never really exposed to it earlier in life (I'm talking about real life exposure as opposed to only educational exposure).

I experienced alcohol and drug use early in my life, and although that could have sent me into certain destruction, I felt that it gave me a heads up later in life. I knew that it was bad, first hand, and to stay away from it if I wanted to succeed in life. Other 'sheltered' students, who were so scared by the education they recieved about drug use, tried it for the first time in college and went crazy, almost all of which never pulled out of it and are now drop outs with no future.

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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I have lived in Salem, Oregon my whole life, and it is easy for me to see why people in eastern Oregon are frustrated. It seems like if you're not in the portland/salem/eugene/medford areas, you are largely ignored. I think that the tensions are intensified when you consider just how different politically the valley is verse other parts of the state. In my program at Western Oregon, anyone from east of the Cascades is staunchly Republican, while people in the valley are very much Democrat, with very few exceptions. I think it is absolutely impossible to get a fifty first state or even moving Idaho's border west, but I can see why a minority of Oregonians would want to.

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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By no means am I saying that there is no room for art. I am saying that paying for it for state properties is a bad idea. Why not display art that was donated? Then use the money that would have bought art for the agency and put it up for art programs in schools. I have no problem that 3-4% of Oregon's GDP goes toward art, but I think that 0% of that should come in the form of artwork at government agency buildings. They should put it to more efficient use, in the form of art scholarships for college art students, or art supplies for classrooms. There's a lot of art at the Revenue building, especially that rusty piece of metal in the front that was removed. That was wasted money ($5500). I'm ok with art at such places, but get donated art. A lot of artists would be proud to have the opportunity to donate their pieces for public display. There certainly is a lot of art around my university, all donated by art students.

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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Public art that is paid for with tax dollars is a HUGE waste of money. There are a lot of kids that don't have enough to eat, don't have adequate healthcare, and go to budget strapped schools, yet tax dollars can pay for art? Don't get me wrong, if someone wants to donate art to be put on public display at say a state building, I'm all for that (assuming it is appropriate for the location). But I know for a fact that at the Department of Revenue as well as DMV Headquarters there were thousands of dollars spent on art that only a small minority of the public cares about. At DMV Headquarters, the building is closed to the public except the lobby, yet there are several paintings in the areas that only employees can access. What purpose does that serve? Does it make the agency run smoother or more efficient? It would have had way more effect in those regards had the money been used for operating expenses.

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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Growing space is not as much of an issue in America, where the BLM has so much land, compared to Europe, where every inch of the continent is and has been greatly sought as a rarer and rarer commodity. The beauty of hemp is that it can be grown in just about any part of America, namely places that are undesirable or unsuitable for food based agriculture. Also, hemp produces so much more raw product per acre than corn or probably any food, that it would be better in regards to growth space efficiency. Lastly, because hemp is not a substitute or compliment product to foods in an economical sense (maybe minimally in some vegetarian stores, a negligible amount), it would drive up food prices only a small bit, if at all. Hemp as a fuel source makes so much sense that it is ridiculous that it is not being used.

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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