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tpohara's comments:
on Sex Education for College Students
this was easily the most offensive show you have ever done.
you used to balance issues, back when you started tol. where were the voices of women who will never trust their husbands again after catching them viewing porn? the counselors who have seen women's self esteem careen into lifelong tailspins or the lawyers who have handled their divorces? where was the mention that the industry this woman promotes devalues of women into self-propelled sex toys.
i kept waiting for you to have a real voice present the other side... you had NONE. you even had an ivory tower voice say she didn't think there were very many voters who would be offended by public funds being used that way... with no response as if you actually BELIEVE that to be true. are you serious?
i do note that your produces made tactical choice to put it on after your funding drive... seems they probably thought your supporters might think twice about giving to you... bit cynical, that.
i will be insisting on removing my id from this station as soon as i finish this. public funding for this? are you serious? i may not like the voices on fox, but i have to admit to a strong urge to forward this url to their news department before the senate takes up your funding... would make great national news, don't you think?
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Can't We All Just Get Along?
there are two issues i have seen that need to come into play in bringing the state back into balance:
public sector management is top heavy. i have worked for both DoT and DoR (Transportation and Revenue) in Information Tech sections, and can honestly say I've seen more time wasted from the middle and upper levels of management. if they have that much time, they are redundant. of course, part of that wasted time is dealing with equally worthless union overkill. i suspect Mr. Towers will ignore that part.
second, the unions fought hard when i was there to ignore the recession we had then. they pour money into their candidates and issues and ignored our (as members) issues. if the union really wants to have the employees do better, they should take less for dues when they are already out of touch too.
imho, of course.
posted 2 years, 9 months ago
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on Southern Oregon's Green Economy
Considering the cost of leveraging a large portion of the legal system to pursue, prosecute, and incarcerate instead of having the benefit of a taxable income, isn't it about time we look at whether this economy should be moved more into the mainstream?
Restricting pot is like the 55mph speed limit: the law is well known to be ignored at best and an encouragement to hang out with those of far more sinister intent at worst.
Before any of you get all high (no pun intended) and mighty, please remember that our state already depends on revenue from alcohol, tobacco, and gambling. Let's at least share the economic benefit of this green plantation crop and make equally good taxpayers out of the growth and resale providers.
posted 2 years, 11 months ago
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on Immigration Law
Kris Kobach on Talk of the Nation pointed out two overlooked aspects of the law:
1) the check has to be in the course of legal contact; a traffic stop, say.
2) an Arizona drivers license (or any id that requires proof of legal residence for issuance) is sufficient, no other papers needed.
I've been stopped several times over the years and every time I was expected to provide valid id (I would have been hauled in if I had not had it or refused). Which one of you thinks that if a cop asks for id you shouldn't have it for him/her to check? Those of you who have traveled overseas know that if you don't have your papers (usually passport/visas) when ANY government official asks for them, you're in trouble. Remember, they also expect proper papers from their own citizens.
What federal laws are the state and local police not supposed to enforce or even ask questions about? Kidnapping across state lines? Bank robbery? Terrorism? Why is legal status exempt?
Maybe the simple answer is require ALL state issued id from EVERY state only be issued to a person who is legally here (by birth or legal immigration); this solves any issue about profiling. The law should be simple: if you have state issued id or appropriate passport/visas when the cop asks, no problem; if you don't, the law should be that everyone (no matter what you look like) can expect to be hauled in, fingerprinted, and checked on (not only for immigration status, but outstanding warrants, terrorist watch lists, etc.). Is that fair enough?
We need to establish a fair but comprehensive legal norm before considering either securing the border or passing anything pretending to be comprehensive immigration reform.
posted 2 years, 11 months ago
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on Inspired Solutions
I would suggest you do something on the various rescue missions (the one here in Salem is the Union Gospel Mission and Simonka Place (see http://ugmsalem.org/ )) that reach out to the homeless and help get folks back on their feet. The Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul would also be important (they helped me many years ago); I support all of these in my community and know they have a positive impact. I can get you contact names for the ones in Salem if you wish. Even folks who may think ill of the Gospel might find reason to support those who reach out to the many needy in our communities.
I'm sure other ideas will come to mind later, but this is a clear immediate number one in my book and in hard times, seeing that real folks are helping others may encourage the individual to reach out to those around them who are in need. after all, even a little caring goes a lot further than none at all.
posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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on Rx: Personal Values
I think you might try considering this from the perspective that legal or not, assisted suicide was presented by a public health plan as a responsible and affordable alternative to life. This is the core of the "death panel" concerns seniors and pro-life advocates object to.
No, it was not presented as the only option, but it should not have been presented in that response at all. This is the slippery slope. By the way, I do know the as/e difference, and still think that sits at the end of the slope.
Let me put it in terms most liberal pro-choicers would understand: what is the normal response of NARAL, NOW, and other far left groups when the horrible practice of "partial birth" abortion is even somewhat restricted? It is to scream that such restrictions are steps on the road to making abortion illegal again, isn't it? Of course, when pro-choicers scream, NPR does an excellent job of covering their views well and casting doubt on the pro-life side... in the health care debate, the roles and the coverage are decidedly reversed.
My opinions: Should we cover experimental treatments? no. Should we tell potentially devastated patients that we are glad to pay for them to go kill themselves? no. Should we make sure legislation coming from the federal government protects doctors counseling on end of life issues from ever HAVING to counsel a patient that assisted suicide is a reasonable option? yes. Would just including such protections in the law remove my objections on this section? yup, you bet.
posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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on Rx: Personal Values
I am a pro-life supporter of a single payer universal health care. I find it hard to not require the one without the other: why protect the unborn life if the mother can’t get pre and post natal care and the child be covered at least until majority? But why claim that protecting someone’s health is important if you are going to kill the innocent and begin trying to force the infirm and old towards a fiscally beneficial assisted suicide. Now before you scream that I’m ill-informed about the latter, please remember that 1) Oregon’s health plan is the image of the Federal run single-payer medicare in many respects and 2) the case of Barbara Wagner shows that at least in Oregon we can not so smugly dismiss the conservative and elderly fears on end-of-life issues the current bills in the House have raised.
I agree with Dr. James Dobson about the responsibility of pro-life proponents to oppose the CURRENT versions of the legislation, but I do believe that providing specific, carefully worded protections against 1) government funded abortion and 2) any body requiring that any doctor who counsels on end-of-life issues have to include assisted suicide/euthanasia would eliminate my opposition. The fiscal conservatives won’t be swayed by the modest changes I suggest, but the pro-life ones should.
My vision of universal care, however, is not what some would want: let’s not pay for Viagra or vanity cosmetic surgery (not talking about burn or trauma victims here); mental health should be covered, beauty or self-serving under the guise of health should not.
My story this year is that my wife got ill and it has cost us well over ten thousand in direct bills and COBRA payments (I had to take 4 months off to take care of her, so it has actually cost us a LOT more). Nothing compared to what some endure, but even this modest a catastrophe destroys one’s personal safety net VERY quickly when you have too high an income to qualify for assistance and yet have very high deductible insurance because that is all you believe you can afford.
posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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on Natural Medicine?
Did I correctly understand the gentleman to say "I learn more about medicine at lunch or on the golf course than from classes or books" (not an exact quote, I had to pull off the road, find the website, and type)? If that is common thinking among NDs, I don't think it is an appropriate argument to say that MD resistance is a turf war, ESPECIALLY when the complexities of the synthetics isn't something I would expect golf buddies to converse over. Further, the folks who MIGHT talk about it on the golf course are salespersons from the pharmecutical companies... not whom I would consider the most reliable sources.
posted 3 years, 11 months ago
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on High Speed Possibilities
It will be a game of the haves and have nots. To be competitive, it will need to run into Redmond, WA. to make the Willamette valley a bedroom community for Microsoft.
Lets look at reality here:
It will need its own rail bed, too much heavy freight moves the current rail for a bullet to make good time in any of the existing corridors. Who gets to give up their prime realestate for this?
It will cost more to move people than air, so it will need to serve the wealthiest commuters.
It will be considered another TSA nightmare target, so Airport type security will be needed... this won't be as quick and simple as boarding Amtrak or the current Cascade Express.
It would be cheaper to buy up the overpriced in-town housing and offer it to real working folks at a real working wage price (affordable housing beats long commute and transportation upgrades any day).
My opinion is that there are better ways to beat congestion and put folks to work. High speed rail customers are already served by air better in this country than their counterparts overseas are, and with government not directly running high speed rail to keep prices down, the rest of us won't be able to afford it enough to make it realistic.
posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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on Not At School
I do think there is a time and place for adult consideration of what the schools offer and allow, the idea that public high schools allow for critical thinking in an age where hormone driven peer pressure rules is a bit incomplete to grossly blind.
That said, presuming that everything that is offensive to someone should be left out is ridiculous. I remember when Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were dropped from English class reading lists and the reasoning struck me as a wee bit foolish. the problem is balance: allow everything and you are a step away from things that are NOT appropriate. Do you include balanced discussion of controversial topics or do you just let street pressure push the kids reasoning? Isn't there a reason we don't let folks under 18 do a lot of other things? Were you (the greater you) and your peers really that wise at 14-17?
posted 4 years, 2 months ago
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on Good News, Bad News
I guess I deal with it by keeping things in perspective based on my "world view" where good news is available, but rarely in the impersonal world of sold media. News gets ratings (and the corollary revenue or support) when it polarizes enough to attract interest.
An ancillary problem is that the broader the audience, the more risk that any "good" news you try to find will actually be seen as either pandering or bad news by a large segment of your audience. For example, NPR having pro-abortion "good news" will disappoint (or worse) those who have a different view of when life starts while it annoys those who are REALLY tired of the subject altogether. If a broad audience news channel instead runs repeated stories of things their audience as a whole agrees are problems, the audience sticks around. IMO, misery likes company, if someone thinks life isn’t perfect for them, they gravitate to stories of folks where life seems at least as bad. Bad news further gives at least an illusion that one might eventually have enough information to protect oneself better.
I would suggest that we really only care about good news when we feel we have even a tiny positive stake in it. This is all the more true when we are convinced that the folks sharing the information with us are less than interested themselves. For me, good news comes more often from church, missionaries, or family; these are the places I have positive ties to and places that I have vested with my trust and caring.
posted 4 years, 2 months ago
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on Nuclear Northwest
Not sure where I fall on the issue, but I do have a few questions:
Can anyone offer believable assurances that unreasonable burdens from any project overruns won't wind up on our shoulders (remember WPPS?)?
Are there reasonable expectations that we have or will have technology to more efficiently use the reactions and their associated radiations other than just heat (to boil water as another person has already said)?
Can these things be located in areas of relative geologic stability for a change and the grid upgraded to handle carrying the loads wherever? And no, there is no place on the rim (WA, OR, Cal, or even Idaho that I consider stable).
Just a few, thanks for discussing this.
posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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on Oregon: The Next 150 Years
Interesting to speculate, but I think we have really no idea... just like folks a hundred and fifty years ago would be entirely confused (and maybe even disappointed) by what has happened and what we (as a state) have become.
If I had to guess, I would say we will be a thriving state post-quake, but that the human cost in the aftermath of the big one would have been unimaginable.
I think the government will be very different, but what it becomes will depend on how we deal with at least a couple of major terrorist attacks (with at least one nuke) doing almost equal destruction in one or more major US metros. We may even have trouble recognizing national and state political structures... states may be joined or further subdivided.
It's all guessing... I wonder what it will actually be like...
posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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on Greenwashing
on the broader scale, your point also works:
we need accurate evaluation of anything in context and not cliche acceptance of a broad commercial sales pitch...
posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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on Greenwashing
I'm really interested to see if there is a lot of "last man on" thinking showing up here.
Eating locally is a great example: we live in a part of the country where we can grow just about anything (in season). Does that mean populations in parts of the country that can't (say most of the Great Basin and Rocky Mountain states) are by definition unsustainable? Should they be forced to move here? Do we have room here to be sustainable if they did? Are they just SOL (Sorry, Out of Luck... what did you think I meant?)?
Let's continue the food question, which is environmentally cheaper: shipping an equal weight of refrigerated food by truck from SoCal, by rail from the midwest, or by sea from South America or Asia? Just exactly where did that morning coffee come from again?
And what about the volume that we already consume here, anyone rationally think we could even provide for our current population without doing the otherwise natural bit of not having fresh foods for most of the year? How many folks would relish the trip to the grocery if for nine months of the year there were only grains and canned goods (don't forget that refrigeration requires continuous power). Classic example: if you don’t live on the coast, you don’t get sushi without getting sick (it was only a traditional meal in Japan if you lived in a poor fishing village back in the days before mass refrigeration).
One point that I often hear conversations here (in the PNW) where otherwise rather intelligent folks look at diesel exhaust from a truck and bemoan the pollution; do they realizing that unless they are wearing homespun fabric from local fibers, eating what was grown within walking or horse riding distance (no car plants, local steel, rubber, etc up here), watching the natural TV (used to be called weather and neighbors), and forgoing the cell phone and (dare I say it) computer... then a truck brought it to them? We truckers don’t just go for drives in those things, someone wants what we are hauling and the carbon footprint is really theirs. Anyone care to tell me where the chemicals involved in making solar cells come from? Or where the local sources are for say a wind turbine’s metals or an electric car’s batteries?
Already got all the stuff you want? Is it ok then to say everyone else shouldn’t?
posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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on Gambling in the Recession
Have to admit that I was a bit disappointed in today's show... only in his next to last breath did ANYONE (the economist) you invited offer even a hint of caution about the whole thing. Are you really telling me there are no voices in the community with enough respect to have someone speaking about any downturn in gambling as a GOOD thing because it may mean less folks are doing it? No competent persons addressing the contradiction of raising more revenues/sales of these "products" and trying to help the gambling addicted with call-in numbers printed on stickers?
Usually, TOL is scrupulous about trying to see issues from many sides... I'm afraid you failed to provide anyone but those who want to trick the folks into a voluntary tax. Nothing like offering a pyrrhic hope, the kind that vanishes when they are done scratching today's new printing of the same basic cardboard (insert equally bleak assessment of any of the other "gaming products" as needed to make point).
I know you're not perfect, but please understand: you're only worth supporting again next time around if you are balanced. Please be careful to be so...
posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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on Gambling in the Recession
Ummm... correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't basing state budget on discretionary spending a wee bit like trying to base children's health care on a smoking tax? Add to that the tiny fact that we then work (rightly, imo) to convince folks that the behaviour is rather self-destructive and it would appear to be a self-defeating premise for our budget. Is it really so different from looking at one’s budget and then not going down and buying a new car this year or taking out a huge mortgage on the hopes that the thing will sell for a big profit next year?
Not a big deal when DOR is raking it in; I mean, who knew? But now we all have to eat more ramen (figuratively, perhaps, for the state), so why does this surprise anyone?
posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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on Shovel Ready?
Lets consider a radical approach that would get our region back to work and address a lot of the housing crisis at the same time.
1) Buy the big houses that are foreclosed and dragging property values in their communities back to what normal working folks can afford (oops, I meant way down... forgot myself there).
2) Burn said houses to the ground (or otherwise totally demolish them).
3) Either a) build far less expensive smaller quality homes on the old sites or b) landscape and sell the empty lots to the neighbors to increase their lot sizes.
There are several pluses here, especially with 3a (more on that in a minute). Biggest problem we have ISN"T that folks who can’t afford their homes are loosing value, but that the rarer ones who can have their value drop below reason. If two homes on the block are foreclosed, the real value of the others falls, and keeps falling until one of two things happens: the houses sell OR the houses aren’t there to detract from the neighborhood. My suggestion for the package is to start by stabilizing home values by REMOVING the sea anchors of too much overpriced inventory.
OK, now to 3a: Building new homes restarts huge sectors of the economy. The government should NOT allow the folks who have been building mansions to design or build the replacements, in my opinion the mega builders deserve their financial pain for being part of the frenzy. But the designs should not be out of character with the neighborhoods, just more reasonable in size and affordability. This would stabilize the existing home prices, put construction workers back to work, restart much of the wood products industry with all the demand, and the related industries would be able to bring folks back on making cabinets, tile, etc. Money would get into the economy quickly as transportation sector and service sector jobs would need to come back online like they have in every housing boom this country has had.
Finally, the taxpayers would see that this wasn’t a mindless throwing good money after bad. Most people I know know they’ll never even know anyone who can afford these large expensive homes. Trying to keep them on the market while "stabilizing" the value close to what will keep the neighbors from foundering means we are just imagining that the boom will return and everyone will be happy enslaving themselves to whatever entity will promise them that they can afford it...
posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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on Black and White and Googled All Over
(dave: there must be a size limit on this, posting a normal (for me) sized post just highlights the box in red and will not submit; seems to be a regular problem since the upgrade, this isn't the first its killed. also, your email bounces and there are no contact points on the page for TOL eddress.)
posted 4 years, 3 months ago
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on Unemployment: Regional Ripples
posted 4 years, 4 months ago
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