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Funding parks with lottery money has been a great solution to a problem that was long-standing and increasingly dire problem. The sollution has worked very well and should be placed on a permanent basis. I will absolutely support it and I urge ALL Oregnians to do the same.

posted 2 years, 7 months ago
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Hainvg just heard the person whose PAC went against Allied Waste and lost and who felt that she had been uselessly defeated, I want to say DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!

I worked on Ballot Measure 6 (the 'Close Trojan Nuclear Plant' ballot measure) and have worked on dozens of other campaigns, since then, that have been outspent by industrial and commercial interests to the tune of millions. Some we have lost, but we have scored important victories by NOT GIVING UP and by organizing what little money we could and talking to as many people as we can.

If you go up against such interests, you stand a good chance of losing. If you don't, you stand NO CHANCE of winning. And when you DO win, it benefits everyone ... and feels SO good!

posted 2 years, 9 months ago
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What a bleak, cynical view of the world and the way it works. Not to mention the glaring factual inaccuracies like the so-called '99.9% accurate' claim.

A recent study by the Seton Hall law professor D. Michael Risinger puts the share of innocents in prison at 3 percent to 5 percent. But that study looked only at capital crimes and with capital crimes the defendant generally has better representation than in lesser cases. But even so, a 2 percent wrongful conviction rate would mean about 46,000 people who are incarcerated for crimes they didn’t commit.

I wonder what jacob would be writing if HE had been falsely accused of a crime, found to be 'guilty beyond a reasonable doubt' by a jury of his peers and incarcerated for 17 years for a crime he did not commit, costing him his job, his friends, his family, his reputation and placing him in a prison system that is, by almost any account, horrific.

As to the claim that the cost of assuring American citizens justice, in cases like this, is too expensive, I would respectfully point out that district attorneys and prosecutors could go a long way toward lowering the cost of such cases by allowing DNA testing where evidence is available.

Experience has repeatedly shown that prosecutors and D.A.'s routinely resist allowing DNA testing in pertinent cases and spend substantial sums of public money to do so, not because there is no credible reason to do so, but because they feel that the subsequent reversal of a case represents a failure of their offices.

This very resistance is a significant factor in the so-called 'paucity of successful appeals'. And the supreme financial irony is that it costs a lot less to do a DNA test and release the innocent than it does to keep a wrongfully-incarcerated individual in prison for 10 or 20 years .. or life .. or the death penalty.

Personally, I love the 'showmanship lawyers' claim. Apparently, frustrated by the the fact that he couldn't claim that these attorneys get rich defending the innocent (because, of course, wrongfully-convicted persons rarely have a lot of money), jacob has decided that they do it for the publicity. Think back; how many innocence attorneys of national stature can you think of? None? I wonder why?

Clearly jacob's personal philosophy and political ideology trump any thoughts of justice, empathy or compassion for others.

posted 2 years, 10 months ago
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I belong to a group called the Mooters, made up of serious Tolkien fans who met online and have become close friends over the years, though many of us have never met 'in the flesh'.

Last month we had a "Mootstock" a gathering of those of us who could make it to Oregon from Michigan, Houston and other points east, and we spent 5 days at the coast reading aloud, hiking, talking of all things Tolkien, making coney stew and more.

During one of our hikes, we came upon a geo-cache, purely by accident, not far from the Hecita Head lighthouse. We were amazed and delighted to find a wizard stamp in it, which you can well imagine, fitted in well with our theme. We left it there; we took nothing but we placed some objects of our own in it and a little note. We noted the contact info on the container and tried, later, to get hold of those who had left it but they were no longer online.

What happens to 'lost' geo-caches? Is there a place one can report them so that those who want to find them can connect to them?

We are still in the process of putting up a photo gallery of Mootstock 2010, which will include pictures of the letterbox we found. It will be found at: http://mootstock.com/mootstock_2010.htm

I can be emailed at: valdaquende@mootstock.com

posted 2 years, 10 months ago
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It should be quite clear to anyone who is paying attention that the use of plastic bags is harmful to the environment on a number of counts.

It is equally clear that the use of paper bags has a serious environmental impact.

The answer is so simple ... use cloth bags. No serious impact ... they go back to the earth when they are thrown away. And their manufacture creates and/or suports jobs for farmers, agricutural workers, textile workers and others.

And to the degree that a ban on plastic bags will cut down on the problems that we all see (except the plastic industry) and will encourage the use of cloth or reusable bags, I am all for it.

posted 3 years, 3 months ago
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This entire matter is a consequence of our society's absurd and idiotic attitudes about our own bodies. There is no shame in the human form unless and until you put it there.

Unfortunately, the Puritans who helped found our country (and others whose religious beliefs consider the human body shameful) brought their own religious prejudices with them, left us a legacy of societal psychosis and were, sadly, able to translate their religious beliefs into public policy.

There is no shame in the human body and the sooner we acknowledge it and get used to it the sooner we can do away with a host of absurdities that beset us in everyday life. The obsession with bodies, sex, cosmetic aesthetics, etc. is entirely founded upon this nutty notion that we have something to hide.

ktkatekate's comment, for example, is a point well-taken. Our current pop-culture bombards us with body-centric images and sexual content specifically because of the concept of shame and the consequential idea that we have something to hide and that it is therefore forbidden and therefore to be sought out. As Helen Fisher (anthropologist at Rutger's) points out, people are terribly motivated by something that they can't quite get.

The solution, though, is to simply remove the ban on the human form and allow people the freedom to dress (or not) as they please. As people get used to allowing others the freedom to be who they are, this dysfuntional phobia about the human body can, finally and to the benefit of all, fade away.

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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Emergency room care is the most expensive there is, because the costs associated with maintaining a 24/7 facility that can handle the most dire of emergencies just plain costs more. And the costs have to be spread across all the people who walk into E.R.

It is regrettable that this is the case but ... this is the case.

posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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You are already paying for them now. Every time someone has to go to the emergency room to get care and cannot pay, regardless of how well or how poorly they took care of themselves, their costs are passed along to either other consumers or to the taxpayers. And emergency room care is the most expensive care there is.

I understand the reluctance to pay for those who can't or don't take care of themselves, but in this case, ideology makes no difference. We will all pay for everyone one way or another. It would be a LOT better to pay for them in a preventative, non-emergency context than to do it in the emergency room.

posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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We spend 50% more on health care than any other country on the face of the Earth. However we rank between 28th and 50th in the world in terms of quality and delivery of health care (depending upon which study you read). Not surprisingly, every other developed country delivers better health care for 2/3 of what we pay by regulating profits, eliminating waste, fraud and inefficiency and ensuring that everyone is covered.

A Harvard Medical School study in 2003 identified over $390 Billion PER YEAR in waste, fraud and inefficiency. Medical costs have risen substantially since then. WE are paying for all of that, as well as multi-million dollar salaries for executives, etc. A lot has been made of the $10 Trillion price tag of Obama's health care reform.It would take less than three years of the waste, fraud and inefficiency to pay for ALL of the reform plan.

posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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My best friend of 46 years, a staunch Republican conservative worked all of his adult life, earning praise and appreciation from his employers. He was laid off, five years ago and, while looking for work, he began feeling mild abdominal pains. Being broke, with a partner to support and barely enough money to buy food, he decided, as millions of other Americans have to, that a visit to a doctor would have to wait until he had the money to pay for it. He finally got a part-time job as a log truck driver but was not covered by health care until after a 6-month probationary period. Knowing that if he went to a doctor before he was covered that he would be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition, he tried to tough it out.

When he was finally rushed to an emergency room, it was found that he had acute diverticulitis which had perforated and infected the organs in his peritoneal cavity. They removed all of his large intestine, 30 feet of his small intestine and gave him a colostomy.

His condition was advanced, though, and they couldn't stop the infection. He underwent TEN more difficult surgeries over the next 40 months and spent all but six weeks or so in the hospital during that time. Of course, he wasn't covered for any of this, so the hospitals and, ultimately, taxpayers that will now ultimately have to foot a medical bill that will, in all likelihood, exceed a million dollars.

And all because he couldn't get the few hundred or few thousand dollars or so in health care up front that would have saved his life, given him another 20 years of productive, tax-paying working years and prevented heartache and misery for his lover, his family and his friends. He passed away, of multiple organ failure, three weeks ago.

We have complicated problems that require complicated, thoughtful and courageous solutions. The single-payer option is not on the tables because 'conservatives' like Steve (unfortunately) do not understand that government allows us to band TOGETHER to do, together, the things that we cannot do singly. Government is NOT the answer to everything but it IS the answer to some things.

posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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This concept raises some very disturbing issues; the potential consequences of opening the door to human genetic engineering is but one.

Right now, human activities are affecting our planet and its ecology on a scale too vast to be grasped. We are witnessing a rate of the extinction of species unparalleled in recorded history and not seen, in geologic terms, for hundreds of thousands of years. We are using up our planet's resources and polluting our environment in ways that will take decades, centuries or millenia to heal.

The silent elephant in the room, and the exacerbating factor in every one of the problems we are creating for ourselves and our planet is that of overpopulation. What will happen when we can re-engineer ourselves to optimize our own survival and extend our own longevity?

Humans have a long history of wielding technologies without having attained the wisdom with which to properly do so; one has only to look at our world to see many of the drastic effects of this pattern. The benefits that could be derived from this sort of research are quite attractive, but I am acutely aware of the potentially disasterous consequences of allowing a species as short-sighted, mercurial and profit-motivated as ours to re-engineer itself.

(NOTE: Should you read this on-air, "Valdaquende" is pronounced "val-de-kwen-duh")

posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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I completely agree. The 'MY health care is okay so don't mess with it' attitude is emblematic of a so-called 'conservative' movement that thinks that as long as they are okay, everything is fine and if anyone else is having a problem it's their own damned fault. It's also emblematic of people who fear change and avoid it at any cost until a situation reaches absolute crisis proportions.

My friend (cited in the posting above) was a conservative Republican and we had many animated arguments along these lines. In the end, after the benighted health-care system in this country condemned him to three years of suffering and hospitalization and, in the end, death, I wound up spending thousands of dollars and thousands of hours loaning him and his family money, driving them from the coast to Corvallis for doctor's appointments, sitting with him for days at a time in the hospital, etc.

None of his conservative friends, to the best of my knowledge, stepped forward to offer any significant help of any kind during that three year period.

I am specifically NOT saying, here, that all conservatives or all Republicans are heartless or cruel, but I AM pointing out that that philosophy which asserts that we can all make it on our own and that anyone who can't is somehow defective as a person or a member of society breeds the kind of lack of compassion that the 'MY health care is okay so what's the problem?' attitude. And boy, does it cost others dearly. Ask me; I know.

This is a society; that means we are all in this together. We do NOT participate in society because we just wake up and feel like we'd like to be around some other people. We participate because, unless you are willing to find some free land you can call your own, hunt for all your own food, grow all your own vegetables, make all your own cloth, sew all your own clothes, make all your own tools from scratch, build your own house from scratch, etc., you CANNOT SURVIVE WITHOUT EVERYONE ELSE. The idea that you can is a fantasy.

Since we're all in the same societal boat, doesn't it make sense to make sure that the other guy's 1/2 of the boat doesn't sink?

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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And where do you think that those investment dollars come from? And are you aware of accounting and tax-acounting practices? When a dollar of profit made by an insurance company is invested elsewhere as part of doing business it is (guess what?) not reported as net profit. Not to mention the many, many other ways that profits can be buried or sheltered. Companies and individuals do this routinely to avoid paying taxes. There's nothing sinister about this, by the way; it is a normal business practice and is provided for by Congress in the US tax code.

Rather than believing what the insurance companies tell me, I'm inclined to believe non-profits like the Harvard Medical School (hardly a hotbed of liberal thinking) (hms.harvard.edu/) and the American Instutute of Medicine (www.aiom.org).

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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To get personal:

My best friend of 47 years was a conservative republican who worked as a log truck driver on the Oregon Coast. He was temporarily unemployed, three years ago, when he began experiencing apparent digestive problems and abdominal pain. He couldn't afford to go to a doctor and assumed that this was just some passing digestive problem. He was hired by a log-truck company in the Newport area, but had to work there for six months before he would qualify for health care. With a household to support and a backlog of bills and debts, he put this on the back burner. So he persevered.

Less than a month from qualifying for his employer's health care plan, he was rushed to the hospital in Toledo. They rushed him to Good Samaritan in Corvallis where he was diagnosed with acute diverticulitis. They removed all of his large intestine and 30' of the small intestine. He spent almost all of the next THREE YEARS in the hospital and underwent ten more surgeries. He finally succumbed and died three weeks ago.

Because our screwed up system allowed him no option for health care, he spent about 1,000 days in 24-hour hospital care, when access to an early diagnsosis and treatment would have saved his life and spared the public well over $600,000 in medical expenses that the hospital now has to spread across the rest of us.

Please, people; wake up and recognize that a) not everyone is like you and b) we are all in this together; your lack of perception and compassion for others is, unfortunately, emblematic of a 'conservative' movement that cares nothing about anything but themselves. There's only one problem with allowing the other fellow's 1/2 of the boat to sink.

I'll be scattering my friend's ashes this weekend.

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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I want single-payer or at least a public option.

There are over 1,100 health insurance companies in this country and they make over $700 BILLION each year in profits. In the last decade, premiums have more than doubled and insurance company profits have soared by over 420% percent in that same time.

World Health Organization studies consistently rank the United States at the bottom of the 'top 30' countries, as far as health care is concerned because we deliver less care per capita than these countries and spend FAR more to do so. All to line the pockets of insurance companies, drug companies and others.

France spends 6% of its relatively-low GDP to insure every single French citizen, no exceptions. The United States spends over 18% of its huge GDP to profit insurance companies and others while leaving over 50 MILLION Americans with no care whatever.

These drug and insurance companies make these obscene profits by cherry-picking, denying coverage and more. They will do anything, say anything to continue making those profits.

They are, unfortunately, aided and abetted by a political party that believes that government by the people is inherently evil, as well as pathological liars like Rush Limbaugh.

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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Your conservative is so full of it about tort reform. Studies show that less than 10 percent of victims of malpractice ever even file a claim.

Every American deserves adequate health care; over 50 million of us don't have it. According to the Institute of Medicine, aproximately 18,000 Americans die each year due to lack of health care. According to the Harvard School of Medicine, over $225 BILLION dollars are wasted in administrative costs and inflated profits. Health care premiums have more than doubled in the last 10 years and health insurance company profits have risen 423% during that time.

If the Harvard study is correct, we could pay the entire $1 Trillion cost of reform with 4 years of the waste they have identified. And guess where that money goes .. to drug and insurance companies.

We are already paying more for health care than ANY other country in the world and yet, out of the 30 most advanced countries, we come in 28th out of 30 for quality of health care. Interestingly, almost all the others have - guess what - single payer health care. But there are more than 1,100 health care insurance companies in this country and they have more money for campaign contributions than voters do, so no one is talking about single payer, even though you don't hear people in Europe complaining about their health care the way Americans are complaining about ours. Do you?

A public option is far from perfect but it is at least a step in the right direction. Advocating the current system with its obscene profits and incredible waste, rather than to try to acheive somthing which provides more equitable treatment to ordinary citizens is just waht I expect from conservatives.

posted 3 years, 10 months ago
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Not surprisingly, almost every comment submitted so far seems to miss the point. The point here is NOT to "make the ethnic makeup reflect that of the population". The idea is to give every individual who wants to apply for a position a fair shot at doing so. The person selected should be the best-qualified, but everyone should have a fair chance.

The fact is that, for almost ALL of its history, America has systematically and deliberately made sure that people of color have either an unfair chance or no chance at all, when competing with whites. This almost inevitably results in a population of people who have been systematically denied opportunities and who often absorb (and pass on to their children) the idea that they cannot be treated fairly because of the color of their skin or their national, religious or their ethnic background.

We are now in the position of trying to transition to a national culture that values everyone and treats everyone fairly, but a huge culture, like a huge ship, has a lot of inertia. It requires a lot of effort to overcome the inertia of the status quo and change that direction.

All that is being asked is that every person, including minorities, have a chance. The previous comments about 'affirmative action' reflect both ignorance of the measure and an unwillingness to make sure that everyone gets a fair chance at the opportunities that our society affords its citizens.

My personal feeling about affirmative action is this: I and all of my American ancestors have benfitted from access to opportunities that others have been denied. I have ancestors who owned slaves and have other ancestors who got land grants, employment opportunities and other socio-economic benefits because, in part, others were denied the same opportunities because of the color of their skin. (Not to mention those who spent their entire lives in slavery and degradation.)

Making sure that this historic wrong is righted, in the present, by making sure that the descendants of those who were denied (and everyone else, for that matter) has a fair chance seems a very small price to pay. If that's affirmative action, I'm all for it.

posted 3 years, 11 months ago
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It strikes me that one of the most important components that needs to be added to our electrical grid is that of storage. What is needed, it seems to me, is a repository for generated power. In the world of information technology there are arrays of computers that are combined to act as 'mega-systems' for shared processing, information storage, etc.

What is needed are arrays of storage cells that can store large amounts of power so that power can be stored in them when it is abundant (or over-abundant) and can supply power during times when the generated supply is inadequate to meet the needs of the moment.

These arrays could be large arrays or 'storage farms' in discrete locations or as small units dispersed among residential and industrial developments. The latter arrangement would probably be better in that they would be more resilient, closer to the point of use, more easily connected to residential power generation (such as solar cells, etc.) and less prone to infrastructure outages.

posted 4 years ago
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That is both silly and simplistic. If you have ever tried to put together a large project of any kind, you'd understand how difficult and costly it is to do so. Every resource that can be brought to bear counts in the overall investment picture.

The idea that a car manufacturer would move their operation, lock, stock and barrel, halfway across the world in order to save what are a few dollars, relatively speaking, in their overall operation is ridiculous.

posted 4 years ago
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I am completely in favor of this idea. We badly need to develop these kinds of technologies and the companies that are making it happen need all the help they can get. The sooner we move to cleaner forms of energy, in particular, the better off we, our children and our entire planet will be.

If incentives such as these can encourage this kind of growth while providing jobs and long-term development in this state, I consider this as wise a use of public money as any and better than most.

I might add that the minute electric vehicles and adequate infrastructure are in place, I will buy and use an electic vehicle; curtailing the use of fossil fuels is absolutely essential to having a livable environment in the future. And the sooner we move toward this model, the better off we all will be.

I'd like to point out a basic tenet of government and finance that has been an underlying economic principle since the days of the Babylonians; that is the realization that public investment brings a host of benefits to the public, at all socio-economic levels. One of the basic purposes of government is to collect revenue and invest it in public works, infrastructure and directed growth for the good of the citizenry.

Encouraging the manufacture of non-fossil, alternative energy vehicles that could be made in Oregon by Oregonians, sold to Oregonians and driven by Oregonians strikes me as being an extraordinarily good idea.

posted 4 years ago
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