A beautiful early Spring Saturday afternoon: sunny, blue sky, light breeze, almost warm. Of course what people want on a day like that is to spend 90 minutes listening to policy wonks talk about the state of Oregon’s finances. What better way to enjoy the day?

As it turned out, a few dozen of us chose to do exactly that yesterday afternoon. We do what we can to keep Portland weird.

It was billed as the “Financial State of the State” and was hosted by Rep Jules Bailey. Joining him were State Economist Tom Potiowsky, who spoke about Oregon’s recent economic history (we never miss a recession!) and Rep Tina Kotek, a member of the Ways and Means Committee, who talked about the budget: how Oregon spends its money. Rep Bailey must have drawn the short straw because he got to talk about “revenues” — ie, taxes.

While it may have been too nice a day to be inside, the material presented should be required basic knowledge for anyone making a decision on Oregon’s taxes or how we spend the state’s money. That would include all voters. Since I was one of the few chuckleheaded enough to show up for the town hall hosted by Rep Jules Bailey, I’ll share what I learned so you can take your time — and save it for a dark, rainy evening.

State Economist Tom Potiowsky on Economic History & Forecasting

If your vision of an economist is a bland little man unable to converse with adults in plain English, then you need to meet Tom Potiowsky. While skilled in the occult arts of economics, he can present material as drearily as a legislative committee needs it or with the kind of verve that holds the interest of a small group of interested citizens. Seriously. Book him for your next party of activists wanting to change Oregon. Here are the highlights:

• Oregon has never missed a single recession or recovery. We don’t necessarily match what happens in the rest of the country exactly, but we’re close enough that national issues and events matter to Oregon. A lot.
• The recession ended last fall (September 22nd, in the middle of the afternoon, a fact he challenges anyone to refute) and, while some aspects have been welcome — exports to the Pacific Rim in particular — there are enough other issues to make him warn that, in 2010, the recovery will be “soft”.
• In terms of joblessness, we’re doing better now than we were a year ago, but still worse than most of the rest of the country.
• Underemployment ranges 17-20%, everything from those who’ve quit working to those working an enforced part-time. Underemployment, says Potiowsky, is a “better measure of the stress that’s happening”.
• The 2000s were a “lost decade”: Oregon had two back-to-back recessions and the economy in 2010 is basically where it was in 2000, despite population growth and other factors.

In May of 2009, as the State Economist does every other year, he presented his forecast for the coming biennium (2009-11). That forecast does not merely serve as a guide for the State’s budget process; it sets the ceiling on spending. Potiowsky, in answer to my question, said “my forecast should be more advisory rather than … us setting the budget”. Two big points:

‘Nuff said.

Apparently Boeing did not pay attention to the Cascade Policy Institute, FreedomWorks and the Oregon GOP. The passage of Measure 67 means that Oregon is a bad place for business, that our taxes will destroy jobs and that companies will flee Oregon for the greener pastures of Washington, Idaho and Illinois. Boeing did not get the memo:

Boeing Co. plans to pour up to $120 million into its Gresham operation, replacing a 30-year old chemical processing plant and adding 152 jobs in the next three years.

Delicious irony: Boeing’s headquarters? Chicago. Mayor Daley’s city. Mayor Daley who welcomed the passage of Measure 67 (kind of weird for a Democrat who depends on labor for much of his support) because it was going to help his city:

“It will help (Chicago’s) economic development immediately,” Daley told the Sun-Times. “You’d better believe it. We’ll be out in Oregon enticing corporations to relocate to Chicago. I’ll be very frank. I make no bones about that.”

Something has gone horribly wrong here. Instead of fleeing the state (as the company once fled Washington), Boeing is pouring into its Gresham plant the same amount of money as Measure 67 will collect from all businesses in a single year (the ironies abound). Boeing’s bean-counters seem not to understand that our state’s business tax burden rocketing from 48th most onerous in the nation to 46th means that for only a about half-a-billion dollars, they could, and should, relocate to someplace much more business-friendly.

I am not a water expert other than to say that snow runoff in the high Rocky Mountains is probably the best water in the world — given what it takes to get a drink of it. (Hint: a lot of hiking.) But I do know that a drop of water does not change its nature, whatever humans do to it. From earth to sky to pipes and faucets and back out into the sewer, H2O is H2O. We make a big mistake, I think, treating municipal water as a series of separate systems. We need to remember what water is and utilize it more efficiently, effectively and sustainably within a single system.

As I said, I’m not a water expert. I do understand that water picks up contaminants, but those are not part of water itself; they become fellow travelers as water moves through our infrastructure. The water we flush is still water; it just happens to be carrying away some other things (the water in our urine is, in the same way, still just water). If it was easy to separate water from the stuff we mix it with, urban management would be much simpler, but that’s the beauty of and problem with water: the same ease with which it can be used to flush our toilets and wash our dishes makes it terribly difficult to separate the water from the “waste” products.

Treating water as separate “before and after” products doesn’t help, however.

Graywater is a great case-in-point. Not all “wastewater” is necessarily harmful. The water used to wash clothes and dishes, for example, would not be good to drink but, if you used it on your rhodies and marigolds, they’d probably be just fine. This is what graywater is: the water we use for household tasks like dishes and clothes, and rainwater coming off the roof, that could be used for other productive purposes instead of just being dumped into the sewer system. Of course it’s not that simple — the wrong kinds of soaps, for example, can accumulate in the soil and poison it — but the basic principle is sound: We add this potentially useful water source to that which we properly flush down the toilet as if they require the same treatment. They do not, and it’s an expensive, wasteful misuse of a precious resource.

Systems exist to gather and treat graywater so it can be reused. In the same way that recycling, solar energy and insulation reduce costs by utilizing resources we had previously thrown away or ignored, graywater has the potential to reduce “original source” water and help keep costs down. Seeing how much water and sewer rates are rising in the Portland area, where we have an easy abundance of water, imagine the potential for areas that lack our access to this vital resource. Like, say, most of the American Southwest and Midwest.

The City of Portland, in coordination with Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas Counties, Metro and the State of Oregon (and perhaps Clark County and Washington State), should look at forming a single water resource-and-use bureau. Bring the wastewater and stormwater functions of the Bureau of Environmental Services into the Water Bureau, not to expand the latter’s institutional (and bureaucratic) power but to treat water as water — not a bunch of different, conceptually separate things. Focus on water itself, not what we want to use it for. The goal is to have as much water as available as possible for human use while minimizing our impact on the natural world. If we can reduce our need for “waste”water systems by using water smarter, then we benefit both ratepayers and the planet.

A single bureau would help this process. But a more holistic (sorry) view of water is more important. H2O is, after all, just H2O.

Until we piss in it. Then it’s a toilet bowl. Or the Willamette River.

Mike Darger of Gresham has filed to run against incumbent Ted Wheeler for Multnomah County Chair. Darger, who apparently sells insurance (I can find no information online) and is either a current or former truck driver, lists "Americans for Prosperity" under "Occupational Background" on his filing papers. AFP is an astroturf group that has figured prominently in the Tea Party movement. He is not listed as a member of the Gresham Tea Party group, but listing his association with AFP means he will be looking to Tea Partiers to support his campaign against Wheeler.

AFP in Oregon is Jeff Kropf's pet project and is run from Kropf's home outside of Sublimity. It receives support from the far-right propaganda organ, Cascade Policy Institute. Carla Axtman did an excellent background piece on Kropf and AFP in Blue Oregon in 2008.

AFP has a nifty Oregon website which tells visitors how they can help refer "job killing tax increases" to the ballot — oh wait, that's already happened. They also call for "Eternal Vigilance" (against the likes of me, no doubt) and continue to warn against the Dems and their union flaks; they also tell why the cell-phoning-while-driving ban is a failure (despite massive data that proves otherwise). Most importantly, they feed contributions to the national organization.

To learn more about AFP (google their sites on your own; I'm not providing them with links):

Think Progress looks at their basic MO ...

...and Rachel Maddow opens a can of whupass on AFP's founder.

Hopefully, Darger will be an articulate (and clean) spokesperson for AFP and the Tea Party movement. The more we hear directly from those who oppose government serving citizens, the better we'll understand why protecting government is one of the great things we can do for democracy.

The one word to remember with AFP: astroturf. This is not an organic grassroots organization; it was built with national money to promote national goals. That goal, of course, is best summed up in Grover Norquist's infamous, and ugly, phrase about shrinking government until it can be dragged into the bathroom and drowned in the bathtub." Just remember that when you think of our men and women serving in the military (both of my sons, one in Iraq), your parents' Medicare and Social Security, and the police and fire protection that keeps us safe.

By now, you’ve read Frank Rich’s latest warning about the Tea Party movement. You share his concern — fear might be a more accurate word — that a cadre exists within the movement, however loose it may be, that will have no qualms about using violence to further their aims. And while “getting rid of government” may seem like their real goal, Tea Party hero and philosopher-in-chief has a different goal in mind:

“Progressivism is a cancer in America,” said Beck, “and it’s eating our Constitution — and it was meant to eat our Constitution.”

Beck’s prognosis? Progressivism “must be cut out of the system.” That’s right. Our movement to bring full civil rights to all people, to end Washington’s disregard for those who are not wealthy, to use government to serve the American people, to end war and American military-corporate hegemony overseas, and ensure all elections are free and open — our movement to ensure “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all Americans is seen as a cancer destroying America and must be eradicated.

And yet a vast, possibly unbridgeable gulf exists between progressives and the Tea Partiers. Why? We both oppose much of what’s going on in DC, we want to be left alone to live our lives, we hate the Patriot Act, we don’t believe American wealth should be used to prop up governments around the world, and we believe in the Constitution. Going through that abbreviated list points out the problem, of course: government. Progressives support a representative democracy that serves all people, and the Tea Partiers pretty much hate all government.

That’s a hell of a gulf.

The majority of Americans, I believe, share some of the Tea Partiers’ fear and dislike of government, but they also want the services provided by government, be it Medicare, the highway system, police and fire, safe food and the possibility that medical care might become affordable again in the future. Few Americans actually want to get rid of government; they just want it to be responsive to “them”. More and more Americans think they are getting ignored while others — bankers, illegal immigrants, welfare cheats, rich people, whoever — are getting are getting preferential treatment.

That is the Progressive Challenge: working to restore a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”. That is why my progressive motto is “Progressive is a verb”. Until we who call ourselves progressives get involved in the political process and work to make government at all levels responsive to “we the people”, the threat from the Tea Party movement will continue to grow. Congress won’t help; even when they pass good legislation, it’s watered-down and the Dems do a crap job of selling the benefits to the American people. At best we can hope for adequate legislation that makes a positive difference for the people who need it most; the health care reform being proposed is an improvement on the status quo and will help millions.

But in so many ways, that kind of outcome from Congress is so far from good enough.

Institutionalized racism must be wiped out; that’s not an option. America must do this because that’s what our ideals tell us to do. Unfortunately, the zeal and heightened emotions that accompany this effort can have negative, unintended consequences. “Polarizing” of people within a community is one we are familiar with: whites set against blacks against Asians against…. Young against old; middle class against working class and poor; the haves versus the have-nots. It’s frustrating to those of us seeking a progressive way forward that unites all parties as much as possible.

Now we can add to this a completely unintended consequence: an assault on a woman’s right to choose:

Across the country, the anti-abortion movement, long viewed as almost exclusively white and Republican, is turning its attention to African-Americans and encouraging black abortion opponents across the country to become more active.

Abortion opponents say the number is so high because abortion clinics are deliberately located in black neighborhoods and prey upon black women. The evidence, they say, is everywhere: Planned Parenthood’s response to the anti-abortion ad that aired during the Super Bowl featured two black athletes, they note, and several women’s clinics offered free services — including abortions — to evacuees after Hurricane Katrina.

Ands:

Black abortion opponents … refer to abortions as “womb lynchings” ….

The article details the issues surrounding the African-American community and the right to choose, but the opening to attack a woman’s right to choose comes in part because of the rhetoric and politics used to attack institutionalized racism. Black leaders, as the article says, have long opposed birth control and family planning — leaders who have been mostly men and did not include Dr King. The same language used to attack a black woman’s right to make her own reproductive health choices — womb lynching — was used here in Portland to attack the shooting of Aaron Campbell. From the Portland Mercury:

"This is a modern day lynching," said Dr.Andre Brown, a panelist in the discussion who specializes in family and couples therapy at Lewis and Clark College. "Instead of trees we have cops who wait their whole life, saying one day I'm going to get me somebody, and a couple of weeks ago, they got somebody."

Brown said "at some point, some day, it was inevitable that the officer would have killed somebody. You have people who go into the police bureau with the sole intent to kill somebody."

Cops shooting black men to Planned Parenthood performing racial cleansing on poor black women; it’s all of a piece, and it’s dangerous for everyone, especially a free, progressive society. The shooting of Campbell was, from what I can tell, wholly unjustified. I do believe there are cops who are too ready to pull the trigger, not only on black men but perhaps a bit more so. We have racist cops, racist government officials, racist citizens; we have people of every ethnic background who hold bigoted views of those of other backgrounds. Progressives and others who believe in the fundamental human rights of all people oppose every form of bigotry, but what we can address directly and politically is that which has a public face: institutionalized racism (and sexism, agism, etc). This is something we must do, and the death of Aaron Campbell shows us how much further we have to go.

But we have to start be a whole lot smarter about it! The use of the word “lynch” was meant by Dr Brown to show how horrific the Campbell shooting was for African-Americans in the Portland area. Campbell’s death was brutal and unwarranted, but it was not a lynching. Not even close. While it did result in an increase in fear among African-Americans, I don’t see evidence that it inspired the kind of terror KKK lynchings did. The use of that word — and the acceptance of its use by too many people — now enables those who oppose a woman’s right to choose to ally themselves with those who oppose the ability, and willingness, of cops to make their own decision to pull the trigger on citizens based on fear and bigotry.

Shoot down a black man; kill a black baby; what’s the difference?

If we value both the right of a woman to make her own health decisions, including whether or not to get an abortion, and the right of black men to not fear the use of police violence, both communities have to make common cause. Granted, many in the African-American community do oppose a woman’s right, especially many with strong religious beliefs. This is a huge opportunity for those who do not oppose those fundamental rights to step forward and lead the way. This is especially an opportunity for African-American women to assert their role as community leaders, both against police violence and violence to a woman’s right t choose.

A progressive nation cannot tolerate either the unwarranted use of police violence nor a degradation in women’s health choices. We have to ensure that our anger over the one does not undermine our work for the other. Those who oppose freedom will use any tactic they can to win their fight. If that means cynically using the tragic death of Aaron Campbell to deprive Portland women of their full human rights, they will. Let’s not help them any further.

Heading into this special session, one of the outcomes we knew was likely was a referendum to voters on changing the state constitution to allow annual sessions. Well, we got that referendum and it's pretty bad. At this point I can't tell what happened, but apparently Senate Republicans, and enough Dems, didn't like the version passed by the House so a "compromise" ended up being dragged through. Voters will be asked to approve what amounts to the current status quo: 160 days in odd years, 35 days in even years.

It's going to be hard to vote Yes for this.

The idea of the “objective” journalist who does nothing more than uncover and report the facts is long dead, I hope. Yes, I know some journalists like to pretend they are free from “bias” or “partisanship” but that’s not only nonsense: it’s childish. If you do not believe in something, you should find a new line of work. Even “truth” is but a version of each person’s beliefs and perspective. Facts are interpreted through personal filters.

The choice is simple: Do we admit to a point-of-view, or do we lie to our readers?

I’m attending John Kitzhaber’s education policy rollout this morning. I make no bones about my support of his campaign for governor; I honestly believe he is the best person to take over next January (I’d prefer this afternoon, but that dang constitution). I hope to assist in whatever way I can to help him win, but that won’t include distorting the issues, misreporting or misrepresenting Bill Bradbury (who is a great guy and would also make a fine governor), ignoring Bradbury or looking away if I think Kitz is wrong or off-base on something.

In other words, I believe I can be both an advocate and a journalist. The trick, of course, is developing and maintaining trust and legitimacy from readers. This will never be easy or universal. I have already heard, second-hand, disparaging remarks about me attributed to Bradbury’s campaign. I have covered two of his events and believe I was fair in my writing. If I am less enthusiastic or comprehensive in that writing than I am in covering Kitzhaber, well: duh. I think less of his proposals and overall approach than I do of Kitz; that’s why I don’t support him. I think the Bank of Oregon is overkill, that his solution of throwing more money at schools is simplistic and that his inability to comprehend what Kitzhaber means about rethinking state services is troubling. I hope I would think the same if I was not a Kitz supporter; I try to write as if Bradbury were running unopposed.

“Citizen journalist” and “advocacy journalism” are terms that have not been fully defined yet. Most of us get dismissed as “bloggers” and worse terms are used. I don’t even know what it is I am trying to accomplish myself. I refuse to be a traditional journalist, but I also refuse to simply play by my own rules. Honesty and (my own rules for) integrity require me to own up to my biases and to present, not a comprehensive picture, but at least one that takes into account the range of available perspectives.

And I think that makes me more honest and trustworthy than the “real” journalists pretending to be “objective”.

Mid-February of a mid-term election (everything being measured by when we elect a President) is far too early for polls to mean a lot. It’s three months until Oregonians vote in the primary; there has been no advertising; and the only events held so far, like the debate between Kitzhaber and Bradbury, have been attended by political activists. Most Oregonians are paying the barest attention; responses to polls in February do not indicate how people will vote in May: they tell the campaigns what kind of work they need to do get those votes in May.

I can save them that work. Rather than analyze polls, they only need look back a month to the campaign for Measures 66 and 67. That is how you win an election, especially in Oregon: grassroots activism. You can do all the traditional things like buy tv and radio ads (you have to do those things, given the need to chase every single vote) but more than anything, you have to have a ground game.

You have to have Oregonians convincing Oregonians to vote. By the thousands.

We won in January because the $7 million raised and spent by unions and Defend Oregon not only bought ads and mailers but paid for the resources that made the victory possible: people talking to people. One million phone calls and 300,000 doors knocked on: those are what won the election, and those are what the big money made possible. The phone system was expensive, and walking lists required a lot of office space, computer time and paper printouts (unfortunately; many of us long for smartphone walking lists). But that was money well-spent: In early January, voter turnout was frighteningly low (low turnout predicting a No victory) but over the course of the next few weeks, we convinced tens of thousands of voters to turn in their ballots — marked Yes and Yes.

The campaigns who understand the need to get “ordinary” citizens on the phones and at the doors are the campaigns that can win. Nick Kahl, John Kroger and Steve Novick did it in the May 2008 primary, the former two over-coming establishment opponents backed by “the party” and the latter almost winning an insurgent race against the Speaker of the Oregon House (who had strong national support). In November 2008, it was extensive, months-long grassroots efforts that elected Obama, Merkley, first-time Democrats like Kahl, and many others. These campaigns, on their own and with partners like the Bus Project, Stand for Children, Our Oregon, unions, OLCV and many more, got people on the phones and to the doorsteps — and won.